This new rideshare will make it easier to get around Fort Worth’s popular Near Southside
Getting to health care in Fort Worth’s Near Southside, the center of the city’s medical district, can be difficult for anyone who doesn’t have a car. It could mean at least two transfers on a Trinity Metro bus plus up to an hour waiting and several blocks of walking.
That will change with an easier, cheaper transit option later this year that could benefit more than just patients and doctors.
Trinity Metro will launch a Zipzone, an area with on-demand ridesharing, in the Near Southside this spring. The Fort Worth City Council is expected to approve funding for the program, $250,000 set aside in the 2020 budget, March 3.
Using Via, a private rideshare company Trinity Metro has contracted with, riders can ping a driver in a Mercedes seven-passenger van. They’ll be picked up and dropped off within two blocks of their location and destination for a flat rate of $3. The Zipzone is roughly bound by Interstate 30 in the north, Allen Avenue in the south, Evans Avenue in the east and Forrest Park Boulevard in the west.
During high-demand hours, riders may have to share the van with others, but the cost is about half as much as a typical rideshare. On a recent Friday afternoon, the estimated cost to travel from T&P Station to Eighth and Magnolia avenues, at opposite ends of the district, was $6.50 to $11.16, depending on the route and size of the Uber car. The vans will be available from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily to start.
Navigating the Near Southside can be hard, said Mike Sanborn, president of Baylor Scott and White All Saints Medical Center. Patients and doctors often bounce between hospitals, pharmacies and lunch spots, adding a lot of traffic to the streets and taking up a lot of time.
“This can be much faster than walking to your car, getting out of the parking lot, driving around and then finding parking again,” Sanborn said. “Getting around the medical district and be difficult.”
A future TEXRail stop is planned for just west of the All Saints Medical Center, but in the meantime the Zipzone will connect commuters from the T&P Station. Sanborn said a large number of medical center employees live along the train route and want to commute to work.
The medical center receives about 80 people from the two Trinity Metro bus routes that run by the hospital at 1400 Eighth Ave. Sanborn said it is likely that number will increase with Zipzone, which is designed to make using the bus route easier.
The hope is the Zipzone will make it easier to connect people from bus stops and the TEXRail station to destination. It may also increase people’s willingness to use transit over driving, said Chad Edwards, the city’s mobility officer.
“It’s so easy to get in the car and drive to where you’re going. We have to make it just as easy to use transit,” he said.
Trinity Metro established a Via-based Zipzone in the Mercantile Center business park last July. Ridership started low — just under 90 rides were taken that month. But in December 870 rides were taken, according to data from Trinity Metro. A Lyft-based program has also been available in the Alliance corridor in far North Fort Worth since last spring.
Transit officials believe the Near Southside could be more popular than the other two Zipzones, which cater to workers who commute into the business hubs via transit like TEXRail’s Mercantile Center stop. The Near Southside has the largest concentration of medical jobs in Dallas-Fort Worth at nearly 40,000, so the Zipzone would be handy for doctors, nurses and other professionals who want to commute into the district.
But it will mainly benefit patients who don’t own cars, Edwards said. Trinity Metro Bus routes 1, 4, 5, 6 and 9 run through the Near Southside with stops near major hospitals. But the routes don’t make frequent stops near smaller clinics, pharmacies and other offices, making it hard to get to medical care without a car. Patients can ride the bus, or TEXRail, into the Near Southside and then order the Via van to take them to wherever they need to go.
Edwards said he imagined an entirely different passenger using the Zipzone as well — the bar and restaurant crowd. Magnolia Avenue and the South Main Street corridor offer a growing number of bars, restaurants, breweries and other venues, but they’re spread apart. The Zipzone offers an alternative to an Uber, Lyft or walking.
Even though the Zipzone hasn’t started yet, Near Southside Inc., the nonprofit that promotes development in the area, has used it as a marketing tool to lure commercial and residential developers. The rideshare is an ideal way for anyone who lives and works in the neighborhood to get around, said Near Southside Inc. President Mike Brennan said. About 3,000 housing units will be available in the coming year.
“There’s really not a lot of places in Fort Worth where you can live a near car-free life, but Near Southside,” he said.
