2020 🚌 goals!

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:

1. 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.
2. 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

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

This week in transit: Welcome your newly-elected officials

TAKE ACTION

Now that elections are in the past, it’s a great time to let your newly-elected officials know (or remind the folks that got reelected) that public transportation is a priority for our region. Take a couple minutes today and send your councilmember or Board of Supervisors representative an email telling them that buses rock!

If you need help getting your email started, here are a few things to ask for—one for each jurisdiction:

• Richmond: Email your City Councilmember and let them know you’d like the span of frequent, daytime bus service extended until at least 10:00 PM (it ends at 7:00 PM today).
• Henrico: Ask your Board of Supervisor representative what their plans are for building better pedestrian infrastructure along Broad Street to improve access to the Pulse and #19 bus.
• Chesterfield: Let the new (and returning) Board of Supervisor representatives know that you support the soon-to-launch #111 bus along Route 1 and are excited to see where the County chooses to run bus service next.

You can find contact information for Richmond City Council here, the Henrico Board of Supervisors here, and the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors here.

ELSEWHERE

Tulsa’s new Bus Rapid Transit, Aero BRT, opens today—congratulations Tulsa! Obviously, I’m biased, but I do think Richmond’s BRT is a bit better. We’ve got 10-minute service for most of the day, and our “weekday” service includes Saturdays. Aero BRT only sees 15-minute headways during peak times on weekdays and has no real frequent service on Saturday or Sunday.

The Pedestrian Observations blog has a great post up about fare evasion. Here’s the biggest takeaway: To limit fare evasion, make it easy to follow the law. In some cities (maybe Richmond!) that means giving deeper discounts to folks with lower-incomes and to folks who choose to buy monthly passes. In Richmond, speeding up fare validation at the ticket vending machines would certainly help, too.

Are scooters a legitimate mode of transportation? A new study in Santa Monica says yes. Folks used scooters to commute to work (29% of respondents), access recreation (26%), dine out (14%), get home (11%), and to go shopping (8%). “Nearly half of those trips replaced a short drive that users would have made with a car or taxi.”

—Ross Catrow