Ask a server at Sadelle's how she gets to work without a car, and in early June the answer had nothing to do with the app the town had just spent months building for exactly that purpose. She hadn't heard of it. Neither had a colleague at Barsotti's in the Shops of Highland Park. A manager at Mi Cocina had downloaded the app to his phone but couldn't say what area it actually covered. This was three weeks after Highland Park's own DART bus stops came down along Preston Road.
That gap between what the town built and what the people working its restaurants actually knew about is the real story here, and it's still playing out. Highland Park spent the spring engineering a full exit from regional transit, funding a replacement, and making the first six months free. The one thing it hadn't solved by early summer was getting the word to the people who commute into the Village without a car in the first place.
Four months in, some of that gap has closed. Some of it hasn't. And the town is now close enough to a permanent decision on fares and coverage that what residents do with the free window left matters more than it did in May.
What Actually Left Preston Road
For decades, DART's Route 237 ran up Preston Road through Highland Park, with the Park Cities GoLink zone filling in shorter trips and paratransit covering riders who needed door-to-door service. On May 2, voters chose to end that arrangement in a special election, by a margin wide enough that Highland Park became the only one of three Park Cities communities on that ballot to leave. Addison and University Park held the same kind of vote the same day and chose to stay. Highland Park now joins Coppell and Flower Mound as the only member cities to ever leave DART since the agency's founding in 1983.
DART service to, from, and within the town ended at midnight on May 14. Route 237 still runs the corridor, but the bus no longer stops inside town limits. The GoLink zone is gone. Paratransit trips that used to begin, end, or pass through Highland Park stopped the same night.
The Replacement, In Practical Terms
Highland Park On-Demand launched May 13, the day before the DART cutoff, run through a contract with Via Transportation. If you haven't opened the app yet, here's what you're working with:
- Coverage runs across the town plus roughly a mile beyond the border, with connections to Mockingbird Station and Dallas Love Field
- Hours are 5 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week
- You book through the app or by calling 214-785-4345, no smartphone required
- The base fare is currently free during the pilot, though the council floated a $3 one-way trip and $3.50 paratransit fare before deciding to run the trial at no cost
- Children under 5 and personal care attendants ride free regardless of what happens to the base fare later
- Highland Park Access, the paratransit arm, requires an eligibility application and rides must be booked up to four days ahead, with booking closing at 5 p.m. the night before travel
Four vehicles currently serve the whole program, two of them paratransit capable.
The Numbers Four Months In
By June 2, about three weeks after launch, the service had logged 595 completed trips and 479 created app accounts, according to figures Highland Park's Director of Policy Development and Strategic Initiatives, Letecia McNatt, shared with local reporters. Six active paratransit riders had signed up in that same window.
Set against DART's own numbers, that's a meaningful jump. Route 237 had been averaging only about 35 boardings on a typical weekday before the switch, meaning the fixed bus line residents were paying into wasn't carrying much local traffic to begin with. In less than a month, the homegrown replacement had already logged more trips than the old route managed in a comparable stretch.
By the town council's August 11 session, McNatt reported ridership still climbing on the same four-vehicle fleet. The two most popular pickup and dropoff points, by a clear margin, were Highland Park Village and Mockingbird Station.
That detail is worth sitting with. Those aren't job sites. They're where people go to eat, shop, and catch a train, which tells you something about who has actually adopted the service so far: residents running errands and commuters headed to Mockingbird, not necessarily the hourly staff who used to rely on the 237 or the GoLink zone to get into the Village for a shift.
Why That Matters Before November
Two pieces of this were still unresolved as of the August meeting. First, the fare. The possibility of future fee-based rides came up again at that session, and whatever the council decides will be built on ridership data collected almost entirely during a period when nobody had to pay. That's a different sample than what shows up once a ride costs money, and it's the sample that will likely shape the permanent version of this program.
Second, the Builder Shuttle, officially called the Workforce Circulator in town documents, still hadn't launched as of the most recent public reporting. The idea is to move construction crews from off-site parking into job sites around town, cutting down on the work trucks that line narrow residential streets during renovation projects. Mayor Will Beecherl described the logic behind it plainly to the Dallas Morning News:
"We'll use the Via service, off-site parking and 'van' those individuals in instead of having to park up and down the streets."
The math behind all of this traces back to what Highland Park had been sending DART. Town Administrator Tobin Maples put the figure at a little more than $8 million last year, with 2026 on pace to hit closer to $9 or $10 million through the town's share of sales tax. Running a local pilot for a fraction of that cost is the entire premise the council is testing, and the fare decision this fall is where that premise either holds up or doesn't.
What Closed the Gap, and What Hasn't
The town did make one direct fix. After criticism that the original signage near the old bus stops along Preston Road left out Spanish-language information, bilingual signs went up advertising Highland Park On-Demand. That's a specific response to a specific documented problem, not a broad awareness campaign.
What hasn't fully closed is the harder part. Managers at Mi Cocina and Honor Bar in the Village told a reporter that most of their employees wouldn't need a DART replacement anyway, since they already drive to an off-site lot and use a separate, pre-existing shuttle to get to work. That arrangement predates On-Demand entirely, which means the app may never reach the exact riders DART used to serve unless the town builds something that specifically targets them.
Highland Park On-Demand launched May 13, which puts the natural end of its six-month pilot around mid-November. That means the town is now past the midpoint, close enough to the finish that whatever gets decided about fares and the Builder Shuttle in the coming weeks will likely set the shape of this program for good, not just for the trial.
If You Live Here
The practical version of all this is simple. Rides are free right now, and that window has a real end date. The coverage reaches Highland Park Village, Mockingbird Station, and Love Field, and every trip you take between now and November becomes part of the record the town is using to decide what comes next. If you've been meaning to try it before deciding whether the current fare structure or a future one makes sense for how you actually get around, this fall is the window, not next spring.
I've lived and worked in these neighborhoods long enough to know that the changes people notice first aren't always the ones that end up mattering most. A transit pilot funded by a $1.55 million budget line doesn't sound like neighborhood news until you realize it's rerouting how your own Saturday errands get logged into a permanent policy decision. That's the kind of thing worth knowing before it's finished, not after.
If you're thinking about what's next for your home in Highland Park, or want a read on how changes like this affect the neighborhood day to day, Jeremy Whiteker has been tracking this market long enough to give you a straight answer. Get Your Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk.
