This week in transit: Proposed changes to the #4A and #4B

TAKE ACTION

GRTC has proposed a reduction in bus frequency on the #4A and #4B routes from 15-minute service to 30-minute service. These two routes both serve Fulton, connect to the Pulse at the Shockoe station, and are the only buses in and out of the neighborhood. This would be the first service reduction since the Big Route Redesign earlier this year and, according to GRTC’s presentation (PDF), would constitute a “major service change” in the context of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. If you live, work, worship, or play in Fulton and have thoughts or feelings on this proposed service change, now is the time to let GRTC know by emailing . I don’t see any more planned public meetings, and it looks like this proposed change will go live in January, so getting your comments in by email—and quickly—is probably your best bet to weigh in.

AROUND THE REGION

An annual awesome thing that GRTC and the City of Richmond do is provide free bus rides to and from the Community Thanksgiving Feast hosted by The Giving Heart. Reducing barriers for folks to get around on special occasions—remember free rides on Election Day?—is a good thing!

Metro Magazine has a great interview with GRTC’s travel trainer Kelsey Calder. Calder helps folks—people with disabilities, seniors, and everyone else—learn how to use public transportation and increase both their mobility and their independence.

Amazon is headed to Crystal City, and StreetsBlog has a look at the transportation pieces of the agreement.

ELSEWHERE

Populus dug into some of the data coming out of Washington D.C.’s docked and dockless mobility programs, and, whoa, they found some interesting things. For example, 16% of dockless users (folks using dockless bikes and scooters) are Black compared to just 6% of Capital Bikeshare users. I wonder if dockless vehicles just naturally find their way into more diverse neighborhoods in a way that planned, docked bikeshare stations cannot.

I’ve been following Albuquerque’s BRT for a long time now, and over the course of the project they’ve had a bunch of problems with their all-electric buses. So much so that this week the mayor pulled out of the contract with electric bus manufacturer BYD. Electric buses are clearly the future, but it looks like we’ve got at least a couple more years until they become a viable option in America.

This week in transit: Bus the vote!

TAKE ACTION

The most important way you can Take Action this week is to go vote! This coming Tuesday, November 6th is Election Day, and to help get out the vote, the City will offer free bus rides on local routes within the City limits. Using this cool map put together by GRTC, you can see that almost every single one of the City’s polling places (minus about a dozen or so) are a short walk from a bus stop. If you still, for some reason, haven’t ridden the bus, Tuesday would be a great opportunity to kick the tires and try it out.

After doing one of your civic duties and voting, consider volunteering as an extra in an upcoming GRTC commercial. They’re looking for a diverse group of folks of all ages to hang out and look awesome on November 14th from 1:00–8:00 PM. If you’re interested, contact Ashley Mason ().

AROUND THE REGION

Justin Mattingly from the Richmond Times-Dispatch was at the RTD’s 75th Public Square where the paper unveiled the results of a regional survey that asked folks about goals for the region. Improvements to the transportation system makes the top-10 list of things people from all over the region are looking for. As a 65-year-old Henrico resident said, “You need a good [transportation] system so you don’t need to use cars all the time.” Yes!

Jim McConnell, for the Chesterfield Observer, writes about Chesterfield County’s new (and slow but steady) progress on sidewalks. The goal is, of course, to have GRTC run local, fixed-route bus service along the County’s major corridors. Accessing that future bus service gets a lot safer and more comfortable if there’s a good network of high-quality sidewalks and paths in place. This is good work from the County and double good because the State is footing most of the bill.

RVA Rapid Transit’s quest to win top honors at the Better Housing Coalition Gingerbread House Challenge continues! This year, the theme is “Holiday Movies” and our crack team of gingerbread urban planners and gingerbread transportation analysts have put together a transit-twist on the Polar Express (see below). Stop by Hardywood today between 12:00 PM and 5:30 PM to check out the gingerbread creations and vote (for us).

ELSEWHERE

I want to quote each and every paragraph from this piece in the Atlantic at you. In it, Jarrett Walker addresses almost every reason I’ve heard folks use to suggest implementing on-demand bus service instead of regular ol’ fixed-route service. This is a particularly timely article for our region, as Chesterfield County is—at this very minute—deciding whether they should run fixed-route GRTC service on Route 1 or some sort of on-demand service provided by a private company out of Loudon County. Decision makers and county leaders! Read this article!

—Ross Catrow

This week in transit: New ridership numbers!

AROUND THE REGION

I’ve got new GRTC ridership numbers through the week of October 7th (PDF) for you to dig into, hot off the presses! Here are some of the more interesting takeaways, but I encourage you to open up the document and see how your own bus performs!

• The Pulse ridership continues to exceed expectations. Over the last three weeks for which data are available (September 25th–October 13th), the Pulse has seen an average of 39,319 rides per week—smashing the pre-launch goal of 22,600. The week of September 30th even broke 40,000 rides!
• Some context for the previous numbers: The Pulse accounted for 22.6% of the entire system ridership over those three weeks.
• For the month of September, VCU students, faculty, and staff took 45,345 local-service rides (that’s non-Pulse buses). Due to how the data are aggregated, it’s hard to tell what percentage of total ridership that is, but let’s say it’s somewhere around 10%.
• The #1ABC, #2ABC, and #5 are some of the local-service routes with the highest ridership. Combined, the #1ABC accounts for about 15% of total system ridership!
• The ridership on Henrico’s major routes has soared after the County extended service to Short Pump and expanded operating hours. Just look at the #19’s average rides the three weeks before the extension to Short Pump and the three weeks after: 1,519 ➡️ 4,520! That’s nearly triple!
• Henrico’s #7 and #91 have also seen sizable ridership increases after operating hours were expanded.
• The route with the lowest ridership? The 23x averaged just 50 rides per week over the last three weeks of available data. Yikes.

ELSEWHERE

Will autonomous vehicles magically solve congestion? Nope! In fact, they may make the traffic problems (and air-quality issues) cities see even worse.

I was just in Pittsburgh last week and was shocked to learn that it costs $1 to make a transfer in their bus network (in Richmond that costs $0.25). Even more shocking, if you’re paying in cash, there are no transfers and you have to just pay the full fare again ($2.75 compared to Richmond’s $1.50). This article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette goes into how those policies extend to their planned mobile fare-payment app and how the local transit advocacy group is pushing to make the entire fare system more equitable.

—Ross Catrow