Business View Magazine | July 2019

273 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 quality customer service, reliability, and on-time performance. In an effort to expand and enhance its already superior level of service, DASH is currently working on a Transit Vision plan, which, according to CEO and General Manager, Josh Baker, is a “rethinking of how people in Alexandria move around and how we provide services to them. We’ve been working throughout the year to talk about network concepts and thinking about strategies for the future of DASH service. One is designing a network focused on increasing ridership – we’re calling it the business model - focusing our services on corridors being frequent and accessible in the main areas of the city throughout the day. An alternative is to focus on coverage, which is intended to ask the question: ‘is it more important for our services to reach every area, or as many areas of the community as possible?’” “So, we’re trying to figure out how to best apply the resources that we have, in the most efficient way, in the way the community wants us to,” Baker continues. “And that’s really about where you use your money. It takes more resources to go to more places and people now have choices. They have options other than public transit, so what should public transit be? Should we continue to be a service that tries to get to everyone, or should we focus money and resources on dense areas, dense populations where you get the most people on the bus as possible? And we haven’t answered that question, yet. We’re now in the phase of people really getting engaged and talking about what those coverage concepts look like. Admittedly, the people who the coverage concepts do not serve to benefit, we’re hearing a lot from. Now, we’re working hard to figure out how to hear from the people who it does benefit.” Another initiative in process is DASH’s zero emissions bus technology. “We’ve launched a feasibility study that’s about halfway done to examine how to plan our facilities and our services to suit the capabilities of electric vehicles,” Baker explains. “And we also applied THE ALEXANDR I A TRANS I T COMPANY pictured below General Manager, Josh Baker