5 replies to this topic

[Spartan]

This was in the Greenville news today incase you missed it. Its not really antything exciting, however if you are interested in seeing mass transit in Greenville then its worth reading. Its an interesting comparison to Charlotte too. I left it in its entirety becasue I found the whole thing interesting.

Mass transit dreams ride on parking our auto habit
Posted Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 8:48 pm

By Ashley Fletcher | The Greenville News

Imagine an out-of-car experience in which you're commuting to work on a light-rail train or in a really nice bus.

You are reading or preparing for the 9 a.m. meeting while shaving valuable minutes from your travel time. Even as growth continues, traffic congestion has eased. We're all breathing cleaner air.

With fewer than 2,500 people riding the bus each day in Greenville, this isn't an easy dream. The roads aren't jammed enough and the parking lots aren't full enough to drive us from our cars.

But the people who dreamed mass transit as part of Vision 2025 are looking 20 years down the road. By then, the traffic figures to be heavier, the commute more miserable.

Still, even if the planners come up with the money to build it — as much $40 million per mile — would you use light rail? Would your friends?

"I don't know if Greenville's ready for that," said Eric Eckelman, who lives in Travelers Rest and works in downtown Greenville. "(People) just love their cars. They just want to be able to park."

Some experts and community leaders share that view, including some who helped write Vision 2025, a list of goals produced by everyday people and officials brought together by the Chamber of Commerce.

They doubt light rail or a bigger, faster bus system would be feasible in Greenville County over the next two decades. While some say it's possible, others aren't focusing on mass transit as the city's next big attraction.

George Fletcher said he hopes some kind of mass transportation will take hold in Greenville County over the next 20 years, but he has doubts. Fletcher is a coordinator for Vision 2025.

But light rail might not be a good fit because of the area's low population density, Fletcher said. Homes tend to be spread out, which makes getting to a rail stop more of a chore.

"We're still building subdivisions at a significant rate, and those subdivisions are really dependent on the automobile," he said. "And I'm not saying that's bad, but it doesn't lend itself to a light rail system. In fact, presumably, (cars are) what people want."

Though he doesn't have the answer to crowded roads, Fletcher said we can't keep widening them to handle increased traffic as the Upstate grows.

"Somebody once said that solving your traffic problems by building more lanes is like solving obesity by buying bigger clothes," he said.

Pat Haskell-Robinson, chairwoman of the Vision 2025 transportation committee, said a light rail or other mass transit system could succeed if people understand the consequences of overcrowded roads. The county's economic growth could slow to a halt if roads cannot handle the people and goods that need to be transported, she said.

And more traffic will only worsen the Upstate's air quality. "It's not something that'll happen overnight, but I do think by 2025 we'll have a very effective multi-modal transportation system here because without it we will be in dire circumstances," Haskell-Robinson said.

"You don't wait for things to happen and become horribly congested to build light rail. You build it and they will come."

Aleisha Conklin of Spartanburg, who recently was shopping in downtown Greenville, sees some benefits to expanded mass transit. It would be safer than driving when people are out drinking. "It'd probably be easier to get around and not cost you as much as your car and insurance," she said.

She thought about that for a minute and said that, even so, she'd probably stick with her car.

Eckelman said he might be interested in a light rail system if one were built, but mostly just to get from his home to downtown Greenville for entertainment. He isn't ready to give up his drive to work.

But he'd only consider riding light rail if it were convenient and quick.

"I'm an American. I don't want to wait two or three hours," he said. While light rails sounds "cool," Eckelman said, he wouldn't ride a bus, no matter how fancy, unless he lost his drivers' license.

"A bus is a bus is a bus," he said.

Buses first

Some people, like Eckelman, would be willing to try light rail but say they won't ride buses. However, buses are a precursor to anything bigger and better, said Greenville County senior transportation planner John Gardner.

It's difficult to justify light rail or an upgraded bus system when ridership is low on the buses we already have, Gardner said. And lacking a significant number of bus riders, the community would have a hard time qualifying for federal dollars to help pay for light rail.

Studies show that when a light rail system opens, 60 percent of its riders are people who were riding the bus already, he said.

When about 25,000 people ride the bus daily, upgrading to a more sophisticated transit system might make sense.

The Greenville Transit Authority has provided an average of about 2,500 rides a day for the past three years. By comparison, in the Charlotte area, where a light rail system is in the works, the bus system provides about 46,000 bus rides per day, Gardner said.

Passenger numbers on Greenville's buses have not increased significantly recently, even with rising gas prices, said Judy Dudley, the authority's general manager.

Fletcher agreed that buses must come first. "We need to use buses for moving people from, say, Greer, to downtown or Mauldin to downtown as a first step," he said.

"There's really no reason that you couldn't have buses running from Travelers Rest to downtown Greenville on a regular basis, or Greer to downtown Greenville."

But an argument could be made for two reasons. One is funding. The Greenville Transit Authority has not operated buses in the Golden Strip and Travelers Rest since 1996, when it had to cut those routes because there was no money to pay for them.

Those suburban communities are getting crowded and still growing. Expanding routes there would probably increase the number of bus riders, but there isn't room for that in the authority's $2.5 million annual budget, Dudley said.

