Audio By Carbonatix
DART is in the midst of a series of community meetings to explain its proposed fare changes. The in-person get-togethers seem to have gone swimmingly, but this afternoon, DART went all 21st century for a one-hour Twitter town hall from 1 to 2 p.m. today. Awfully brave, I thought. Something about Twitter can unleash some people’s inner asshole.
The proposed changes are too complicated to explain in 140 characters, but you can look at the proposal, and DART’s rationale for what amounts to a fare hike for a lot of people, here.
It’s safe to say the Twitterverse didn’t exactly explode in outrage. Things plodded along for most of the hour with Tweets ranging from mild to moderate displeasure:
No, DART responded. But it will introduce new 17-seat buses in October, for a “better match of ridership, vehicle & neighborhood.”
Then there was this guy:
Sort of, DART says:
@Publishmystory The reduced fare goes from .85 for a single trip to a 2-hour trip (includes bus-rail transfers) for $1.25. #dartfarechange
advertisement— dartmedia (@dartmedia) June 14, 2012
He continues:
Which was a bit off topic:
Then at 1:50 p.m., as the town hall neared its supposed end, there was a veritable explosion of comments mostly thanks to one Katie List, who I think comes out as the people’s champion in this whole thing.
To whom DART responded that hey, they’re not going to raise fares again at least until 2018.
Okay. So what did we learn from this? First, the fares seem like a done deal. Second, the enormous pool of DART riders who use Twitter will probably get smaller.
Oh yeah. We also learned not to trust this guy:
