HB 1541, a dedicated transit funding stream for the Richmond region

TAKE ACTION

This past week, Del. Delores McQuinn introduced HB 1541, a bill that would create both a Central Virginia Transportation Authority and a dedicated funding stream for public transportation in our region. That’s exciting! Unfortunately, as currently written, this bill also presents serious roadblocks to building a frequent and far-reaching public transit system in the Richmond region.

First, a quick, high-level summary:

Using revenue from new sales and wholesale fuel taxes, HB 1541 creates a pot of transportation money that is split three ways: 35% will go to a new regional authority, the Central Virginia Transportation Authority, for regional transportation projects; 15% will go to transit and “mobility services”; and 50% will, proportionally, go back to the locality in which it was raised.

I’ll dig into the (very in-the-weeds) details with a longer post on the RVA Rapid Transit blog later, but, for now, here are three areas of concern with HB 1541:

1. This bill allows localities to cut up to 50% of their current public transportation funding. This is unacceptable. New transit money should pay for new transit service. Remember, the Richmond region funds public transportation less than any of its peer cities from across the country, and using this once-in-a-generation opportunity to maintain the unacceptable status quo would be a huge mistake.
2. “Mobility services” is currently undefined in the bill. As I wrote last week: Any regional funding bill “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.”
3. At one point the bill says the local and regional funds shall be used “solely for new construction on new or existing highways and bridges”, and at another it says localities can spend their share of the money on “construction, maintenance, or expansion of roads, sidewalks, trails, mobility services, or transit.”‬ This language is seemingly contradictory. The regional authority and localities should be allowed to spend their money however they choose—on construction or maintenance and, especially, for non-car infrastructure like sidewalks, trails, and transit.‬

It’s early going with HB 1541, and that means there’s still time to improve and clarify the details.

So! If building an equitable, frequent, and far-reaching regional transit system is important to you, please consider reaching out to your state legislators and letting them know that HB 1541, while exciting, needs some important changes.

This is a once-in-generation opportunity and we need to get it right.

—Ross Catrow

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