Richmond transit stays in the news

Richmond.com is reporting that City Council’s Finance Committee recently killed off the proposed downtown circulator– in part because businesses wouldn’t pay for it.

I’m glad that Richmond.com is tracking this story, as I’m not an avid city council watcher and hadn’t heard what happened to this proposal. It’s odd, however, that they’re posting this story today, June 12, when the vote was two months ago- March 16 (and calling it a “recent” vote). I searched the TD and discovered they had published a story about this same vote back in March.  The article is not available on their webpage.

The TD article interviewed some business owners who tell why they don’t support the circulator as proposed. The original proposal included two routes which covered much of downtown. City council voted to kill one route and only support the eastern half- from the convention center to Shockoe. The reaction of business owners was negative:

“What the circulator does is make our downtown whole,” said Michael Byrne, president of the Historic Shockoe Partnership and owner of Richbrau Brewing Co. in Shockoe Slip. “Doing half of it is doing half of nothing.”

Other businesses, however, said the circulator is a service that should extend beyond downtown to include thriving retail areas such as Carytown and the Fan District, as well as an increasingly vibrant restaurant and gallery strip along Broad Street.

“I say do this once and do it right,” said Charles Diradour, whose business leases buildings to well-established restaurants and night spots in the Fan and other neighborhoods west of Belvidere Street. “Let’s not do it piecemeal. If we’re going to be one city, let’s act like one city.”

The piecemeal approach, however, is exactly what one councilperson wanted: “‘I want to get into the circulator business, but I want to get into it slowly,’ said 4th District Councilwoman Kathy C. Graziano, chairwoman of the [Land Use, Housing and Transportation] committee.” – TD 2/21/07

And herein lies a huge problem with public transportation planning- (some) politicians want to phase things in, spend as little as possible until they’re guaranteed financial success. The public, however, will only use public transit when it’s convenient and comfortable- which costs a lot of money upfront to achieve.

You can’t run a bus once an hour and see if it’s popular before increasing service. People won’t ride the bus precisely because it only runs once an hour. And people won’t ride a bus with an imperfect route- they’ll only ride the bus when it stops near their origin and destination without too much meandering in the middle. And achieving those goals costs money.

It’s also fairly well-known that bus lines don’t garner much support from the business community: they’re not permanent and can be axed by any politician or bureaucrat. Trains or light rail, however, usually gain more business support and spur more investment because they’re on a fixed route and likely won’t be voted out of existence. See this article for more on the economic benefits of rail:
Rail Transit In America — A Comprehensive Evaluation of Benefits

Regarding a circulator bus for Richmond- it sounds like local businesses would support it if the city commits to doing it well- a sensible and comprehensive route with frequent service.  My money says they’ll support a bus if they’re guaranteed their investment will not be spent towards another failed, city-backed economic development scheme which the city backs out of when it doesn’t create immediate magic downtown.

The circulator concept is not dead, however, as Council President Pantele is very much a supporter. In fact, his ideas are the best I’ve heard so far- he’s publicly advocated for frequent service connecting Carytown to Church Hill, and even floated the idea of a trolley. Richmond.com outlines his hopes:

Pantele’s plan calls for two bidirectional loops, one running from the Bottom to Harrison Street, the other from Harrison Street to Boulevard, with 10-minute service. Although Pantele said the city is not obligated to go through GRTC to create such a transit loop, it would be logical to restructure GRTC’s current route system so that the circulator would serve as a hub for all other routes in the city. Clean lines and frequent service would make the circulator convenient and easy enough for anyone to use.

Imagine taking the bus from Carytown to Church Hill and not needing to consult a schedule or complictaed route map! Let’s hope these plans and those of GRTC CEO John Lewis will mesh to provide reliable, frequent, & affordable transit options not only to suburban locations, but also within the city itself.

 

More on Richmond transit improvements

I was absolutely thrilled with most of the proposals floated in this week’s lead Style article to improve Richmond public transportation.

