2020! A new decade!
Welcome to 2020! It seems like just yesterday that the Richmond region decided to move forward on building a new bus rapid transit line and make the first substantial improvements to its transit network in decades—but, if you can believe it, that was nearly four years ago! Since then we’ve seen the entire bus network redesigned, GRTC’s budget grow, new routes spring up, and the region’s suburban counties increase their transit investment. It’s been a rad four years for transit!
This coming year, 2020, promises some transit highlights of its own, too:
First and foremost there is a real possibility of creating dedicated transit funding for the Richmond region. In fact, as of last year, the Central Virginia region alone lacks a dedicated funding stream for transit and transportation. With the General Assembly convening next week for their 2020 session, the potential for our region to (finally) get its own method for funding regional public transportation is higher than ever before. Two things to keep in mind:
- If a regional funding bill is introduced, it must include money specifically allocated to public transit maintenance, capital expenses, and operations. Must! We’re not talking about money for squishy “multimodal projects,” but money for actual-factual public transportation. This is non-negotiable.
- As of this very moment, such a bill has not yet been introduced so the details are mostly big question marks. You can certainly email your state legislators and tell them that you whole-heartedly support dedicate, regional funding for public transit today, but watch this space when/if the bill materializes for how you can get involved in the work to support our first efforts at building a truly regional public transportation system. This is huge, and it’s important to get it right.
Second, Chesterfield County will launch its first bus route in a good long while on March 16th. The #111 Falling Creek/Tyler bus will head down Route 1 from the city limits to John Tyler Community College. Even just a couple of years ago this seemed like an impossibility, and now it’s real—real enough for the timetables to exist (PDF).
Third, the region will wrap up (or make significant progress) on a bunch of neat transit-adjacent plans: Richmond 300, RVAgreen 2050, and some longer-term transportation plans out of PlanRVA. Each of these will have a way for the public to get involved and demand/ensure that public transportation play a significant role.
Fourth, new GRTC CEO Julie Timm will undoubtedly look to make changes and improvements to how the transit agency is run in 2020. You should definitely follow her on Twitter, and keep an eye out as she works through this year’s budget and addresses some of the ongoing issues facing GRTC.
So, yeah! We’ve got a lot of fascinating stuff queued up for 2020, and—if we want to see the kind of progress we’ve witnessed over the last four years—it will require the constant, dedicate support of transiteers like yourself.
With that in mind, here is a homework assignment to kick off the new year: Forward this email to your favorite transit-friendly pal and ask them to join the RVA Rapid Transit email list. We’ve got a lot of really critical work to do over the next couple of months, and we’ll need all the help we can get!
—Ross Catrow