The authority is planning to introduce a few new routes near the city of Greenville this month, but even with those additions, routes will remain clustered around the city of Greenville because of budget constraints.

A second reason some won't ride buses is the perception that they are for people who can't afford other means of transportation.

Dudley said bus riders often are those who lack better transportation options. But that's largely because of the limited services the bus system can afford to provide.

"When you operate the type of service that we operate — 60-minute service — that limits who is going to endure that inconvenience," Dudley said.

"If it operated every 15 minutes, you would begin to see a different customer standing at the corner. It might be the casual rider or the choice rider."

Cost of convenience

But that kind of convenience carries a high price tag. The more frequently a bus or rail system stops at one location, the more vehicles it must run. And the more offices, shops and homes it reaches, the more tracks it must cover.

In Charlotte's new system, costs are projected to be more than $400 million for a single 10-mile line. That's only one of five lines Charlotte plans to build to run in conjunction with trolleys and buses. The entire system is projected to cost $6 billion.

By comparison, widening a highway mile by adding a lane in each direction costs about $10 million a mile, Gardner said.

Light rail can work well in regions where most people are commuting to a central location, usually a downtown area. But in Greenville, there is no single employment center.

"Greenville's got several different roughly equally spaced employment centers," Gardner said. "Downtown's just one of them."

Others include the Haywood Mall area, the Interstate 85 corridor and Pleasantburg Drive, he said.

Haskell-Robinson said the authors of Vision 2025 have no specific plan for where light rail or any other form of transportation would go, how many stops it would have or where the stations would be.

The plan suggests a rail linking Travelers Rest and the Golden Strip with downtown Greenville. But Vision 2025 is just a set of goals before actual planning begins, she said, and no government or group has been designated to start that planning.

But dreaming is the beginning of progress, Haskell-Robinson said.

"Until people understand that there are alternatives to the automobile that are efficient and convenient and affordable, we're going to see people sitting in their automobiles," she said.

http://greenvilleonl...05011957044.htm

[Spartan]

I found the Charlotte comparison interesting. It should also be noted that Atlanta put in the MARTA rail becuase its bus system was heavily used.

[monsoon]

That was an interesting article.

[orulz]

Spartan, on Jan 20 2005, 07:34 PM, said:

"Somebody once said that solving your traffic problems by building more lanes is like solving obesity by buying bigger clothes," he said.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What a great quotation!

Spartan, on Jan 20 2005, 07:34 PM, said:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"When you operate the type of service that we operate — 60-minute service — that limits who is going to endure that inconvenience," Dudley said.

"If it operated every 15 minutes, you would begin to see a different customer standing at the corner. It might be the casual rider or the choice rider."

I couldn't agree more. With 60 minute service, people like me who don't have a car are likely to WALK instead of take the bus (a male of average height walking briskly covers a good 5 miles in 60 minutes.) That's the way it is in Asheville, too. Due to the extreme consequences of "missing the bus" you pretty much have get there 10 minutes early just in case the bus is ahead of schedule, but then the bus is usually late so you end up waiting 20 minutes anyway. It's difficult, stressful, and ineffective as a transit system.

30 minute headways make a pretty huge difference, but you still have to remember the schedule and get there a few minutes early, lest you should be stuck waiting a half hour for the next bus. Bump it up to three buses per hour, and the average wait drops to just 10 minutes, so memorizing schedules isn't so important anymore. And if you just miss your bus, you're only stuck for 20 minutes, which isn't that bad.

Any improvement beyond that is icing on the cake - and should only be considered if there are capacity issues. 4 buses per hour requires 33% more buses and only improves headways by 5 minutes, which is not justified in towns like Greenville or Asheville.

I was surprised to see that even Asheville has more than twice as many bus routes as Greenville... but at least Greenville's buses run until 8:30 instead of calling it quits at 7:00 like Asheville, which is absolutely absurd.

[The_sandlapper]

I just don't think many southern cities are ready for the whole LRT or subway system yet. I'd be really surprised to see if it takes off in Charlotte honestly. It's growing but I don't think it has the density yet? But I guess that's why they are preparing for the future, fair enough I guess? By comparison other cities with much larger populations and densities than Charlotte are now just implementing LRT (Houston, Minneapolis), even if these cities lack the density needed they make up for it in sheer population numbers alone! The south is still a very heavy automobile dependent region, and will be for quite awhile. I can't see any real progress made unless they did something drastic and limited the number of cars on the road (which of course would never happen, or started implementing clean burnig cars as the standard, which probablly won't happen as long as there is money too be made from oil/gasoline, or stacking people on top of each other like the northeast). There is a movement of urban core living in southern cities now but it's being done more so becasue it's envouge, not because it's practical? I think if living in the core was done to be practical the prices of all these new townhomes & condos wouldn't be soo expensive? JMO anyway.

[Spartan]

True. Greenville doesn't have the density at all. One way to get people onto busses and mass trasit is to not expand a roads capacity. People will get frustrated with the traffic and consider mass transit. But then you have to measure the impacts on the communtiy. If traffic was too bad then maybe nobody would want to live there? Just some food for thought.