Apparently, however, I’m out of the loop of public transit developments across the country and the world. Because the ideas that John Lewis, CEO of GRTC, proposed in Style, are already in place all over the world.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT- see it even has its own acronym and its own wikipedia entry) is a new trend in public transit that usually includes these characteristics*:

• Dedicated bus lanes
• Enclosed stations
• Signal Priority technology (to keep lights green)
• More attractive and comfortable buses

Sound familiar? It should, these are the ideas Mr. Lewis mentioned in his interview. In most cities that have implemented BRT, ridership has increased by around 30% and commute times have decreased.

In fact, a program manager at the American Public Transportation Association has said “This decade will be the decade of BRT.”*

Here’s some pictures of BRT buses from different cities:

Bogota, Colombia- notice the separate lanes and enclosed shelters:

The picture below highlights the new design which gives buses wider appeal and helps overcome their stigma. This is the type they’re using in Las Vegas as well as in several EU cities:

And finally an artist’s rendering of a proposed BRT in Eugene, OR, also with a sleek design and separate lanes. This one, at least in the conceptual rendering, looks almost like a train, which I suppose is a big part of the point. Americans are notorious for favoring trains over buses (while simultaneously eschewing the taxes required to pay for the enormous upfront cost for trains, one major reason our country has little functional & well-used transit):

And from Wikipedia, a list of American cities with BRT:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Austin, Texas (opening 2008)
• Boston, Massachusetts
• Chicago, Illinois (BRT connecting convention center with downtown for private buses since 2002)
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Denver, Colorado
• Eugene, Oregon
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Las Vegas, Nevada
• Los Angeles, California
• Miami, Florida
• Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
• Oakland, California
• Orlando, Florida
• Phoenix, Arizona
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Providence, Rhode Island
• San Jose, California
• Santa Monica, California
• Seattle, Washington

So this seems a big undertaking for Richmond. I don’t know how much you can do BRT half-way and still be successful. And I’m really skeptical that the political will exists to make changes this drastic happen. You will notice, of course, that no other cities in Virginia have BRT. It’s pretty clear that neither our state government nor VDOT are promoting this type of transportation choice. We’re still pretty stuck on the road-building model- from the state to the local level (which is clear in the Style article as well , exemplified by Rt. 288).

But in any case, the ideas are great and I’ll be a cheerleader for them.

*From the article: Spivak, Jeffrey. “New Trend in Transit.” Urban Land. April, 07. P. 123-4.

 

Improvements to Richmond transit

I’m so happy I think I might cry.

This week’s lead Style article on GRTC is full of good news. Just look at the title: Mass Appeal: Rising gas prices, dwindling road funds and growing suburban ridership. Why GRTC’s new chief executive has an offer metro Richmond can’t refuse.

It seems the CEO of GRTC, John Lewis, is a visionary who’s undertaking a complete review of the bus system and proposing major changes.  As a frequent bus-rider, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.  A few proposals mentioned in the article:

• Special bus-only lanes
• More express routes to suburban locations
• More amenities on buses (e.g. wireless internet, overhead storage, especially on those longer express routes)
• Devices to keep stop lights green for buses
• GPS-equipped buses so that they can be tracked (I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to be waiting for a bus, call GRTC and ask where it is, only to be told they have no idea and it should have been there 20 minutes ago!)
• New indoor transfer hubs with ticket-vending machines
• More frequent service (again with the crying)

The philosophy John Lewis embraces is to capture the “transit-by-choice” riders- those who have cars but don’t want to use them.  So he wants to expand suburban and express routes and offer more amenities.

He’s also aware that he’s in a free-market competition with the individual car, and he wants the bus to be better: faster and more comfortable.  From Style, “Ultimately, he wants Miller’s hour-and-a-half commute from Whitcomb Court to Bill’s Barbecue [on Boulevard] to take minutes. ‘Our whole goal is to beat a car,’ he says.”

