Most new urban communities get bus service
Yet problems persist with acceptance and service, particularly in greenfield developments. The bus is the most frequently used mode of public transportation in the US today, but in transit-oriented development planning the bus tends to play second fiddle to light rail or commuter rail.
On the ground, however, the bus has quietly become the first transportation alternative in many new neighborhoods. In a survey of 19 projects with significant portions complete, New Urban News found 16 communities (84 percent) served by buses that give residents the choice to travel to employment centers, other forms of public transit, and downtown amenities (see table on page 6 describing service in all communities surveyed). Two of the three without bus routes plan to get service.
Infill projects have the distinct advantage that bus service was viable even in the early stages of development, while a greenfield project like Kentlands had to wait 11 years (from start of construction) for bus routes to pass through neighborhoods. Service is not yet available in several newer Florida projects, where remote locations and a lack of public transportation culture delay connections.
Bus service has several advantages over light rail or commuter rail service. The latter require substantial infrastructure investments that in many cases have to be approved by voters, and systems take many years to build. Bus service runs on existing roads, is already available in metropolitan areas, and can be extended by an executive decision of the local transit agency. Moreover, bus routes are flexible enough to respond to new demand rapidly.
However, while bus routes are easy to extend, they are also easy to discontinue at a moment’s notice. This recently happened in Atlanta, where MARTA, the local transit agency, cut service on nearly 100 routes, completely discontinuing over 30 routes. Another disadvantage is that buses typically are large, noisy, and polluting — in many cases not a good fit in communities with narrow streets.
Controversial on neighborhood streets
The precise routing of buses has become a hot topic in Southern Village in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where bus service began on neighborhood streets when the community was annexed by the Town of Chapel Hill last summer. Some residents are concerned that the buses are a safety hazard on narrow streets and also dislike the noise, says project manager Jim Earnhardt. They have petitioned the town to discontinue service in the single-family residential section, while a rival group is petitioning the town not to stop the service.
The Town Council now has asked the transit agency to meet with the homeowners association to work out a route that can satisfy the majority. Since 1996, Southern Village has had a separate bus service that connects a park-and-ride lot adjacent to the village center with the University of North Carolina campus. This route runs every eight minutes on weekdays. Harbor Town in Memphis, with approximately 900 households a short distance from downtown, would seem an obvious candidate for bus service.
But the project’s location on an island in the Mississippi River kept public transit away until June 2000, when a trolley service connecting to downtown was launched. The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) agreed to create the service after a lobbying effort by residents, the developer, and city officials, says Alison Burton, MATA’s director of marketing. The trolley runs from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays with service until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The route originally ran on the private streets inside Harbor Town, but after some residents complained about the noise level, the trolley now stays on the periphery of the community, says Elizabeth Cagle, a Harbor Town property manager.
According to Burton, some residents also had the perception that buses could bring criminals into the community. Cagle notes that the service was intended more as an alternative way of getting to the downtown entertainment districts than as a commuter route. But since it does not run late enough on weekends for most people, it has not been used as much as expected, she says. “We have been greatly disappointed by the response,” Burton says. Ridership on the Harbor Town end of the line has been very low, and currently the service has been extended for another six-month trial. Smaller buses has been seen as a solution to the safety and noise concerns. “Many transit systems are breaking the tradition of just wanting a 40-foot bus, and are going to smaller vehicles,” says William Lieberman, a private transit consultant formerly with the Metropolitan Transit Development Board in San Diego. In Harbor Town, however, a small trolley has not been enough to change negative perceptions of public transportation. For a while, Orenco Station in Hillsboro, Oregon, was served by small buses that could pass through the more pedestrian-oriented parts of the neighborhoods. “We actually preferred that arrangement,” says Mike Mehaffy with the PacTrust development company. “But when TriMet [the Portland transit agency] consolidated routes, the smaller buses were no longer economically viable.” According to Lieberman, labor remains the highest cost in running a bus route, and that cost does not