By Ross Catrow
Earlier this year, a team of nationally recognized transit experts came to town to help the city completely reimagine Richmond’s transit network. Our current bus network is built on the bones of America’s first electric streetcar system and has resisted major overhauls to its lines for at least 40 years. To say that a fresh start is desperately needed is an understatement.
It is, in fact, a fantastic time to rethink and reorganize Richmond’s bus system – and not just because 40 years of cruft needs sweeping away. Next year, The Pulse (Richmond’s first bus rapid transit line) will launch, and careful thought needs to be given to the connections between this new rapid transit bus line and the city’s existing bus network in order to reduce waste and increase efficiency.
Luckily, that’s just what the transit experts at Jarrett Walker + Associates were brought to Richmond to do. Fresh off of their tremendous success in revamping Houston’s bus system, they worked with the city, GRTC, and community stakeholders to create three concepts of what Richmond’s bus system could look like – all of which can be implemented at no additional cost. It’s called the Richmond Transit Network Plan (RTNP), and it could change your life.
Each of the three concepts has different goals that speak to different community values. The “Familiar” concept is very similar to what we have now, with a few tweaks to better integrate our existing buses with The Pulse. The “High Coverage” concept spreads bus lines across the city to as many places as possible, but a lot of those lines would be infrequent buses that come only once per hour. The “High Ridership” concept covers the busiest and densest parts of the city with extremely frequent bus lines. No longer would you need to consult a bus schedule to figure out when the next bus arrives. Just walk to your stop and the bus will be there in 7.5 minutes (on average). The tradeoff for that frequent bus service is that you’ll have to walk a block or two farther to get to your stop.
And we don’t have to pick just one of these RTNP concepts. There’s a spectrum between Familiar, High Coverage, and High Ridership, and we get to choose where Richmond belongs on that spectrum through a survey at richmondtransitnetwork.com. This survey will help inform the folks at Jarrett Walker + Associates as they put together the new system.
Again, this is at no additional cost. Each of these options – the Familiar, the High Coverage, and the High Ridership – can be done within GRTC’s current budget. All of the options are an improvement over the current system’s few frequent lines, duplicative routes, and heavy reliance on the (very unpopular) downtown transfer plaza. The High Ridership model, in particular, is extremely exciting and would give a lot of freedom to a lot of folks living in a lot of different places in the city.
VCU and UR students will have access to a greater array of jobs, internships, and housing. Households that do not own a car (over 14,000 in Richmond) will be able to more easily get around town to work, play, and worship. With the High Ridership concept’s many frequent bus lines, we could even see an explosion of transit-oriented development within a quarter mile of those lines, meaning more access to more places.
Plus, riding the bus is cheap. Compared to $6,700 to own a car for a year (according to AAA), a year’s worth of bus passes in the City of Richmond costs just $720.
But Richmond’s newly revamped bus network is just the beginning. With a strong foundation in Richmond, bringing frequent and high-ridership service to the entire region starts to become a reality. Hold on to your hats, y’all, because a regional transit vision plan is in the works and due out this fall. Imagine connections across Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield helping people more easily reach family, education, jobs, food, healthcare, and, of course, breweries, biscuit bakeries, and doughnut shops.
It’s exciting to think about as we begin putting the first pieces together today.