Trinity Metro is also launching a Zipzone in Crowely in May. The Crowley zone will operate 6:30-10 a.m. and 3:30-7 p.m. weekdays and will include service to Texas Health Huguley Hospital Fort Worth South, the Gateway Station shopping center and Trinity Metro bus routes 6, 66X and 72 in Fort Worth. Like the other zones, a ride will cost $3.
Zipzones are also planned near the Bell and Centreport/DFW Airport stops of the TRE train line, around Hulen Mall and on the west side of Lake Arlington, but it is unclear if or when those districts will be approved.
Trinity Metro improvements
The city and Trinity Metro are steadily moving forward with plans to revamp the bus system in Fort Worth. Bus routes were designed more than 20 years ago when Fort Worth’s population was barely above 500,000 and the city limits didn’t stretch to the far north and west.
Today the system does a poor job of carrying passengers, according to an analysis released last fall. Of the 48 bus routes, five carry 50% or more of the system’s weekday riders. Only seven operate every 15 minutes, the ideal frequency to attract riders. Finding a bus at night or on the weekend is even harder — 33 routes end service by 6 p.m.
To help fix that, Edwards and experts from mobility consultant Nelson\Nygaard, laid out three scenarios in September. The weakest option would do almost nothing to improve the bus system and instead would rely on small investments, like building new bus shelters, to help improve ridership.
A more robust plan would significantly increase the frequency of bus service on at least 16 routes and extend TEXRail to the southwest. Bus rapid transit lines would include Interstate 35W to Denton as wells as AllainceTexas, west on I-30 and along Chisholm Trail Parkway. Bus rapid transit, called BRT, mimics light rail because they give the bus a dedicated lane with large, well-lit transit stops and quick service.
After several public meetings and an online survey, Edwards said the recommendation to city officials would likely be a slightly pared down version of a “visionary” transit city plan, which features extensive changes.
This plan originally called for two light rail routes down Lancaster/Camp Bowie and North Main/Hemphill — routes that mimic historic streetcar lines. A commuter rail line would run south from downtown to Crowley while another would connect far southeast Fort Worth to downtown.
Edwards said plans would scrap the light rail and replace those routes with BRT lines and may not include the additional commuter rail lines, though TEXRail would still be extended to near Tarleton State’s Fort Worth campus.
Cutting light rail saves significant money. Originally projected to cost more than $6 billion, the plan would now run about $2.8 billion. Light rail is expensive at about $110 million per mile, while bus rapid transit lines are estimated at about $30 million per mile. They accomplish the same goal and are equally attractive to developers who want to build near transit lines, Edwards said. The multi-billion investment would not come all at once, but would span 25 years and include local, state and federal money.
One BRT could be available for east Fort Worth residents soon. The city has about $60 million set aside for a line that would run down East Lancaster from downtown east to the Handley area on the border with Arlington, Edwards said, and he wants to double that money with grants. Plans for that BRT are in the early stages, but eventually the line would extend west down Camp Bowie Boulevard to Southwest Boulevard.
“We’re going to have to do this over a long period of time, so let’s start with something that we can do now,” Edwards said.
The city is hosting a series of public meetings to gather input on transit needs in Fort Worth. They’re scheduled for:
▪ Feb. 29, 10-11:30 a.m., Como Community Center, 4660 Horne St. Served by Trinity Metro routes 27 and 32.
▪ March 2, 6-7:30 p.m., Southwest Regional Library, 4001Library Lane. Served by route 25.
▪ March 3, noon to 1:30 p.m., 1001 Jones St. Served by TEXRail, TRE and local and express bus routes.
▪ March 4, 6-7:30 p.m., East Regional Library, 6301 Bridge St. Served by route 20.
▪ March 5, 6-7:30 p.m., Diamond Hill Community Center, 1701 N.E. 36th St. Served by Route 12.
▪ March 18, 6-7:30 p.m., Heritage Trace Church of Christ, 4201 Heritage Trace Parkway. Served by route 11.
▪ March 19, 7-8 p.m., Shamblee Library, 1062 Evans Ave. Served by routes 4 and 8.
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "This new rideshare will make it easier to get around Fort Worth’s popular Near Southside."
