The Opening of TAPS New Midway Mall Terminal

TAPS Public Transit opened the Midway Mall Park & Ride terminal before sunrise on Monday, April 15 at 4:45am. By 5:20am the first bus —the TexExpress— arrived ready to transport passengers to their jobs at Raytheon in McKinney and farther south to DART’s Parker Road Station in Plano. Minutes later at 6:00am, the Red River Route bus departed for Denison and Durant, Oklahoma followed by the colorful blue and yellow Storm Route bus headed for Southeastern Oklahoma University in Durant.

A midday formal grand opening ceremony hosted a large crowd of well wishers including the Sherman Chamber of Commerce, officials from Texas Dept. of Transportation’s Austin and Dallas offices to mark the importance of the event.

With the opening of the new facility, the parking lot at the TAPS main office at 6104 Texoma Pkwy has been closed and all park and ride passengers are required to park at the Midway Mall location. More than 200 parking spaces are available for park and ride customers.

Located adjacent to the east main entrance to Midway Mall, the TAPS terminal provides direct access from the parking area into the 2,600 sq. ft. waiting and service area, as well as access from the Mall. The TAPS facility includes extensive seating, passenger information displayed on large video screens, mobile device charging stations, a rack filled with the latest route schedules and maps, and a complete security system with video and audio monitoring.

The public can speak with TAPS directly via a hands-free, one-button telephone system that automatically connects passengers to Rider Services Representatives from opening time until the facility closes at 10:00pm. The call box can also connect to emergency services via 911.

TAPS CEO and Executive Director, Brad Underwood, said the Midway Mall project will have a huge impact on park and ride passengers —quadrupling the current number of parking spaces for park and ride use— offering a comfortable place to wait that is out of the weather. “As time goes by we expect to add to the amenities at the Midway Mall terminal now that we have transitioned traffic away from our headquarters building in Sherman,” said Underwood.

Ridership on TAPS’s newest fixed routes —the Red River Route, TexExpress, and The SE Storm Route— has increased considerably since they were launched last fall. Meanwhile, fixed route ridership for students and employees at Austin College and Grayson College has grown incrementally as more riders are attracted to the low-cost, comfortable, reliable service.

The growth of scheduled fix-route service still takes second place to the transit agency’s point-to-point, on-demand services that last year handled more than 350,000 trips across TAPS Public Transit’s six-county service area in North Texas.

For more information about TAPS Public Transit, visit online at TAPSbus.com or contact a TAPS Rider Service Representative at (800) 256-0911 Monday through Friday, 4:30am-midnight, and on Saturday 7:30am to 1:30pm.