This week in transit: Learning from other cities

ELSEWHERE

As we watch and wait for the General Assembly to decide on the fate of the transportation bills impacting the Richmond region (HB 1541 and HB 1414), let‘s take a look at a few transportation items from around the country:

• TransitCenter published a postmortem of Nashville’s failed 2018 transportation referendum (PDF). This report offers a ton of lessons—for us here in Central Virginia—on how to engage bus riders and build a diverse coalition of support as the region continues to invest in new transit projects. Honestly, there are a lot of lessons in here for folks doing any sort of collaboration-building work—transit-related or otherwise!
• The Indianapolis NBC affiliate reports that average daily ridership on IndyGo’s brand new BRT, the Red Line, is less than half of the 11,000 rides projected. It’s not an exact comparison, but, average weekday ridership on the Pulse this past fall hit 8,298, far above the 3,500 rides projected (and far above Indy’s current average daily ridership). While the Pulse is not perfect, its continued strong ridership shows that the region made some pretty good decisions when building a new foundation of the future of public transit in Richmond.
• Dockless e-scooters are not public transportation (although, maybe they should be), but they do provide an interesting and useful way for folks to get to and from public transit lines. Chicago just released an absolutely fascinating evaluation of their e-scooter pilot program (PDF), that’s worth flipping through. This kind of in-depth, data-driven analysis of transportation programs and decisions is wonderful and part of the reason why RVA Rapid Transit has pushed for Richmond City to create its own Department of Transportation.

—Ross Catrow

Support HB 1414 and more state-level transit funding

TAKE ACTION

Last week you had the opportunity learn about and support (pending a couple of amendments) HB 1541, a bill that would create a dedicated transit funding stream for the Richmond region. This week, take a gander at HB 1414 / SB 890, the Governor’s Transportation Omnibus package. The proposal will reorganize state transportation funding and create a new “Virginia Transportation Trust Fund,” of which 22.2% will be dedicated to mass transit and 5.72% dedicated to rail. It’ll also create a “Transit Incentive Program” that will help fund transit, bus-only lanes, and fare programs for folks with lower incomes. That program will be available to urban areas with populations over 200,000 (that’s us!). Having an increased state-level focus on local and regional transit only helps continue all of the transit progress we’ve got here in Richmond.

If more—and more straightforward—state-level transit funding sounds like something you would support, you can learn more and contact your legislators using this super easy form over on the Virginians for High Speed Rail website.

AROUND THE REGION

GRTC had their January board meeting last week and you can look through all of the presentations, documents, and assorted PDFs on their website. Three specific PDFs are worth your time:

• The Operating Performance Report includes a bunch of tables and charts describing ridership, on-time performance, safety, and a ton of other things. Of note: Ridership in 2019 was up 11.35% compared to 2018; August, September, and October of last year saw more ridership than any month in the previous couple of years; across the system, on-time performance is way below the goal of 80% of trips, hovering around 70%. That means a lot of late buses.
• There are a bunch of interesting tidbits in the 2019 GRTC On-board Survey Results. A few takeaways from the survey: 68.1% of riders live less than three blocks from their stop, about half of all riders do not make a transfer during their trip, and 87.1% of riders own a smart phone.
• GRTC has proposed several alignment changes to the West End routes this coming May. While the maps aren’t the easiest to understand, it looks like realignment will absorb the #75 bus into a handful of other routes and extend the #50 and #77 buses further east.

ELSEWHERE

Curbed has a good article about the benefits of bus-only lanes to everyone—drivers and people on bikes, not just bus riders. Watch this video of a GRTC #1 bus trying to make it down 14th Street during the evening rush hour, and you’ll see how giving dedicated space for buses (plus maybe some queue jumpers at specific lights) would speed up commutes for everyone.

—Ross Catrow

RVA Rapid Transit’s position on HB 1541

HB 1541, introduced by Del. Delores McQuinn, will create a Central Virginia Transit Authority and potentially a dedicated funding stream for public transit in the Richmond region. That the entire nine-locality region—Ashland, Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent, Powhatan, and Richmond—has come together to collectively support regional public transportation for the first time is commendable. RVA Rapid Transit is deeply thankful for all of the hard work put in by leaders, elected officials, and staff from each jurisdiction.

While we respect the work that went into this bill and agree with its overall intent, we support the following two amendments to the legislation in order to ensure that this new funding advances public transportation needs in the region:

1. As written, the bill directs 15% of the total revenue raised to “transit and mobility services,” which the bill does not define. This would allow portions of new revenue to be spent on transportation network companies such as Uber/Lyft or on private, for-profit van services. RVA Rapid Transit supports an amendment to specifically direct the 15% “transit and mobility services” funding to GRTC or its successor.
2. As written, the bill sets a requirement for participating localities to maintain at least 50% of their FY 2019 level of GRTC funding, referred to as Maintenance of Effort. Across all participating localities, this is $3 million less than GRTC’s FY 2021 budget. RVA Rapid Transit supports an amendment to change the maintenance-of-effort date from June 30, 2019 to July 1, 2020.

RVA Rapid Transit looks forward to working with the region’s localities to use this new funding opportunity to support more frequent and far-reaching transit and to improve transit access and overall safety for riders—including pedestrian and bicycle connections.

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