Business View City & Municipal | August 2022

153 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7 vision plan that goes all the way through 2030.” The new network has new route names, route structures, and increased service in key corridors to make the buses much more useful. Barna details, “We have a number of routes running every 15 minutes or better all day, seven days a week. That is a huge change for Alexandria. And it allows people to really count on the buses a lot more.” Prior to the launch of the New DASH Network in September 2021, DASH had been drawing less than 50% of pre-pandemic ridership levels. While those reduced numbers were largely based on the impact of COVID-19, which they had no control over, their controlled response has been impressive. “We’re all the way back up to 100% (of pre-COVID ridership), so we are really excited about that,” Barna professes. “We’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from riders about the new routes and our fare free service. It’s been a really great transformation for the community and for DASH to have this new network in place.” That’s right. All of the DASH buses are free to ride. The Alexandria Transit Company applied for and were awarded a state grant and the City Council of Alexandria voted to increase the DASH subsidy to help offset the revenue normally collected from riders, so they are going to be fare-free all the way through 2025 based ALEXANDR I A TRANS I T COMPANY (DASH) on that program. “We’ve really seen historic ridership growth,” explains Barna, “which is probably indicative of the improvements we made, but also indicative of the fact that people are getting back to their old travel habits, which is great. People are heading back to work in the office, doing errands, being social, and meeting up with their friends.” General Manager and CEO of DASH Josh Baker admits that their recent successes have not come easily. He notes, “We’ve had to endure the challenges that everybody is dealing with in regard to staffing, recruitment, and the general labor shortages you’re seeing across the board. Our leadership team is actively working to overcome these obstacles. We’ve been trying every trick in the book. Right now we’re offering sign-on bonuses. It is a job seekers market, so making yourself marketable to potential applicants is important.” Being a transit provider means a myriad of licensing challenges. New hires require a significant amount of training and often people will not make it through the entire training process. “So we have to plan for attrition,” Baker says. “We’ve started to overbook ourselves the same way an airplane does. They oversell their seats and expect that a certain number of people won’t show up. Unfortunately, that’s what we’re experiencing, too. It’s not only the