Proposed Chapel Hill Transit Changes

I attended the meeting on April 20th to discuss the early draft of proposed bus changes, and it was disappointing to see very few people there. One of the staff mentioned that they had looked at ridership numbers during the spring and summer time period, and woman wisely pointed out that ridership may be down during that period because people may choose to walk when it's warmer. I ride the A bus, and often take one of the later routes that are proposed to be cut, but it's easy enough for me to take the NS and get exercise. I'm more concerned about the proposed cuts to entire neighborhoods.  

The first time I was in the Chapel Hill News was back around 1980 when CH was annexing the North Forest Hills neighborhood.  The kids (I would have been 10) led a petition drive which we sent to Town Council to get the bus service to go through that neighborhood.  I've always been able to say I'm the reason the "A" bus goes down Cynthia Drive, but I guess no more....  Full disclosure - we sold the petition by stating we wanted to be able to ride the bus to the library, but we definitely used it more to go to the Pump House.

I'm one of those who catch the bus on Cynthia. Thank, James. I also frequently ride my bike to campus - yes, on the sidewalks, right past those signs saying no bikes on sidewalks. If the sidewalks were busy with walkers, I'd probably ride the bus more rather than attempt MLK on a bike at rush hour. I'm very concerned about the elimination of the North Forest Hills portion of the A Route. It will be about a 20 minute walk to a bus stop on MLK from my home on Summerlin Dr. I already have to do that if I stay out after 7:30. At the last round of meetings in April, I suggested bringing a bus route along Piney Mt. Rd. to catch folks in that area. Perhaps the T Route or G Route, which currently double back on themselves, could be sent or returned along Piney Mt.Maps of the proposed changes are not included in any of the current
meeting announcements, but can be found here:
http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1506 There is no good signage on the buses about the upcoming meetings....certainly no clear message that "this bus service will be eliminated." The bus drivers do not seem to be aware either. I sent an email to the neighborhood listserv this morning and I'm posting the meeting notice at all the neighborhood bus stops when the weather clears. Any other ideas for turning out public comment would be appreciated. 

Just as I'd begun to notice an uptick in ridership on G and A routes, this?  And yes, there's been almost no notice and certainly no effort to collect comment until now.All you have to do is look at the rush-hour density on MLK and Estes to begin to wonder what "they" are thinking.  I've always thought the absence of any service on Estes between Franklin and Clayton was puzzling, esp. given the location of the library - and have written as much the the transit people (obviously, to no effect).  But now, they seem to think less is even more.   As with so many other public utilities/services, the logical conclusion must be that if you cut out enough services, people will stop trying to use them, and then you'll save buckets of money by eliminating them altogether.But out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if they reinstated some sort of fare or travel-pass plan? 

In the Council's budget session on Transit (and only Transit) earlier this month, director Steve Spade's estimate is that it would cost the system About $1.2 million to retrofit the almost 100 buses to take fares. The more-than-double ridership from the 2002 ridership (first year of fare-free buses) has resulted in a proportionate increase in Federal and state funding. So going back to fares would cost the system several million dollars. The only other public transit system serving Chapel Hill, Triangle Transit, gets 12 percent of its revenue from fares. All the rest is from other sources, including major pass arrangements with UNC (and other universities elsewhere). This was in answer to a question at a TTA board meeting (where I represent CH). On CHT's proposed service changes: staff should be providing draft schedules for the public hearings. i've also asked that they provide maps to show changes in the routes.  Hope that provides an answer to your question.  Ed Harrison

I ride the four routes that use S. Columbia:  V,NS,J, and D.  I'm happy withthe changes on those routes.  The ridership on the times that are eliminated is very low.I also agree with Ed, not to go back to fares.  

I rarely ride the bus but I hope that part of this calculus involves how heavily various routes are used because in the end, like it or not, everything everywhere boils down to cost/benefit.  My routine is such that as I'm walking I see buses on the south edge of campus on weeknights in the 7-9 pm range, on Mason Farm Rd and East Dr (or is it West Dr, I forget) and unless people are crouching down or the riders are small people whose heads don't stick up above the top of the seat, most of the time the buses are either completely empty or almost completely empty (except for the driver).  It would be good if someone somewhere was keeping track of ridership so more resources could be put towards routes in high demand at the expense of resources currently put towards routes in low demand.

