Where did the bus stop go? If you walked or drove along Preston Road this spring and noticed a taped-over sign where a DART stop used to be, you already know the answer starts with a May election and ends with an app on your phone. What most residents don't know is that the free ride they're getting right now is also a live experiment, and how they use it over the next twelve weeks will likely decide what it costs and looks like after that.
Here's the short version of how Highland Park got here, and the longer version of what it means for anyone who lives here now.
What Actually Changed on May 14
Almost 70% of Highland Park voters chose to leave Dallas Area Rapid Transit in a special election on May 2, 2026. The town canvassed those results on May 13, and DART service inside town limits ended at midnight the following day. Route 237 still runs along Preston Road on its way to other destinations, but it no longer stops in Highland Park. The Park Cities GoLink zone, which used to fill in shorter trips, is gone from the town entirely. Any DART paratransit trips that began or ended in Highland Park stopped as well.
In their place, the town launched Highland Park On-Demand the same week, a city-run microtransit service operated under contract with Via Transportation. Town Administrator Tobin Maples called it "a big, exciting day" after the council meeting that made it official. Highland Park became the only one of three Park Cities-area municipalities with a DART withdrawal question on the ballot to actually leave. Addison and University Park both voted to stay.
How the Service Actually Works
The new system is really two services wearing one name, and the difference matters depending on how you plan to use it.
| Highland Park On-Demand (Microtransit) | Highland Park Access (Paratransit) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | Any resident, no application needed | Riders with a documented mobility need |
| Booking | Instant, through the app or by calling 214-785-4345 | Must book up to 4 days ahead, closes 5 p.m. the night before |
| Hours | 5 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week | Pre-scheduled only |
| Cost right now | Free, during the six-month pilot | $3.50 per ride |
| Coverage | Highland Park plus a one-mile radius, with connections to Mockingbird Station and, per the app listing, Dallas Love Field | Full current DART service area |
The microtransit side is the one most residents will actually use. Open the app, enter a pickup and dropoff, and a vehicle from the town's small fleet comes to you. The Access side, built for federally required paratransit coverage, requires proof of eligibility first, either documentation from another transit agency or a doctor's note from within the past six months explaining why fixed-route service isn't workable.
The fleet itself is modest. Highland Park Department of Public Safety Lt. Lance Koppa has said four vehicles serve the entire program, two of which are equipped for paratransit riders.
Why It's Free, and Why That Wasn't the Original Plan
The town initially planned to charge a $3 base fare, roughly matching what a DART local ride cost. At the same May 13 meeting where the council canvassed the election results, that plan changed. Council members voted to make microtransit rides free for the duration of the six-month pilot instead.
Maples explained the reasoning this way after the meeting:
"They'll get on our on-demand and we'll take them to their doorstep. And there's no fee for that."
The logic is straightforward. Highland Park had spent years paying into DART through 1% of its sales tax, roughly half of what the town could otherwise keep locally, with that annual contribution projected to reach $9 million in 2026. Charging former DART riders again to use the replacement felt, in the town's own framing, like billing the same trip twice.
What This Actually Costs the Town
The math behind the switch is worth sitting with for a moment, because it's the clearest number in the whole story. The six-month pilot is expected to cost the town about $417,000. If extended for a full year, Maples has said that figure would land around $750,000.
Set that against the roughly $9 million Highland Park was contributing annually to DART, and even the full annualized cost of the new system is a small fraction of what the town paid before. That comparison is the actual argument for leaving DART, not a philosophical one about local control, but an arithmetic one about what a fully built-out town with no bus riders to speak of was subsidizing.
The town still owes a share of DART's outstanding debt regardless of the withdrawal, so the savings aren't quite as clean as the headline number suggests. But the gap between $750,000 and $9 million is wide enough that the decision reads less like a gamble and more like a town doing what Mayor Will Beecherl described as basic math.
The Adoption Gap Nobody Planned For
Here's the part of the story that doesn't show up in a press release. By June 2, roughly three weeks after launch, Highland Park On-Demand had logged 595 completed trips and 479 created app accounts, according to figures from Letecia McNatt, the town's director of policy development and strategic initiatives. Six paratransit riders were active on Highland Park Access at that point. Those are healthy numbers for three weeks of a brand-new service.
But ask who's actually using it, and a different picture starts to form. In early June, a manager at Mi Cocina in Highland Park Village said he had the app on his phone but didn't know what area it covered. A manager at Honor Bar said most of his employees wouldn't need a replacement for DART anyway, since they drive to an employee parking area and take a pre-existing private shuttle into the Village. An employee at Coupe's in the Shops of Highland Park said she knew a few coworkers who'd had to change their commute plans since the town left DART.
That's a meaningful split. The people building ridership numbers in the first month appear to be residents who chose the app for convenience, not the hourly workers commuting into Highland Park who actually relied on the old Route 237 stop and the GoLink zone. The town has since added English and Spanish signage along Preston Road, near where the old DART stops used to be, after criticism that the initial rollout didn't include Spanish-language information.
Why the Next Twelve Weeks Matter More Than the Last Twelve
The pilot launched May 13. A six-month pilot puts its natural endpoint around mid-November, which means Highland Park is now past the midpoint, with roughly twelve weeks left before the town has to decide what this service becomes permanently.
That decision will be made using ridership data collected during exactly this stretch. If the pattern from June holds, and the people showing up in the app's usage numbers are mostly residents riding for convenience rather than the workers the service was built to replace, the town could end up setting permanent fares, hours, or fleet size based on a data set that never fully reflects who actually needs the ride. A free service only solves the double-billing problem Maples described for people who know it exists.
For residents, the practical takeaway is simpler than any of that. The service is free right now, it reaches Mockingbird Station and, per the app's own listing, Dallas Love Field, and it runs later into the evening than most people assume. Whether you're sending a house guest to catch a flight without pulling your own car out of the garage, or you've simply been meaning to try it since May and haven't gotten around to it, the next several weeks are the version of Highland Park On-Demand that costs you nothing and tells the town the most about what to build next.
If you have questions about how transportation changes like this affect a home you already own or one you're considering in Highland Park, our team at Wiebe Real Estate pays close attention to the details that shape daily life here, not just the ones that show up in a listing. You can browse more of what we're watching in the neighborhood on our Highland Park page, or reach out directly. Work With Us.
