What’s up Scene It readers!

I found myself without my car this week (SOMEONE left in in Minnesota…), which has allowed me the joy of experiencing more public transit!

Unfortunately, Des Moines’ options for public transit are relatively limited – we’ve got the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) busses, and that’s basically it. So, how good are they?

Cleanliness: The DART busses are very clean! There wasn’t any garbage floating around, the floors were spotless, and the outside of the bus was nice and shiny. The seats d

Timeliness: Both of the busses I rode were only ~5 minutes late, which was honestly totally fine with me – I wasn’t in a hurry. At my first stop, there was only a bus every 90 minutes (yikes!), but those 5 extra minutes of waiting felt way more reasonable given that context. If you were taking a shorter route I could see that being very annoying.

Accessibility: The DART website has many tools for planning your route and viewing bus schedules, all of which seem very useful! Personally I just used Apple Maps, which is well integrated with their system. One thing they have that got me really excited was an automated phone number you can text that will send you the next busses and times at the stop you’re at – in a world of everything being an app or a website, it was super nice to see that support for people with older (or “dumber”) tech! As someone with a “Dumb” phone myself, I found that functionality very comforting.

Cost: I did not buy a bus pass or anything like that – you can pay with cash when you board (into a machine that I could not for the life of be get my bills into… embarrassing 😅). It’s $1.75 – $2 per ride when you do that, which does feel like a bit much when you compare it to the price of CyRide in Ames ($1 for the same deal). That being said, CyRide is heavily subsidized by the University up there and also has less are to cover, so I definitely got more for paying more… I’d be curious to see how DART pricing stacks up against other similar public transit systems. They do have a half-fare system for those in more need, which is cool to see! You can check out their pricing structure here.

Overall I’m very impressed with DART, and would definitely recommend trying it out if you can! I was able to get from Ankeny to Clive in under an hour, and luckily my schedule was flexible enough to make the bus schedule work. My biggest complaint is frequency – for my trip, I had the option to either be 45 minutes early or 45 minutes late to my meeting, which while I was able to make that work just fine not everyone has that level of flexibility. Hopefully DART is working to improve this! Also… DART subway when?? 👀

DART LINK: DART also has the LINK bus line, which is a super frequent bus line through downtown Des Moines that’s completely free!! It comes every 15 minutes! Unfortunately my trip was not able to benefit from this, but if yours can you should check it out!

Check out the DART system for yourself, and go on your own public transit adventure today! https://ridedart.com/