I hope that folks will attend tonight's public session on the service changes at Town Hall, starting at 6 PM, and post here with impressions of it.  I've got a neighborhood meeting soon after that, and that takes priority for the household.  Will be especially interested to hear if the level of information provided is enough to understand the changes. I've asked for maps of the new routes, as proposed for change, and for schedules (with "time points" -- e.g. "E. Franklin St. at Varsity Theater") for the proposed routes.  Ed Harrison

I attended the meeting and will offer some impressions - necessarily subjective, I admit, especially since I'm part of that section of town covered by both the G and A routes.  Two basic but important ones are (1) that it was very sparsely attended - fewer than 15-20 people there if that, but (2) that they were almost all there to protest changes to the G and A routes. (Ironically, the Transit publicity for the meetings specifies that the Town Council is served by both routes.)  There were at least 6 employees from Chapel Hill Transit, as well as Stephen Spade. Virtually all of the presentation time was spent demonstrating that there's a financial crisis, that they (believe they) have no alternative but to cut services as outlined, and that they arrived at their decisions based on current ridership statistics.  There was more time spent on justifying the changes rather than on explaining them, although they clearly intended that the group (had it been larger and concerned with more thajust the G and A routes) would break into route-specific or area-specific subgroups, to whom different transit employees could explain specific changes in more detail.  In truth, explanation of exactly what the changes would entail probably wasn't all that necessary, since those there had already scrutinized the announcement and knew how their neighborhoods (notably Briarcliff) would be affected.   The individual transit reps did bring paper maps of the existing routes as an aid to taking comments from people.A couple of interesting perspectives emerged via the interaction of various comments:The two routes (G and A) that are taking the biggest hit in the cut-backs are two that actually don't make much sense logistically. There are long stretches of both routes that aren't well used and other sections of them that are quite heavily used.  If you look at them on a map, they are truly tortuous, as if pieces were knotted into the route as an afterthought.   Although transit analysts were replete with numbers to prove ridership overall is well below ideal levels on these routes, not much thought seemed to have been given to why or whether the situation could be fixed by other than surgical removal of the offending route.  There were suggestions to split or redesign the routes with more rational consideration of who's going where.  (For example, my suggestion was that perhaps adding coverage to lower Estes and the Mall could complete a loop including MLK and Franklin or Rosemary, serving more people in more directions and - down the road - serving the library.   Granted, that doesn't help the Booker Creek neighborhoods, but as the G route now stands, no one who starts in Booker Creek is on the G bus to go to the Mall, its other-end terminus (or vice versa). A different route configuration seems called for, and similarly for the A route.)There were also questions/comments about other sources of revenue, but the only one that seemed at all promising, according to CHTransit, is that of paid advertising on the buses, which probably wouldn't generate enough to fend off all cuts, but might help somewhat. Forgive my inveterate cynicism, but I was ultimately left with the sense that this seems a done deal, like so many other occasions on which citizen input is invited but too late in the process and destined to be more or less filed away.  The changes become effective in August, which is way too soon to allow much realistic hope of modification.  Ultimately, the only informing "voice" heard in the planning process was that of ridership statistics, and it's hard to see how the popular voice coming this late in the process can have any effect.   Perhaps some can hope that they will rethink cutting G route frequency so drastically (to be reduced to once an hour - which may well be enough to kill ridership altogether) and that they will consider making minor modification in some of the other route cuts.  But anything other than perhaps restoring an occasional run or two would take too much time to plan by August.  The intention seems to be to present the changes as they now stand, unmodified, to the Manager and Council and say, "here it is -- you should know that people on G and A are screaming, but this is what we're stuck with." Respectfully submitted (with apologies to anyone there, including Transit officials, if this account is erroneous or incomplete, or if my impressions are wildly off-base.)

It seems to me that a huge contraindication is taking place.  Transit service, which is so important to our environment, is being scaled down AND Transit Oriented Development continues to be proposed and approved.  The rationale for TOD is that the density will support transit and enable the residents to get about easily without exponentially adding to traffic problems.  However, as both transit is cut and trees are cut for TOD developments, residents will have have to have their car or two (or 3) and the TOD design will end up having a negative impact on Chapel Hill.Until transit is funded, dense development creates more problems (redundant small shopping, condo/townhome/apt vacancies, tree loss, stormwater impact) than solutions.  Some will attempt to explain that we need a critical mass of people to obtain federal funding for transit, so we NEED the density for that purpose.  I would suggest that this is backwards logic-transit is a tool to help a town and its environment, and should not be the REASON that we approve density.   Del Snow

As I
said on our neighborhood blog (we of the G route), none of us are surprised
that we are on the chop block when it comes to rider statistics. We daily see
the empty buses and the empty bus stops. To those who do ride the G route,
however, the service is vital and those of us who always see empty buses may be
guilty of snapshot assumptions.Several
issues have come to the forefront of neighborhood discussion: (1) the promises
made for a free
ridership system, and (2) the needed change to a fare system (to be fair). :)We on
the G route, whether we use it or not, pay for that free system of transportation. We have
done it without too much complaint because the service was promised to all neighborhoods
and the supposed reduction in car use and traffic. If we don't have free
service why should we pay for someone else's free service?Others
feel like the service needs to stand on a fare system, with riders paying (by
pass or ticket) for their use. There's no problem with the system getting
grants or ad revenue but don't tax us non-users for users' rides. If the route
pays, it stays. If UNC or Carrboro wants to pay for their
faculty/students/citizens, God bless them.There's
no secret about the origins of this, budget crunch time for local governments.
Can we afford a bus system, expanded library, teacher assistants, (put your
favorite service here)? When the budget vote comes, the Town Council is going
to have to pray we're all asleep.

