In a time of growing demand, calls for reform and uncertain budgets, the Asheville Transit Committee sets some priorities for where the cash will go
Above: The Asheville Transit Committee gathers for its Jan. 6 meeting, around one of those photographically vexing projectors city meeting rooms have in abundance.
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A lot of important conflicts, discussions and decisions happen not in the chambers of Asheville City Council, but in the city’s many boards and commissions. Occasionally, we’ll cover one of these committees to bring more insight into how local government works. Last month, we looked at the Citizens Police Advisory Committee weighing in on the process for reforming the police department. Here, we look at the Asheville Transit Committee and staff crafting possible changes to a major city service.
As the local area has seen sharp population growth, a drop in wages and increased traffic, Asheville’s transit system has increasingly been a focus – and sometimes a frustration — to activists, city planners and residents who rely on it.
Over the past decade, the system’s seen a rebranding (it’s technically named Asheville Redefines Transit or the ART), route changes and repeated attempts to increase services Ashevillians have clamored for while facing an often-chaotic situation on the cash front. The system relies on a complicated mix of federal, state and local funds and combined with the recession and the city’s own budget crunches, that’s meant some of the major goals put forward by advocates and the city’s own Transportation Master Plan have yet to happen.
The system has also seen pushes for reform, as last year the People’s Voice for Transportation Equality, a coalition of riders that rely on the system for transportation, asserted that the system often didn’t serve them well and put forward an agenda of 19 reforms, ranging from later night service and greater representation to making it easier to carry groceries on the bus.
When the Asheville Transit Committee convened Jan. 6, they could announce that one of those goals had been accomplished: Sunday bus service had begun — though in a scaled-down version compared to a usual weekday — two days earlier. Asheville City Council approved the change when it passed the city’s annual budget last year.
“It was extremely well-received,” system manager Norman Schenck said, after a round of mutual applause from staff and commission members about the service’s launch.
“We don’t expect the ridership to mature right away, the industry standard is three years on a route for it to mature,” Transit Projects Coordinator Yuri Koslen said. Eventually, he added, “we expect about 1700 riders per Sunday.” The first Sunday saw about half that.
“It was a nice event, everyone was on board,” he added.
The grocery issue also came up in a presentation by Youth Empowered Solutions and Just Economics, with the committee agreeing to work with the groups and find ways to make transporting this necessity easier.
Now, with the beginning of the year, the city’s due to craft its budget over the coming months and that process began with the commission discussing priorities with staff for further expanding service.
Specifically, Koslen said that improving routes in South Asheville — a part of the city that’s seen considerable growth in recent years — and a slight expansion of hours to routes that were full at the beginning or end of their current shifts were some of staff’s top priorities when it came to expanding services.
“There are some routes that had more than 20 riders on their last trip or more than 20 on their first trip, and the transit master plan suggests that means that you should have an additional trip before or after,” Koslen said.
A sheet handed out to commission members listed what approximate amount of money each change would cost, some that have just been considered in addition to those they were prioritizing.
This sheet, specifically.
“What’s our timing on this?” Chair Julie Mayfield asked.
“Right about now,” Transportation Planning Manager Mariate Echeverry responded, noting that the sooner the commission set its priorities the better.
This year, Koslen said, staff is looking for things that “are a slam dunk,” that are “easy and will help the most people,” specifically improvements to two South Asheville routes — the S3 and S4.
“I don’t think we really have a leg to stand on with the half million for full Sunday service,” Mayfield said. But she wondered if staff could see if increasing service on some key routes on Sunday was a possibility, and Koslen replied that they could analyze the issue and also see if some routes might not be worth what the city’s investing in them. Echeverry added that so far, the transit system had mostly tweaked routes (changing how often buses arrive, for example) rather than eliminating them entirely.
“Ultimately, the goal is to move people as effectively as possible and we’re strapped for cash,” he said.
Amy Cantrell, who worked with the reform campaign, thanked the city for Sunday service and added that surveys the group had conducted indicated that the top transit priorities, “by far,” are full Sunday service and late night hours.
“It’s not even 3 a.m. or midnight. The majority said if we can even have service to 10 p.m. we’d be very grateful,” she said.
But Koslen noted that the priority at the moment for extending hours is simply one hour earlier or later than a given route runs, if the city’s numbers indicate there’s enough riders to justify it.
“That’s a way for us to grow our hours based on demand and ridership,” he said.
Vicki Meath, executive director of Just Economics, said she’d heard that late night was needed even more than early morning service, “we’ve heard, anecdotally, of people losing their jobs when a route was reduced to 7 p.m. when it had been running later. In a tourism-based economy a lot of people are working later. We’re primarily concerned with people getting to and from work and to basic necessities on the bus, so the later night service was definitely a concern.”
Committee member Calvin Allen, also one of the organizers of the People’s Agenda efforts, noted that he’d heard plenty of concerns from other riders asking “why the S4 is stopping so early.” Routes like that, which serve the city’s public housing developments, he added, particularly suffer from this problem and in some cases he’d had to walk into town because of when the buses stopped running.
“These are almost two different things,” Koslen said. “We may ultimately get to later night service, but we’re not able to identify ‘we should run the S4 three more hours.’ What the master plan says is that when you see 20 riders on the last trip add another trip. It would get to what Just Economics is talking about eventually.” But, he added, the groups were talking about a broader extension of hours than staff was currently advocating.
“So this is just an incremental step,” Mayfield clarified.
The committee quickly reached consensus that more frequent service on the S3 route was necessary, with committee member Adam Charnack noting that “the S3 is pretty glaring as an inadequacy in our system, hour-and-a-half service is not acceptable.”
Mayfield suggested that “the county really needs to step up” and help back extensions of the S4 route due to its connection to A-B Tech, but was unwilling to put that forward as a priority until more commitment from other local governments was forthcoming. “I don’t think we should ask the city to fund it.”
The committee agreed with the extension of hours proposed by staff as their next priority.
Committee member David Wilson noted that he wanted to see how Sunday service works out before committing to its expansion.
The committee agreed to the extensions of the South Asheville routes as well as the extension of hours as the main priorities it wanted staff to place in the coming budget.
Charnack wondered if they should add another priority, “just in case someone finds a pot of gold.” Allen noted that a circulator between the city’s two largest projects — Hillcrest and Pisgah View — would help residents there and bring back services that were lost in some of the route changes during recent years.
But Koslen said that “it’s something that could be looked at as we update the master plan, but it still needs some work.” Mayfield noted that Allen should work on getting the circulator included as a priority for future years as the city updated the master plan.
Agreeing with staff, the committee also supported improvements to the central transit station in downtown, as well as updating its transit master plan and adding another planner to the transit staff. When staff suggested studying the fee rates and possibly increasing them, Mayfield agreed, but cautioned that incremental changes over a long period of time tended to work better, though she also noted “if we’re asking the city to spend more money it’s only fair that we’re asking the riders to support the system.”
But rather than a pot of gold, Echeverry noted toward the end of the meeting that the system is, once again, facing potential cuts in federal funds.
“There’s some uncertainty, we may lose $700,000 or we we may lost $400,000. It’s going to be challenging for Council to make a decision without knowing what those numbers are going to be.”
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