About DART
Who we are
What we’re for
We're residents of Madison, Wisconsin, and its neighboring Dane County communities who want a better, smarter, and more balanced approach to transportation locally and throughout our region.
We’re determined to challenge transportation planning and spending priorities that leave us stuck in traffic and dependent on our cars; that all too often damage and disfigure our cities, towns, neighborhoods, and rural areas; and that promise greater mobility but produce the opposite.
In years to come the most livable, equitable, and prosperous regions will be those where people can get around easily without a car. DART wants greater Madison and Dane County to be such a region. Because whatever one’s priorities for making our region a better place to live, reducing the need to drive will bring those goals within closer reach.
But becoming a truly “car-optional” region itself hinges on three key objectives:
Better transit. Our region needs bus, rail, and other public transportation services so fast, frequent, and convenient, and so woven into the fabric of our communities, that using them becomes as habitual and commonplace as driving.*
Less pavement. Our region must fully use the infrastructure it has before adding costly new roads, lanes, and parking facilities that disrupt and divide communities. It must also make its infrastructure, old or new, more useful to those who walk, bike, roll, or ride transit.
More choices. Our region should offer many different safe, simple, and easy ways to make any given trip or accomplish that trip’s purpose—including multiple ways that require less driving or no driving at all.
How we work
DART’s support for transportation planning and investment that’s more about people and places than traffic and cars, takes three main forms:
Research. We learn how communities around the nation and the world successfully encourage car-free travel, then translate those lessons and other data into information to foster similar efforts here.
Outreach. We communicate the value and benefits of a more balanced, less automobile-centered transportation system, using publications, presentations, and social media to spread our message and build community support.
Advocacy. We engage with local transportation policy through correspondence, comment, and public testimony on behalf of programs and projects that encourage alternatives to driving, and we invite and equip the public to do the same.
Want to learn more?
Consider following DART on Facebook and joining the DART Facebook Group. We hope to make both the page and the group good sources of current information, and forums for lively discussion, about transportation issues in great Madison and Dane County. And please check back here as well as on Facebook for updates on other ways to get involved.
Those just seeking more information about DART can use our DART Contact form. We’ll do our best to respond promptly.