Past

According to Tom Marshall (archive link), at one point in time, the segment of the 11 on Washington Street from Delaware Avenue to 40th Street was a trolley. Indeed, this is why Washington Circle exists: at the intersection of Washington and 40th, there’s a weird roundabout-looking thing, except it has a traffic light and the Washington Street lanes keep going straight through. This is where the trolley used to turn around to head back into Wilmington.

You can see in the arrow above how the green line running along Washington stops right around 40th, so this information was easy to fact-check. In person, there isn’t anything special about this loop, and there is no indication that there was once any sort of trolley line here.

The windows of the bus I was on were very dirty, so here’s an aerial view courtesy of Google Earth.

I’m unable to find very much specific information about this line, so I can’t say for certain when it started, where it started, or who it was operated by, but it seems the Hagley Museum likely has some information in its Delaware Coach Company collection. I hope to explore this sometime in the future, but for the time being, I do not have the spare time to do so. The Hagley Museum has a nice little article on their blog about Wilmington’s streetcar system, and I highly recommend reading that.

Sometime in the second half of the 20th century, the 11 was extended to Arden, with a deviation to Rockwood Office Park on weekdays only. When, I am not sure, but it was prior to 1999. More information on the exact routing today is below.

We can obtain a bit more information starting around the turn of the 21st century thanks to the Internet Archive. The 11 used to have a companion route, the 38, which operated as an express between Rodney Square and Faith Presbyterian Church, then continued to Philadelphia Pike to connect with buses there—formerly the 1, then the 13 and 31, and now just the 13. This route was cut in 2019, though.

2018 appears to be the year that the route got its current routing through downtown. Previously, it followed the same thing that the 6 does today up to Washington Street.

Present

Today, the route 11 operates with two trip patterns. Both operate along Market Street and Washington Street, but on weekdays, 15 of its 29 round-trips short turn at Lea Boulevard. The other 14 weekday trips, plus all 12 of its Saturday trips, continue on to Arden. I went on a Saturday, so I got the entire experience that the 11 had to offer.

It begins at the Wilmington Transit Center, continuing on Second Street where all other routes originating there turn onto Walnut Street. It serves Second Street before it turns onto Orange, serving the George Campus of Delaware Technical Community College.

Then, it briefly runs on Fourth Street (without stopping) and turns up Market Street. This is the only route other than the 25 (formerly 12) that goes on Market Street in both directions rather than King Street southbound and some other route northbound. In fact, the 11 and 25 are the only north-south routes in Wilmington that do not go onto King Street. I believe that this is likely a relic of these routes both formerly being trolleys, but I have no concrete evidence to back this up.

From Market, it turns to Twelfth Street, then to Washington Street, where it remains for a significant portion of the route. In order to continue on Washington Street, though, the bus actually has to make a turn after the Washington Memorial Bridge, where continuing straight would put you onto Baynard Boulevard.

After turning, Washington Street is very residential, consisting mainly of rowhouses with some churches and corner stores mixed in. While I’m not sure of the internal conditions of these houses, they look very nice on the exteriors, and I would be happy to live in this area.

Also on Washington Street is the northern edge of Riverview Cemetery, spanning more than half a mile southeast nearly all the way to Governor Printz Boulevard, with Market Street splitting it in twain between the two. As stated by the Delaware Public Archives:

Riverview Cemetery was founded in 1872 by a coalition of 18 fraternal lodges of the Knights of Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. This 42-acre site was the first cemetery outside of Wilmington city limits to be open to people of all socio-economic classes and religious faiths.

Delaware Public Archives

Crossing the aforementioned Washington Circle, we pass Rockwood Park (famously the location of the Ice Cream Festival) and hang a left on Marsh Road. We pass through Carrcroft and pass by Mayfield, where Biden lived in his youth, and cross over Wilson/Veale Road and Silverside Road before getting to my destination, a new restaurant that opened back in October in Plaza III on Marsh Road. It’s actually two different restaurants in one—”322 BBQ” and "Hill Donut Co. and Pancake House”—though you can order everything from a single table. The route 11 bus actually starts its return trip one stop past Plaza III, at Forwood Manor, but I would ride that segment after my lunch.

