GRTC welcomes Julie Timm as their new CEO

Yesterday—in big, big transit news—GRTC announced that they’ve hired Julie Timm as their new CEO. Timm, who served as the Director of Development for Nashville’s transit agency, fills a leadership role that had been vacant for about a year. She’s a Hampton Roads native and previously worked for Hampton Road Transit.

From the GRTC press release:

I am so excited to be coming home to Virginia and honored for the opportunity to serve the Greater Richmond community. Mobility is an indispensable requirement for how we define our communities and how we connect to housing, jobs, education, healthcare, food and recreation. More importantly, it is an essential element to how we connect to each other. This time of growth and transformation for Greater Richmond opens a valuable window for us to clearly define how we will advance those mobility connections for the prosperity of all the residents of our region.”

Timm will officially take the helm (Is their a bus version of a helm? Step into the operator’s seat?) next month.

Make transit more useful and more folks will use it

As cities around the country see their bus ridership drop and drop, the Richmond region has seen one of the largest ridership increases in the nation. The region has done that through a smart combination of capital investment (aka the Pulse) and common-sense (and less flashy) expansions of existing service—especially in Henrico County.

Earlier this summer, GRTC released ridership data up through the end of June. That means we can now see what a full year of bus ridership—since the launch of the Pulse and the redesign of the region’s entire bus network—looks like. There are a ton of interesting things to tease out of this huge set of data, but one thing that jumps straight off the page is the impact of Henrico increasing the span of their major routes.

A quick refresher: After the Pulse launched and Richmond City redesigned its share of the bus network last summer, Henrico County followed suit in the fall by expanding bus service to Short Pump and adding nights and weekends service to its major routes (the #7A/B, #19, and #91). Take a look at this graph of ridership for the #91 and the #7A/B and see if you can spot when those buses started running on nights and weekends:

Not only did those routes see a huge spike in ridership when the later service hours began, but the ridership matched—or even outpaced—the week when you could ride the bus for free (far left portion of the graph)! Useful service >>> free service! By adding nights and weekends—especially night service—the County opened up all sorts of bus trips that were impossible before: Afternoon shifts, evening errands, Saturday jobs, and more. It makes a ton of sense that when you increase the usefulness of a bus, more folks will ride that bus.

The great thing about this kind of investment in bus service is that it is so easy. It required zero capital expenses, zero engineering schematics, and absolutely no lengthy applications for federal funding with all of the accompanying hoops to jump through. All it took was for a majority of the County’s Board of Supervisors to decided to pay for more bus service. Not to minimize the advocacy effort required to build the political will for this kind of support for public transit, but compared to securing a once-in-a-generation $25 million federal grant it’s a snap.

Now, what would happen if Richmond City decided to extend the span of it’s frequent bus network, running all of its 15-minute frequency routes until at least 10:00 PM? What sorts of trips would suddenly be possible for folks? What kind of ridership increase would the region see? We should find out—all it would take is the political will and a couple million bucks!

This week in transit: More transit-oriented development coming to Richmond

AROUND THE REGION

Last week, Richmond’s City Council approved the rezoning of Monroe Ward as recommended by the Pulse Corridor Plan. This new upzoning will limit the number of surface parking lots and encourage more and denser development in a neighborhood that has easy access to high-quality transit in both the Pulse and the #5 bus. You can read an overview and some context behind the rezoning here—as far as zoning summaries go, it’s a delightful read.

GRTC’s high school bus pass program was a great success last year, and the bus company is out at summer school programs making sure students are signed up and comfortable with riding the bus. At the end of last year, 42% of eligible students had signed up for the pass. If you’ve got an RPS high school student and want them to get free access to the entirety of our region’s bus network, you just need to fill out this permissions slip (Spanish version here).

Emma North, writing for RVA Mag, has a car-free tour through Richmond’s Arts District that, of course, heavily features the Pulse.

Are you in search of a good gift for the transit nerd in your life? Consider a print of this modern redesign of Richmond’s old street car network circa 1891. Give it a closer look, and you’ll see that a lot of Richmond’s current bus system is still based on the old street car lines from 130 years ago.

Logistical note: As summer winds down, this email newsletter will take a quick summer vacation for the next couple of weeks. HAGS!

ELSEWHERE

Here’s a good piece about how to design an equitable, just, and inclusive transportation system. From the article: “We have a 20th-century transportation network that needs to be redesigned to address the future needs of the 21st century. We are faced with a choice to continue following the examples set by our predecessors, or to shift the paradigm to right historical injustices by designing a network that is inclusive of all people while also preparing for the future.”

TransitCenter has a great post titled "The Right to Pee." about a recent study which found that bus operators routinely worked 10-hour shifts without a bathroom break. If you've ever wondered why there's a planned (and necessary) delay at the end of a bus line, this is why. Bus operators may be superheroes, but they're still human!

—Ross Catrow

This week in transit: New ridership numbers, national recognition, and park-and-rides

AROUND THE REGION

New systemwide GRTC ridership numbers through the week of May 19th (PDF) are out and available for you to download. So far this year, the entire system has seen about 7.8 million rides compared to just 6.7 million last year—and they’ve still got June’s numbers to run. Also, at 6,908 average weekday rides, the Pulse has nearly doubled the initial ridership projections of 3,500. Wow!

Check it out: More national media coverage on the success of the Pulse! GRTC’s Garland Williams talks to NPR’s Here & Now about how Richmond’s new BRT and redesigned bus network resulted in a 17% increase in bus ridership. Across America, transit ridership is on the decline, so it’s exciting to see other cities learning from Richmond’s success. One quibble: Williams doesn’t think we’ll see more dedicated bus lanes in Richmond. There are, in fact, a bunch of streets where the City could install dedicated lanes to speed up bus services and make public transportation faster, cheaper to run, and more competitive with folks who choose to drive personal vehicles. To name a few: E. Main Street, W. Main Street, W. Cary Street, 14th Street, Chamberlayne Avenue, and Hull Street—and that’s just in the city. If we want to make public transportation an easy and reliable way to get around—whether you have a car or not—we’ve got to start prioritizing it over personal vehicles.

ELSEWHERE

A frequent complaint about our region’s existing public transit system is the lack of park-and-rides specifically for the Pulse (park-and-rides exist for some of GRTC’s express buses). Charleston, South Carolina is working on their own rapid transit improvements and part of that includes a park-and-ride study. That’s maybe something Henrico County should consider on both the eastern and western ends of the Pulse line.

Oklahomans are stoked on public transportation! Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Oklahoma!

—Ross Catrow