change with the size of the vehicle. Orenco Station continues to have bus service from its town center, which sits on an arterial road, and residents can travel to nearby employment centers and to light rail stations. Enduring reluctance It is difficult to quantify to what extent residents in new urban developments are actually getting on the bus, but anecdotal evidence suggests a mixed picture. Addison Circle, a dense development of multifamily units north of Dallas, may have the best access to bus service — a bus substation with 15 routes is one block away — but Carolyn Merrell of developer Post Properties reports that the buses are not used much by residents. In Fairview Village (Fairview, Oregon), a shuttle bus service to the nearest light rail stop was discontinued for lack of use, but two routes running at the edge of the neighborhood remain. Kentlands has been under development since 1988, but did not get dedicated bus service until September 2000. Two routes carry passengers to the Rockville Metro Station and the Lake Forest Center shopping mall. After a slow start, ridership has started to pick up. Phil McLaughlin, Manager of Operations with Montgomery County Ride On, estimates that the combined ridership per weekday in Kentlands is 138 passengers — still a relatively low number in a community with about 5,500 residents. Nationally, bus ridership increased in the second quarter of 2001, but at a rate well below the growth in light rail transit. According to the American Public Transportation Association, bus use was up 1.87 percent and light rail grew by 4.39 percent. Trips on buses made up nearly 60 percent of the total number of transit trips. A recent survey conducted for the National Association of Realtors, “A Look at Voter Opinions on Transportation Among Suburban and Urban Voters,” suggested that many Americans feel the impact of increasing traffic, but that few have made any drastic changes in their behavior. Where 44 percent of respondents said they had experienced an increase in stress because of worsening traffic congestion, only 12 percent reported having turned to public transportation for relief. New urban projects built within established urban fabric seem to fare better, in part because service is more frequent. Lowry, the redevelopment of an air force base in Denver, is 40 percent complete and already served by seven bus lines. The routes include express buses with rush hour service and buses that run every 15 minutes. According to the Regional Transportation District (RTD), ridership is highest in the town center, among community college students, high school students, and workers in the business park. Lowry currently has about 4,500 residents, 6,000 employees who work in the community, and 3,500 students. The Lowry Development Authority stays in constant contact with RTD through Lowry’s Transportation Demand Management Program, which began in 1998. Future additions to the bus service will depend on density of housing in new neighborhoods, says Hilarie Portell, a Lowry spokesperson. Highlands Garden Village, another Denver infill project, is bounded by 36th, 38th, Wolf and Tennyson streets, about a mile and a half from downtown. The RTD bus lines run on 38th street, with stops at Wolf and Tennyson. The buses operate every 15 to 20 minutes at peak times, and every 25 to 30 minutes at nonpeak times, and are fairly frequently used by residents, according to Sage Strever, who works at Highlands Garden Village. The Wolf Street stop is located on Highlands Garden Village property, and a 300 sq. ft. plaza was built by the developer as a bus stop. RTD plans to build a shelter and computerized information center, where riders will be able to punch in their destination and receive information about connections. Such passenger amenities are essential to making bus service attractive to people who otherwise rely on the flexibility of the automobile, Lieberman notes. Recent research by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) suggests that residential developments built on greyfield mall sites are particularly well-suited for bus and other transit service and often have existing bus routes running on arterial roads (see December 2001 issue of New Urban News). Internal service Some projects in suburban locations will never see bus service coming from the outside, but residents in Abacoa (Jupiter, Florida) are now able to use public transportation within the community. “Mass transit is basically non-existent in northern Palm Beach County,” developer George deGuardiola says, “and there is no indication that it will come in the foreseeable future.” Instead, deGuardiola approached the county and persuaded it to cover the $75,000 annual cost of running a free trolley service. The trolley carries 20-25 people, and runs every 50 minutes on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The route carries residents from neighborhoods to the town center, to the baseball park, and to the university campus on the site. It has been well attended since it began service in May, and a second trolley was added in December. “The trolley gives children the chance to travel without their parents and gives the older population greater freedom of movement,” de Guardiola says. He adds that the trolley also has the potential to capture many internal car trips, which are typically more numerous than the daily commute.
