Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Year of Change: How DCTA plans to move itself, region into the future

Raymond Suarez, CEO, DCTA

The word “change” can be scary to some and difficult for others, but for us at DCTA, we’re embracing it! We take great pride in the many milestones and accomplishments we’ve achieved, but we’re aware of our region’s drastically changing landscape and know that we need to change the way we do business to meet the increasing mobility needs of North Texas. In the upcoming year, DCTA will continue its commitment to provide innovative mobility options to improve the quality of life where our residents live, work and play.

Providing Mobility Solutions and Adding Value to the Region

We’re implementing a new, strategic process to better engage with our member cities, board of directors and stakeholders so we can meet their expectations. Identifying key priorities and concerns of our key stakeholders, partners and riders will enable us to better serve our many communities.

In addition, we’re strategically restructuring how we do business to better align ourselves to address the changing mobility demands and rider behaviors. Listed below are key projects we plan to implement next year:

  • Mobility as a Service (MaaS) Provider Request for Proposal (RFP) – Next January, we plan to issue a RFP for mobility services that is intended to qualify vendors to enter into service contracts with us to provide customized service proposals to meet the mobility needs of our regional clients and member cities. We will solicit proposals from a wide range of vendors including shared mobility companies, software developer and third-party mobility providers. This approach will leverage the most innovative technologies and transportation service models under a DCTA service contract and will be regularly reissued to maintain relevance and ensure the contract stays up-to-date on the mobility tools that are constantly evolving.
  • Microtransit Services – Earlier this year, we launched a microtransit pilot service that serves the Denton Enterprise Airport and other businesses in the designated zone. Microtransit service offers real-time flexible routing and scheduling of minibus vehicles. Similar to Uber and Lyft, DCTA-branded vehicles carry a handful of riders at a time. Next year, we plan to launch additional microtransit services in other key areas in the communities we serve.
  • A-train Rail Trail – We’re slated to complete construction of our entire 19-mile rail trail which runs alongside our A-train from Denton to southern Lewisville. Once complete, the trail will provide pedestrians and cyclists a safe opportunity to travel the entire trail or take a break and ride the A-train.

Key Priorities for Next Year

We’ve already made great strides internally to address the way we do business, and have identified key priorities to enable us to better engage with our communities, increase ridership and provide innovative mobility solutions which include:

  • Improving engagement with customers and stakeholders to enhance partnerships in our region
  • Strategically addressing the changing landscape of our service delivery and innovation in mobility
  • Having more transparent communications with our board of directors, partners, cities, etc. about our goals and how we can best address their needs
  • Doing a better job of building brand recognition in the community

At DCTA, we’re not making excuses for the past, and we’re striving to do things differently to ensure we’re ready for future mobility demands to keep our riders moving forward.

CTG Staff
CTG Staff
The Cross Timbers Gazette News Department

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