I agree with Del. Cutting routes is contradictory to the expressed goals of the town to become less dependent on single driver vehicles. It's also contradictory to the expressed goals of the university to build fewer parking lots/decks on campus. So instead of losing the gains we've made in convincing some people to rely on the bus system, why can't we use smaller buses for some routes/time slots and look for other creative ways to save on costs while also encouraging mass transit usage?

As I explained earlier to Dorothy Moore of Glen Lennox, an 80-year-old who uses the G Route to reach University Mall for groceries, using smaller buses saves almost no money because so much of the cost of transit operation is to pay the driver.  She communicated to me in the old-fashioned way, a phone call using the number my wife Pat had helpfully given her at the U Mall bus stop. Ms. Moore would be stranded by this proposal.  The change in the G Route does remove one bus route entirely from the largest single shopping center in the entire CHT service area. To me, that contradicts the Council's recent directions in documents such as the Ephesus Church Road/Fordham Boulevard Small Area Plan. An earlier version of changes to the F Route removed service from Ram's Plaza, Eastgate and Elliott Road, and put it on the edge of U Mall. (Also pulled service from several affordable apartment complexes). I managed to kill that idea, but it took two committee meetings to do it.  Ed Harrison

Again, I agree with Ed.  The best way to run a bus system is to have only one type of bus.  This eases maintenance, driving skills, replacement of buses and parts, etc.  It does mean that sometimes large buses are used on routes that could be handled by smaller buses.  This has been studied for many years, and the results are always that it is best to use the large buses.About the idea that the bus system is primarily for students:  CH Transit is a hub-and-spoke system that delivers people to the campus, hospitals, and downtown, and does it very well.  About 40,000 people commute to campus and the hospitals every day.  That figure includes 17.000 students of all types who live off-campus.  There are about 12,000 parking spaces on campus (incl the hospitals) available for commuters.  So we either run the bus system or we pave the campus and greatly increase the road capacity. There have been routes tried that are not hub-and-spoke.  Remember the route from Univ Mall to downtown Carrboro via Estes Drive?  There just weren't any riders.  The off-campus students do count.  They live in the town, pay taxes, and use services just like any other resident.I remember when then UNC Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance Nancy Suttenfield started making the major contribution to operating expenses about a decade ago.  She said that we (UNC) recognize that without the bus system, our employees can't get to work and UNC and UNCH cannot function. 

No one is saying that there should be no bus system or that it shouldn't serve the campus.  And the University does pay a large chunk of operation costs.  But by no means does it pay all of the costs. The point was that while students should indeed be served - and they most certainly are, given the system configuration and route timing - they should not be the only ridership group considered in planning, for fiscal and logistical reasons as well as town resident, voter, and taxpayer-mindedness (and it would be nice to include air quality on these hot summer days). It's all too clear that the mission of the Chapel Hill Transit is not to get residents out of their cars - it's apparently to enable the University to reduce parking pressure on and near campus.  But it's entirely fair for residents to ask whether that can or should be the sole and controlling mission.

Options are being examined. I posted earlier today to Transit, with copies to colleagues on Council, to other town staff, and to some businesspeople, concerning the reduction of service which cuts in the G and F Routes would have on access to University Mall. Total reduction in number of trips would be 68 percent, with 100 percent reduction on the G Route. I cited the case of Ms. Moore in Glen Lennox. Steve Spade asked me to call him, and he outlined some "scenarios" for route re-design that could deal with routes receiving the most concern. So, it's not "a done deal."    Ed Harrison

The service changes were derived from a Comprehensive Operations Analysis done by a consulting firm. I know there have been changes since April, because I asked for some of the more bizarre recommendations to be taken out, as did Dan Coleman in terms of service to some key parts of Carrboro. Discussion of these changes is within the "Partners" group right now, not at the Council or Board of Aldermen. The transit is run by a partnership, policy and financial, between the towns and UNC. Council members can be contacted via the email addresses on the Town website. Along with others, I'd prefer not to be contacted by "Anonymous" when a name is obviously available.   Ed Harrison

Did it occur to anyone that cutting routes now will enable the CHT to add the routes back if the .5 cent sale tax is passed by the voters next year. If the sale tax is passed only new services will receive those funds not current routes already in place.