Transit system taking stock of its operations

It looks for ridership vs. coverage balance

Passengers wait for their bus Friday at the River Cities Travel Center in downtown Little Rock. Recently the board that oversees Rock Region Metro heard presentations about the pros and cons of focusing on ridership versus miles of service.
Passengers wait for their bus Friday at the River Cities Travel Center in downtown Little Rock. Recently the board that oversees Rock Region Metro heard presentations about the pros and cons of focusing on ridership versus miles of service.

Pulaski County's transit system will endeavor to overhaul its regular bus routes this year and, in doing so, either configure it to attract more riders or continue an emphasis on how much area the routes cover.

Striking the right balance between increasing ridership and providing service to as much of the community as it can is an age-old conundrum that transit agencies with fixed budgets face. But in recent years, they have leaned toward building ridership with new route designs.

How that plays out on the Rock Region Metro bus routes -- which are split evenly between "ridership" routes and "coverage" routes -- will be decided in the coming months.

"It can be very painful," Scudder Wagg, a senior associate at Jarrett Walker and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in designing bus routes, told the Pulaski County transit agency's board at its monthly meeting last week.

At the same time, Rock Region Metro will review the funding formula on which it has relied through an interlocal agreement largely unchanged since the agency's creation in 1986 when it was known as the Central Arkansas Transit Authority. The agency changed its name in 2015.

The agency's 2019 budget totals $19.2 million, of which $13.6 million comes from the five jurisdictions it serves -- Little Rock, North Little Rock, Sherwood, Maumelle and Pulaski County -- based on a formula that considers how many service miles the transit system's 25 regular bus routes operate within their boundaries.

Little Rock pays the most, about $9.4 million. It also has the most miles within its boundaries, almost 1.9 million service miles in 2018, according to the agency's latest estimates. If adjustments to the routes are made, the changes are reflected in the funding formula the next year, agency spokesman Becca Green said.

"One of the things we want to look at in the analysis is a critical review of the formula for funding," Charles Frazier, Rock Region's executive director, said last week. "That's one of the major components. That was in the original interlocal agreement. Since that time, we have partners come and leave the interlocal, and so part of my assessment is we need to see what options are available."

He said he wasn't sure if the number of miles was the only factor on which the transit agency's funding should be based.

"It could be hours," Frazier said. "It could be other metrics. We don't know what those are yet. We need to understand what those are, and maybe it's a combination of metrics."

His comments came after Wagg completed the second presentation in two days to board members at Frazier's invitation. Wagg's firm provides planning services; policy development; advice to cities, regional governments, transit agencies and transit advocacy organizations; as well as other services.

The presentations included an overview of pros and cons of ridership versus coverage.

Wagg likened the ridership model to working like a business in which a transit agency maximizes ridership by choosing which markets to enter. In other words, it won't run in some markets or as often if the ridership isn't there.

The coverage is more like a government service in which everyone receives some service "even those in expensive to serve places," he said. Transit agencies measure coverage by the percentage of population and jobs near "some service."

But the coverage model comes at the cost of service frequency, the amount of time a bus serves a stop, which Wagg called the most neglected element of transit.

Bus routes that have 15-minute intervals between collecting or dropping off passengers at a bus stop generate more riders because riders know they can go when they want to go, make connections more easily and run smaller risks of being stranded by disruption, he said. Most routes on Rock Region Metro have 30-minute service intervals.

Routes on which service is frequent also help support redevelopment of the areas they serve, Wagg said.

But frequent service routes only work in limited areas that include dense development, walkable areas and on thoroughfares in which the buses don't have to exit to make stops, he said.

The ridership model will encourage more riders and thus more fare revenue that might require less in subsidies from Rock Region Metro's funding partners, as well as support dense and walkable development and reduce congestion, according to Wagg.

But he said the coverage model, or access for all, works better in suburban, low-density development areas and provides "lifeline" access to everyone, no matter where they live. It also provides service to every political district.

"Both goals are important," Wagg said. "But they lead in opposite directions."

Most transit agencies don't adopt a strictly ridership or coverage model but rather a blend of both, and they arrive at that blend without much thought of what they want, Wagg said. But in recent years, transit agencies for which Wagg's firm has worked have shifted more service to the ridership model.

His review of Rock Region Metro's service shows half of its routes are based on a coverage model and the other half fit a ridership model.

"The question is not whether it's the right way or wrong way," Wagg said. "It's 'is this what you want for your community?'"

Wagg's other presentation included a table-top exercise in which Rock Region Metro board members were given the opportunity to design each of their own bus routes in a fictional community.

The board chairman, Art Kinnaman, called the exercise "interesting, challenging, frustrating and fun -- all at the same time."

The look at the blend of ridership and coverage models will be part of what Frazier called a comprehensive operational analysis that has a goal of modernizing the transit agency's route network with a new design and additional transfer centers. Any changes will be budget-neutral, but the analysis will include what could be done if the agency received dedicated funding, he said.

The analysis also calls for public involvement.

"We're going to get plenty of feedback," he said.

The analysis is expected to take much of the year to develop, Green said.

"Right now, we're collecting rider feedback and will do a deeper dive gathering information on productivity and ridership later this summer," she said. "By September, we should have conceptual designs for the system network, including a budget-neutral concept, plus alternatives."

At the same time, Rock Region will be doing a pilot project to test micro-transit options in some areas of the system. Micro-transit is an on-demand service in which smaller vehicles will be used to pick up people where demand is less robust and take them to stops on regular routes.

"All of this work is so we can gain knowledge and have a better understanding of what the best service options are for operating more efficient service and how those options can be funded," Green said.

Wagg said transit will remain an integral part of a city or region's transportation mix because other forms, be it transportation network companies such as Uber or Lyft or self-driving vehicles, cannot solve the problem inherent in metropolitan areas -- limited space.

"Ultimately, if you want to move large numbers of people, you have to solve that space problem," he said.

photo

A lone bus rider sits outside the River Cities Travel Center in downtown Little Rock on Friday as an advertising-covered bus drives past.

Metro on 03/17/2019

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