The only red flags I see are that the express route to Fredericksburg is a part of his plan, and it has started well below expectations.  So I hope that route picks up, and if it doesn’t, that he can weather the criticism.  Because, as a transit user, I think many of his ideas are spot on.

From what I’ve read in Style, I’ve got a new hero in town.  Thank you, Mr. Lewis.

I’d be amiss, however, if I didn’t mention other excellent aspects of this article- such as tackling the debate about cutting transit subsidies, the local politics of transit funding and route placement, and the philosophy of public transit.  Props to the (sadly) inactive Richmond Talks Back blogger and UofR prof, Thad Williamson, who’s research on GRTC gets a mention.

 

Wilder’s take on transit

River City Rapids reports today on a comment Mayor Wilder made at a recent town forum about the sad state of public transit in Richmond:

The mayor’s reply (paraphrased): “I know we need to do a better job with transportation. I find it incredible that you can now get on the bus and go to Fredericksburg but you can’t get on it and go to Chesterfield!”

Besides appreciating the humor here, I’m glad to know that Wilder supports public transit. Besides the now-forgotten diatribes he made against the congregation of bus riders on Broad St., this is the first I’ve heard of him speaking on public transportation.

I wish he’d spend more of his political capital on that issue and less on some other fights he’s picking.

And thanks to River City Rapids for sharing this anecdote. It made my day.  Or at least my morning.

 

Bureaucracy vs. common sense

The Capital Region Airport Commission, which operates Richmond International Airport, has been leasing land it owns to Henrico Co. for use as a park-and-ride lot for use by bus and carpool commuters. The lease has been $1 per year since 1984, according to the TD.

The FAA, however, has a rule barring below-market leases. So the park-and-ride lot will move.

This, to me, is an example of bureaucracy killing common sense community-oriented policies. If the Airport Commission wants to donate its land to improve transit in their community, why shouldn’t they be allowed to? Bureaucratic regulations are necessarily blunt instruments that always have unintended consequences, but it’s especially disheartening when those consequences hurt well-intentioned efforts.

And unfortunately, this bureaucratic rule by the FAA is making it more difficult to decrease our dependency on automobiles.

 

Get out of your damn cars!

“Henrico’s traffic planners figure that, as a general rule of thumb, the average residence produces the equivalent of 10 vehicular trips per day.”*

Photo: Traffic on I-64.

In the interest of full blogger disclosure, I’ll admit my bias up front: I hate cars – they cause pollution, fatness, and death. I’ve never understood people’s fascination with old cars, luxury cars, those little model cars, any of it. Sure I like the mobility afforded by the automobile, and the ability to get out of town. But any day of the week I’d prefer to bike, walk, or take a train and leave the car at home. One of my proudest moments in using public transportation (I know, it’s a weird thing to be proud of) was when I made my way from my house in Richmond to the airport in DC without a car: I took the 13 bus to Main St. Station, took Amtrak to DC, switched to the metro at Union Station and traveled to L’Enfant Plaza (which necessitated changing lines), and then took the 5a bus to Dulles Airport. It was a beautiful thing. But ridiculously complicated! In Germany, the trains stop inside the airports- here I had to take two metro lines and a bus to get there.

But back to the point at hand. 10 trips a day! Where is everyone going? Let’s see if I can’t figure this out:

Work: 2 trips (1 there, 1 home)
2 people working?: 4 trips

Grocery shopping: 2 trips (but presumably not every day?!?)
Take the kids to school: 4 trips (2 trips to pick them up, 2 to take them home)
Kid’s soccer/ballet/piano lessons: 2 trips per child
Post Office, Drug Store, or other random errands: 2 trips (although, is it 3 trips if you go to the grocery store(1), then the post office(1), then home(1)? Or is that 2 trips? Good lord, I don’t want to be a traffic planner- talk about dull conversations. I’m boring myself just writing this.)

