DES MOINES, Iowa — Des Moines Area Regional Transit’s Reimagine DART program will overhaul the entire public transport networks bus routes, combining some while cutting others.

Erin Hockman, DART’s Chief Strategy Officer, said that the Reimagine Dart plan will provide faster travel for bus riders.

“So we are proposing a new bus network to really align with how and where people are traveling today. We heard feedback from our community that they wanted us to prioritize fewer bus routes with more frequent service so people can travel farther, faster,” Hockman said.

DART is funded primarily through property taxes. Part of the Reimagine DART plan is to scale back operating costs.

“We really started this process off with two questions. How much service can the region afford and then how do we prioritize those resources we have? Because we want to provide the very best service we can with the funding that is available and so we were directed by our Board of Commissioners, local elected officials, to reduce the total amount of service by 10%,” Hockman said.

DART’s budget will see a near 3% cut for the next fiscal year going from $45 million to $43.7 million.

“Today is about 45 million and in this proposed draft network, we would see our budget decrease to about 43.7 million and property tax revenue would stay flat from this fiscal year to next fiscal year. So it really helps limit property tax revenue growth and we know that’s important because costs for goods and services has gone up and we’ve all seen that in our own household budget,” Hockman said.

The Reimagine Dart plan can change depending on the funding availability from its member communities.

“Our goal with this proposed new network was really to design a bus network through a budget that we heard our communities could afford. That said, we know all of our cities are facing a lot of budget constraints and they’re operating in a difficult budget environment. And so it’s possible we could have to adjust service in the future after this plan is implemented,” Hockman.

To learn more about the Reimagine DART visit DART’s website.