FORT WORTH, Texas — Nearly five months after its launch, Fort Worth’s new emergency medical service is still working to bring ambulance response times down to city goals, but remains several minutes off the mark.

The city council has set a benchmark for the fire-based EMS division, which took over on July 1, to reach 90% of emergency calls in under eight minutes. Records obtained by the Fort Worth Report show the service is hitting 90% of calls at 11 minutes and 9 seconds.

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According to city estimates, the response times are 30 seconds slower than those reported by MedStar, the city’s previous ambulance provider, in the year before the fire department assumed control.

In October, when the fire c

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