I Commuted from Downtown Dallas to Legacy West Using the Express Bus

Photo: F. Muhammad from Pixabay

Editor's Note: This story was written by a LegacyConnect staffer who set out on a mission to rethink his commute.

Confession time: I live in downtown Dallas, and over the last year I’ve started to commute to the Legacy area regularly for work. And although one of my professional passions is helping people discover and utilize commuting options other than driving alone in a car, I’m embarrassed to say that’s exactly how I’ve been getting back and forth on my trips to West Plano.

So when I recently caught up with a longtime friend over coffee and told her that I’d been traveling to Legacy more and more often, she asked me how I was getting there. Then, she immediately called me out on my hypocrisy (as only an old friend can) once I told her. Point taken. The gauntlet was thrown.

A bit of background: My personal approach has always been to live near my work so I can walk, bike, and scoot to where I need to go. I’ve used public transit sporadically over the course of my life, but it’s never been required as part of my daily routine. Until, apparently, now.

So, when I decided to run a personal experiment every day for a week, I was surprised when I found myself a bit apprehensive.

Unlike my preferred modes of travel, where I was in charge of the timing and speed of travel (even if that just meant pedaling really hard if I was running late), taking the bus meant operating on someone else’s schedule.

It also included not knowing who I’d be traveling with, not being in charge of the temperature, and not being able to slide into that gap between cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic in an effort to shave a precious three-quarters of a second off my commute time.

It meant ceding control, which is not a particularly strong trait of mine.

Luckily, I’m also stubborn and overly protective of my ego. And the ego-threat created by the possibility that my friend might earn the right to call me a hypocrite for life — well, that got me over the ‘control issues’ hump.

Preparation

So I set about preparing, and here's what I learned.

My first step was to download the GoPass app, which I already knew could assist me in both trip-planning and pass-buying. I found it very intuitive to use: within about a minute I’d plugged in my home address (near the Farmers Market) and destination address (Legacy Food Hall, where I tend to have a lot of coffee meetings), and learned that the DART Express Bus I’d be riding is the 208.

My goal was to simulate the 8:30 a.m. to 5-ish p.m. schedule that I’d likely be operating under more in 2020. So, it was a nice surprise to learn that the morning 208 Express Bus schedule is set up to match that almost exactly: busses run about every 15 minutes at peak commuting times with four departures scheduled between 7:18 and 7:50 a.m.

Quick ProTip: there are a few other downtown stops that might be closer to your home that aren’t listed on the schedule. For example, I got on at Ervay/Pacific, which isn’t a listed stop. Use the trip planning tool in the GoPass app to find them.

From my front door, the walk was about 8 minutes. I decided I’d aim to arrive about 10 minutes before the scheduled time departure time of 7:07 a.m. so I could find my actual stop, but it turns out it was super-easy to spot.

With some time to spare, I played around with the app, pulled up the day pass I’d purchased the night before for $6 (which allows you to ride all day), and activated it. Again, all very easy, and very intuitive. It’s a very well-designed app (it’s award-winning, after all).

The bus arrived about one minute behind schedule. I hopped aboard, flashed my phone with the activated ticket to the driver, and surveyed the scene. Contrary to my fears of being sardined shoulder-to-shoulder or being forced to stand, the bus was only about a quarter full.

I bee-lined for the back row, which was completely empty, burrowed into the back corner, and stretched out to enjoy the ride.

I knew the trip was scheduled to take about an hour using the Dallas North Tollway, which is roughly the time it takes me by car depending on the day and the traffic. The bus made three more stops (one person at each) on the way to the DNT, and, just like that, we were cruising up the tollway.

That’s when I suddenly realized that I had an hour to kill. I’m so conditioned to having to pay attention that this freshly-unlocked time took me a minute to process. After aimlessly flipping through the news for a minute, I noticed we were passing under the first ‘gantry’ (one of those big metal structures where the tolls booths used to be) that reads your TollTag and debits your account.

That triggered a thought: “How much have I actually been spending in tolls every time I drive to Plano?” So, I looked it up.

I was a bit startled to realize that I’d been paying $7.76 in tolls every day for the round trip. I’m not sure how much I thought it was, but that struck me as high. That led me to actually calculate the total cost of the 48-mile round trip, using the AAA’s 2019 Your Driving Costs milage rate of $0.6188/mile. And I WAS FLOORED.

It cost me $37.46 every single day that I decided to hop in the car and head up to Plano. What? Again, I didn’t know how much I was expecting, but, just, wow. That was a jaw-dropper.

Suffice it to say, that figure rented space in my head the rest of the trip.

The rest of my ride was a mix of daydreaming and people-watching. Pretty much everyone had their headphones in. Some were on their phones, others had their eyes closed, dozing.

What struck me was that, unlike when I’m driving myself, the two bouts of traffic we encountered (one full stop, one slow-to-a-crawl for about 5 minutes) didn’t bother me a bit. I honestly only half-noticed, and just went back to looking out the window thinking.

That chill feeling is not how I’m used to feeling when in traffic.

I came to when we took the Tennyson exit. I checked my phone (8:05 a.m.) and noted that we were right on time. I guess DART accounts for traffic. I knew I was going to stay on past the first few stops, so I hopped off at the stop on Communications just past Legacy.

Three minutes later, I was walking into the Food Hall. Total door-to-door trip time? An hour and 15 minutes, which is about how long I usually spend considering the time it takes to park and walk from the garage.

Fast forward to the afternoon. I’d looked up the departure times and found that the departure times were a bit less frequent during peak commuting times: every 30 minutes.

That was fine, as the 208 was picking up riders across from the Food Hall at Headquarters/Communications at 5:19 p.m. (and then 5:52 and 6:20), which was just about when I wanted to leave.

The experience was the same, but this time the bus was about one-third full of tired-ish passengers looking like they just wanted to get home.

The afternoon trip actually took about 10 minutes less than the morning trip because we didn’t hit any dead-stop traffic. Since the reverse route winds through downtown slightly differently than in the morning, I was able to get off at a stop that was actually a block closer to my house and headed home feeling more energized than usual (likely due to the pretty great power nap during the return trip).

The Final Analysis

My takeaway? I think I’m sold. And I can tell already that I’m going to switch to the Express Bus as my primary commuting means. I have no doubt there will be days when wrenches are thrown in my schedule, or days when life gets in the way. But now that I’ve actually experienced what it’s like to be driven to work, and avoided the stress of fighting traffic, I’m pretty sure that I’ve become a convert. Not to mention I’ll be saving over $30 a day. That adds up quickly.

Going forward, I think I’m going to develop a better routine for how I use my time on the bus. I basically feel like I somehow ‘unlocked’ an extra two hours a day.

I used it pretty aimlessly, glancing at Mavericks news here, catching a bit of shuteye there. But I feel like if I went in with a plan (even a loose one) of a couple of things I can intentionally knock off my to-do list, then I can grow into a productivity-ninja from there.

P.S. I’m totally going to treat myself to some new commuting gear: upgraded noise-canceling headphones and a slick new stainless steel water bottle are top of them. Upgrades are easy to rationalize because they’ll both pay for themselves within the first week.