Interestingly enough, even though the next 11 trip back to Wilmington from Forwood was scheduled to leave in only a few minutes, the driver of vehicle 405 that i had taken up did not continue to be on the 11. Instead, the Saturday blocks are set up in a strange way, where this driver has a ~50 minute break and deadheads to Wilmington TC to spend the rest of his shift running on the 2 and 6, where another bus deadheads from Wilmington to Forwood Manor and finishes out the rest of that day’s 11 trips. I find this strange, because it only takes about 35 minutes to go from Forwood Manor back to Wilmington, so these two deadheads could have been avoided. It likely has something to do with weird scheduling requirements or union contract stipulations, so I won’t lambast DART for this or anything.

About an hour later, filled up on a fried pickle burger and chocolate/candied bacon donut, and with a blueberry lemon donut in hand to take home, I proceeded to begin waiting for my 11. The stop at Plaza III is a bit hidden, so I walked about five minutes south to the previous stop at Marsh Road at Silverside Road across from the new Kid Shelleen’s location, itself only about five minutes north of where the southbound 11 joins with the northbound 11.

I was saddened to see that my return bus had dots, so sadly, you can’t see anything out of the pictures I took on this bus.

Notice how the headsign says Arden. Usually, DART drivers get a bit picky about people being in the vehicle during their layovers, but on this route it makes sense since it makes the one-directional loop. From Marsh Road, the route turns right on Harvey Road, producing my favorite stop name of all time (“Harvey Rd @ Op the Sweep”), then right on Veale Road. From there, it continues straight for just over a mile, and then turns right on Marsh Road, rejoining the Arden-bound route in reverse.

The way back is mostly identical, though it uses Eleventh instead of Twelfth, and doesn’t directly serve Del Tech. I got off at 11th @ West so that I could make my connecting bus back home.

While I was waiting for my bus home from there, I found two interesting things: vehicle 23902, a suburban Gillig (i.e. no rear door), and Bob.

Bob is the unofficial mascot of this trip. You can find him at the West @ 11th shelter.

Service levels

When it comes to the 11, weekday headways vary quite wildly. The segment up to Lea Boulevard gets service from 5am to 11pm, which is about the gold standard for routes around here. However, headways vary, ranging from 25 to 60 minutes throughout the day. The Arden segment is even worse, being peak-only with only one midday round-trip, leaving you with no buses for about three and a half hours during the day. I would argue that Washington Street should get half-hourly service through the entire day, and Arden hourly. I can understand the Arden segment not being very frequent—it is seldom used—but Washington Street is a well-traveled residential corridor, and should be treated as such.

Saturday service is an entirely different story. All trips go to Arden, running about every 75 minutes from 7am to 9pm. In the context of DART, which has a reputation for dropping the ball on weekend service, this is pretty great. You can still see DART’s continued problems with weekends evidenced in the fact that the 11 has no Sunday schedule, but I digress. In some ways, if you live in Arden, the Saturday schedule is actually better for you than the weekday schedule!

Future

In the new DART Reimagined plan (archive link), the route 11 will be gone. The segment on Washington Street will be replaced with a revised route 25, and the Arden segment will be replaced with a DART Connect on-demand zone (“Naamans”) covering most of Brandywine Hundred. Route 11 is considered by DART to be one of its “moderate ridership routes,” where it has “[greater than] 5 passengers per scheduled trip, but portions of route have very low ridership” (source, archive link).

I think this fate ultimately makes sense for this route, since the part with the most ridership is the part they’re keeping in the new 25. My only problem with this is that it is Monday to Friday only. Being sandwiched between the extremely strong and robust corridors of route 2 and 13 (serving Concord Pike and Philadelphia Pike respectively), both of which run seven days a week, DART has a great opportunity here to provide a great, robust service to the second-largest population center in New Castle County (after Wilmington), but the fact that it is going to be weekday-only brings down the ability for it to be relied upon for everyone.

