GRTC not arming fare enforcements officers (and was never going to anyway)

We had a couple questions about the City’s recent audit involving GRTC and fare enforcement (PDF), especially as it relates to arming fare enforcement officers. We asked new GRTC CEO Julie Timm about this, and she said, unequivocally, that “putting armed officers on our buses to issue court summons...is the wrong answer for our system and our community.”

Here’s her full statement:

Fare enforcement officers are required to have armed officer training in order to issue a summons; however, GRTC fare enforcers are not armed. Putting armed officers on our buses to issue court summons to our riders will not prevent fare evasion, and I do not believe anyone is suggesting we do that. It is the wrong answer for our system and our community.

Almost a million rides in a month!

TAKE ACTION

At this year’s session, the General Assembly will inevitably take up some transit-related issues. But how do you know what the folks down at the Capitol are talking about and when you should hit up their inboxes? The Virginia Transit Association’s email list is a great way to stay informed on the important state-level transportation issues of the day, and you can sign up right here. Remember: A ton of GRTC’s budget comes from state and federal sources. We need to let our state reps know that we expect them to be strong supporters of transit in Virginia!

AROUND THE REGION

This is new: GRTC has put the documents from their November 19th board meeting on their website.

Get excited, because included in those board meeting documents is GRTC’s November ridership report (PDF), and, whoa! Richmond’s trend of increased bus ridership continues with 947,064 rides taken in October. That’s almost one million rides in a month! Compared to October of 2017, that’s an increase of 247,770 or 35%! Really incredible stuff. Additionally, Pulse ridership is up and VCU use of the entire bus network is up, too.

Chesterfield County recently released the Chesterfield Millennial Visioning Project Report (PDF), which asked a bunch of county Millennials what they look for in a place to settle down. Unsurprising to readers of this email, but 66% of respondents said “they would not like to live where retail, restaurants, offices, and residences are all kept separate and accessible only by car” and half of respondents said “that a regional bus network in the Richmond Metro Area is important to them.”

Here’s an interesting piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by C. Suarez Rojas, that looks at GRTC’s budget planning for next year. Sounds like the concerns from earlier this year over missed budget projections aren’t as dire as previously reported, and that GRTC saw a revenue increase of $825,000.

ELSEWHERE

As Richmond’s bus ridership continues to climb, other cities in Virginia are looking to RVA as a model for juicing their public transportation networks. Wyatt Gordon at Greater Greater Washington, says Norfolk is looking to increase ridership on the Tide, its light rail that launched in 2011. But check this out, the Tide—which is, again, a train—sees daily ridership around 4,500, while the Pulse, a humble bus, averages daily ridership of 8,298 (137% over the initial goal)! Turns out, when public transportaiton is useful and efficient, folks will use it—regardless of how it moves around on a street.

—Ross Catrow

VCU and GRTC sign a three-year agreement

Earlier this week, VCU signed a three-year agreement with GRTC to continue their unlimited rides program for all VCU, VCU Health System, and Virginia Premier students and employees. The program, which provides unlimited rides across the entirety of GRTC’s bus network, is extremely popular:

In a recent VCU survey, 95.4% of students and employees expressed support for a continuation of the existing transportation agreement VCU and GRTC have been piloting since August 2018. Since January, VCU community members have accounted for approximately 12% of GRTC’s total ridership, averaging 87,400 trips a month.

Not only will VCU extend their agreement with GRTC through 2022, but they’ll pay more for it, too. Beginning in August, the University will pay $1.42 million for the first year, $1.57 million and $1.65 million the following two years. VCU paid $1.2 million for its first pilot year.

Keeping the region’s largest employer (and university) on the bus is a huge win for the Richmond region. Now, it’s up to other larger employers in transit-accessible locations to begin offering similar bus pass programs to their employees, too.

April’s (great) GRTC ridership stats

At least week’s board meeting, GRTC released another round of ridership numbers (PDF) that showed, yet again, Richmonders continue to get on the bus.

Some highlights:

• Since this past July, the entire GRTC system saw 7.1 million rides and, with a couple months left in the fiscal year, is just 300,000 rides from eclipsing last fiscal year’s total.

• Across the system, ridership is up 17% compared to this time last year.

• April was the second highest ridership month since this past October, with 772,979 rides.

• The average weekday ridership of the Pulse has reached 7,075. This is over twice the original goal of 3,500 rides.

• In April, VCU-affiliated folks took 102,278 rides, which made up 13.5% of the entire system ridership.

• The data provided by GRTC doesn’t line up quite right to figure out exactly what percentage of rides on the Pulse are taken by VCU-affiliated folks, but it’s somewhere around 30%.

As you can see, Richmond continues to buck the national trend of decreasing bus ridership using a simple recipe of fast, frequent, and reliable service. The more the region continues to invest in high-quality public transportation, the more folks will ride.

You can read the press release over on GRTC’s website.