Ridership on the Denton County Transportation Authority has doubled in Highland Village over the past several years, DCTA CEO Paul Cristina said at a regional transit panel in early September.

Cristina spoke at the Infrastructure Summit in Irving, where leaders from DART, DCTA, Trinity Metro and the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) discussed the future of public transit, The Dallas Morning News reported. The contrast with DART was stark. DART interim president and CEO David Leininger said ridership could fall from about 55 million trips this year to 52 million next year if the agency does not change course. He pointed to rising car ownership and lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

DCTA, which serves Highland Village, Lewisville and Denton, has grown ridership among its member cities by about 8% annually for two consecutive years, Cristina said. The agency's FY2026 budget likewise shows ridership up nearly 8% year over year in fiscal year 2025. Highland Village's GoZone on-demand rideshare service saw a 15% jump that year. Lewisville's GoZone ridership rose 12%.

Ridership also tripled in Lewisville and increased 50% in Denton over the same multi-year period, Cristina said, crediting changes in DCTA's service mix and use of ridership data.

But the growth masks a harder reality for some riders. Cristina described a Highland Village resident with cerebral palsy who works for the Internal Revenue Service in Carrollton. Getting from home to work requires transfers between paratransit, rail and other services run by different agencies. Cristina said the patchwork route he could offer the man simply does not function.

"It doesn't work," Cristina said.

DCTA provides about 50,000 trips a year for elderly and disabled residents between its member and nonmember cities through its Access paratransit program. The region's 65-and-older population is projected to grow 80% over the next 25 years, Cristina said. He estimated one in four older residents could face some form of mobility disadvantage.

To close the gaps, Cristina called for a common trip-planning or dispatching platform that would let riders move across the region without navigating each transit system separately. DCTA's GoZone service, which operates in a shared Lewisville and Highland Village zone, expanded residents' access to jobs within a 30-minute commute by almost 94% since its launch, according to DCTA.

Residents who use DCTA services can find route and schedule information at dcta.net or by calling (972) 221-4600.