Well I guess that’s it- a household with 1 person working, 2 kids in school who also participate in extracurricular activities, and one daily trip to the grocery store would generate 10 trips.

But, at the risk of boring my readers even more, the National Household Travel Survey (Read their reports, impress your friends!) shows that Henrico’s number is pretty far above the national average. In 2001, the last year I can find data for, the average household took about 6 trips per day (for the nerdy amongst us, more data can be had here). Does the county have real data (one would hope) indicating they’re above the national average? Does the county board chair know what he’s talking about (again, one would hope)? Do they fudge their numbers to make the case for more roads? At any rate, apparently people who live in Henrico drive – a lot – 10 trips a day, every day.

So, do Henrico-ites drive more than the rest of us? Is the whole Richmond region above average (and I mean that in the worst way)? And most importantly, will this ever change?

One of the depressing aspects of this quote was that it came in the context of discussing the New Urbanist development of Rockett’s Landing- a community that’s designed to be walkable and cut down on car dependence. It would seem the county is not counting on this “new” type of development to actually lessen residents’ impact on traffic patterns.

Well, I guess it’s up to all of us to get out of our damn cars. Start using the bus system (it’s not that bad, really!). Bike, walk, and start asking your local politicians to increase our transportation choices. Move somewhere where you don’t have to drive to get to work or the store. We shouldn’t have to use our cars for everything!

For more, read John Sarvay’s recent Buttermilk & Molasses post on “The U.S. Through a Canadian’s Eyes.” – Incidentally, living in Canada is what changed the way I think about cities. I couldn’t agree more with this Canadian’s assessment of the difference between our two societies.

Also, there’s a great movement around the country to build “complete streets” – that is, streets that are built for multiple uses – bikes, pedestrians, etc. Louisville is the latest of 22 cities to adopt a policy to build all new roads as complete streets- and to retrofit old ones when when they’re repaved.

*According to Henrico county’s chairman of the Board of Supervisor, James Donati, Jr., as quoted in the March 5th City Edition article, “Coming Soon to East Main Street: Traffic Tsunami” by Phil Wilayto.

 

4 Light-Rail Projects in Virginia, where is Richmond’s?

According to the March issue of Richmond magazine, Roanoke, Arlington, Charlottesville, and Norfolk “are planning Light-Rail Transit (LRT) in the next two to five years.” Not studying, mind you, but planning! Can anyone confirm this? Although Richmond magazine tries to give a ray of hope that Richmond may come to its senses and invest in LRT, I have my doubts. Every politician and city leader I’ve heard speak about its prospects claims it’s too expensive for the benefits received. Never mind projects like the convention center. That was totally worth it.

Here’s the semi-official list of problems with LRT in Richmond.

My summary and interpretation of the problems:

• Laying track is expensive.
• Building a maintenance facility is expensive.
• Federal funding would be needed and is not guaranteed (translation: LRT is expensive).
• Regional cooperation would be needed and is not likely (translation the suburbs won’t pay for it, therefore it’s too expensive).

To be fair, the TD article linked above does raise legitimate concerns, but how are they different in the other Virginia areas “planning” to build LRT? Why can’t Richmond overcome these challenges? Is it a lack of leadership? Is it that we have other things to spend money on, like fixing our under-performing schools or hiring more police officers?

In other Richmond news, thanks to the 804.com blog for pointing out the new Venture Richmond website (and mentioning my blog too, thanks 804.com!). Venture Richmond is the group that resulted from the Wilder-forced merger of Richmond Renaissance, City Celebrations, the River District Alliance, and the Richmond Riverfront Corp. Their website has some great stuff about all the new developments going on downtown, but I had to laugh that their list of “authentic Richmond experiences” included a canal cruise. You tell me one Richmonder you know who’s actually cruised in the canal (and I mean in those little boats they have in the summer). Go ahead. See if you can find one.