Ultimately, I look towards public transportation because I don’t own a car myself. DART is much cheaper across the board than owning a car in just about every respect, but especially for someone like me, who tends to make five or fewer independent trips per week. In order to build a network that people can rely on for all their needs, the ability needs to be present for people to travel seven days a week everywhere they need to go. If you can’t get groceries, go somewhere for lunch, or go to the movies simply because of the day of the week, that’s just a bad system. Especially in today’s society, people have the need to leave the house on weekends. People work on weekends, and the 9-to-5 is no longer the norm for everyone, especially for the disadvantaged populations that public transportation ordinarily serves. Being a student, my ability to obtain a job is already pretty limited, but as a user of public transportation, it pretty much has to be remote or nothing. Luckily, I’m not in a position where I need to have a job, but it would be quite an issue if I were. Even if I had a job, I would likely have to spend all my money on paying for car insurance…

A list of vehicles currently in active use by DART First State/Delaware Transit Corporation to operate fixed-route, paratransit, and Connect (microtransit) services, including:

• Vehicle number

• License plate number (if available)

• Build date

• Manufacturer

• Model

• Engine

• Transmission

• Operating garage (e.g. Wrangle Hill, Beech St., etc.)

Today, I got my list. Since this is public information anyway, it’s only right that I also share it. There are many circulating DART vehicle lists out there, but each has its own problems; some are out of date, and all of them only list the buses used on fixed-route services. This list is guaranteed to be up-to-date as of January 23rd, 2024, the date that I received this list.

You can find the list in its entirety by clicking the button below:

DART Vehicle List

Within this, you can find a few different sheets:

• All Vehicles: Does what it says it does. This is the raw sheet that was given to me by the DTC representative.

• Standard + Coach (Gillig, Proterra, MCI): In this sheet, I have only included the vehicles that are used for standard, fixed-route service. I have split them into color-coded sections based on their major numbering systems. Do note that this sheet does not include vehicles 1776 and 1777, which are used on the routes 61 and 62, respectively.

  • 125-126: 2006 30ft Gilligs - I’ve never seen these actually in service, neither monitoring Catenary or in-person, so I suspect these are backups or for parts in case all else fails.

  • 151, 153-157, 168: 2012 40ft Hybrid-Electric Gilligs - the oldest among the fleet still in regular revenue service

  • 283-284, 286: 2009 30ft Gilligs

  • 301-322 (except 311): 2010 30ft Gilligs

  • 401-474 (except 439, 441): 2014 40ft Gilligs (473 and 474 are 2015 models)

  • 501-522 (except 519): 2020 40ft Gilligs

  • 601-626: 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2020 30ft Gilligs

  • 707-732: Myriad of Gillig and Proterra battery-electric buses from 2019-2023

  • 914-923: 2012 and 2017 45ft MCI coaches

  • 21001-21021: 2021 40ft Gilligs - the first use of the new numbering system using year prefixes

  • 22001-22014: 2022 30ft Gilligs

  • 22015-22030: 2022 40ft Gilligs

  • 23901-23904: 2023 40ft Gilligs (suburban configuration, no rear door - all of DART’s other Gilligs have driver-operated rear doors)

• Cutaways (Ford): All of the Ford E450s you could ever want. These are primarily used for Paratransit services, but a couple are highlighted with a green tint:

  • 1775-1776: Used for routes 61 and 62, both of which are contracted out to Transdev

  • 19001-19005: Used for DART Connect in Georgetown and Millsboro

• Transit Vans (Ford): Used primarily for DART Connect in Newark. There are also a couple based out of Georgetown - likely for DART Connect Georgetown/Millsboro - but I’m not sure about the two in the Beech Street lot.

• Electric (Gillig, Proterra) + Hybrid (Gillig): Specifically all of the low-emissions vehicles DART has. They have largely been slow to adopt them, though they tend to get a good amount of usage during the summer. In the winter, they get little use except down by Rehoboth. Out of the 538 vehicles in the list they sent me, only 33 of them (or 6.13%) were electric or hybrid. Yikes! I hope DART accelerates purchase of more electric buses, or maybe even some of that fancy new hydrogen fuel cell stuff, but with Proterra recently going under, widespread electric fleet adoption doesn’t seem awfully likely.

• Vehicles over 10yrs old: One main thing I noticed going through the data was how new many of the vehicles are. Of the 538 total vehicles, only 39 (or 7.25%) were older than 10 years old. Props to DART for keeping their stuff up-to-date!

I hope you find this information useful. I may also add any pictures I have to the spreadsheet at a later date, but I wanted to make sure I got the information published the day I got it. I’m not sure if Delaware’s FOIA request system requires you to be a Delaware resident, so if there’s other information you want to see about DART, feel free to let me know.