Dial-a-ride Expands To City's North Side

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) will expand Dial-A-Ride service to the north sector of the city beginning Monday. The north area, including the area now serviced by the Pontiac Heights bus, will be provided daytime Dial-A-Ride service for the first time Monday. The new daytime Dial-A-Ride service area, larger than the area served by the Pontiac Heights bus, will provide doorto-door transportation within the northern sector for 25 cents a ride. Service alI so will be avaüable to the hospitals, to I the U-M campus, and to the bus route I transfer point at Fourth and William I Streets, where passengers may transfer I free to regular line route buses for trips to all áreas oí the city. Monday's expansión will mark another in a series of AATA moves to expand Teltran (telephone-transportation) service after overwhelming Ann Arbor voter approval of a 21L-mill transportation levy in April, 1973. The availability of both daytime and evening Dial-A-Ride in the north side area makes the northern area only the second sector to be served that extensively. (The southwest area, part of a Dial-A-Ride pilot project since 1971, is the only other area to have daytime Dial-A-Ride. Evening Dial-A-Ride was instituted citywide in late 1973). For information about the new service, AATA has announced that a new north side Dial-A-Ride telephone number - 973-0300 - will be staffed to receive inquines through Friday Monday's scheduled launching of north side daytime service marks a major step along the road to total Teltran implementation, a target AATA officials hope to meet by January, 1976. The phase-in will be done in six more steps and will end with completion of direct home-to-work subscription service. The new north area Dial-A-Ride service área has irregular boundaries, but its rough lines are as follows: the intersection of Broadway and Plymouth Roads on the east; Arrowwood Hills Cooperative on the north; Ann Arbor Railroad tracks west of Main Street on the west; and on the south, the northern areas of downtown. The U-M Medical Center, while not I cluded in the mapped northern area I Dial-A-Ride sector, will be provided I noce in some designated areas. That new telephone will be staffed trom 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Friday for information questions only. Beginning Monday, when service begins, that number will be available only for service requests. All information calis about the new service are requested to be made on the existing AATA number 665-7701 beginning Monday, in order to free the new number for service calis only. The new service for the northern Ann Arbor área will mean that Dial-A-Ride service will be available from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 8 a.m. through 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. (Currently, Dial-A-Ride service is available in the north side area- and most of the city- only evenings and weekends). ._ ■ ■ - - - - - Dial-A-Ride service throughout the city evenings and weekends was implemented in December , 1973. AATA officials stressed that adding daytime Dial-A-Ride for the north side area does not mean that north side residents can travel door to door throughout the city during the day. Door-to-door delivery to any location in the city is still avaüable only on evenings and weekends, as it has been since citywide Dial-A-Ride became a reality in December, 1973. The difference for north side residénts is that they will be able to travel doorto-door from any location in the service area to any other location in the service area, as well as to any of the other specially-served areas outlined above. Dial-A-Ride vehicles will, however, piek - - - - up a patrón directly at his or her north side address and take him or her to a transfer point to caten a line bus, if the destination is outside the door-to-door service área. Of special interest to north side residents, AATA officials feel, is the fact that the new north side service will offer door-to-door service for Arrowwood Hills Community Center and North Main Community Center. AATA officials said the exisiting Pontiac Heights bus route will be left intact for a month after Dial-A-Ride begins, to allow residents to aecustom themselves to the new transit system. It will then be abolished, although eventually- with full Teltran implementation some months from now- it will be replaced by an express bus.