HandyDART accessible transit service to have extended hours in Metro Vancouver

HandyDART, the accessible door-to-door transit service for people with mobility challenges, will see its hours extended until 2 a.m. PT starting Jan. 11 in Metro Vancouver.

It comes after the service's annual review last month recommended a number of changes to improve the service.

Along with the extended hours, with users able to book those late-night trips starting on Sunday, Jan. 4, TransLink also announced it would be setting up new software to improve the HandyDART booking experience.

That software is expected to launch in 2027, according to Metro Vancouver's transit authority, with spokesperson Anita Bathe saying that TransLink wants to listen to customers as it implements the recommendations from the review.

"Customers will have that ability to, you know, attend a late-night concert, go to a friend's house and not have that stress of feeling like they have to rush home to catch the last HandyDART," she said.

Beth McKellar, the chair of the HandyDART Riders' Alliance, said the changes were long overdue and were requested for over a decade.

"It's getting the right ears to listen," she said.

"And it was like beating a dead horse. All you get out of it is dust and flies. But, finally, we had some ears that were listening."

McKellar's organization was among more than a dozen that was consulted as part of the annual HandyDART performance review.

HandyDART is used by over 32,000 registered customers, according to TransLink, with services being run by private contractor Transdev.

In its annual review, TransLink staff said that bringing the services in-house, and not contracting them out, would be expensive and bring little direct benefits to customers.

"The in-house delivery model is assessed to have a greater risk of administrative duplication relative to models with contracting," the review's summary reads.

The report adds that third-party operators offered procedures and experience from multiple operations, while TransLink didn't have existing experience with a point-to-point on demand service like HandyDART.

McKellar said that TransLink's refusal to bring HandyDART services in-house left her thoroughly disappointed.

"TransLink always wants to stay at arm's length. They don't want to take accountability, and that's so disappointing," she said.

"But you know, there's always hope. Like I said, it [was] a long time before the right ears finally started listening."

Bathe said that TransLink had a HandyDART advisory council within the organization, in addition to talking to other groups about the service regularly.

"We are always looking for more feedback ... we really want to make sure that the system is the best that it can be for all of the users, and their feedback is really important to us and they matter," she said.