Transit Updates for Greater Grand Rapids

[Raildude's dad]

35 minutes ago, GRDadof3 said:

100' ROW??!! Dang, lol.   I don't think you'd want a 5 foot sidewalk anywhere near a 7-12 lane roadway. You'd have to put up permanent fences (aka Las Vegas Boulevard).  Can you imagine? 

I do think this Laker Line is not TRULY a BRT, other than the raised platforms and larger buses. An additional bus-only lane could have been added in the more congested areas, but as others have said, you would have had to take out quite a few homes and businesses from Wilson to Covell. 

What, you don't think a 3 foot parkway is sufficient ? LOL

 

22 minutes ago, JoeSchmo said:

Theres aren't structures in the way, but there are some significant residential developments that it certainly would have to plow through.  You can also see the east/west trail of lakes and muck (between Georgetown and Hudsonville) that perhaps could add challenges.

The environmental impacts now days prevent any significant project w/o creating acres and acres of replacement wetlands plus the cost of acquiring the right of way gets astronomical.  If it's a primary residence, the owner is guaranteed   125% of appraised value plus any and all expenses are covered. Can't find a equal replacement. you get to upscale.  I always tell friends, you want the new highway to take your house, not be the new neighbor to the highway.

Another thing,  it looks tight Covell to Collindale  with those walls on the south side. Look at Access Kent parcel viewer. MDOT owns more ROW behind the walls. Why they built the walls is a mystery to me. There's a 100 foot all the way. 

[GRDadof3]

11 minutes ago, Raildude's dad said:

What, you don't think a 3 foot parkway is sufficient ? LOL

 

The environmental impacts now days prevent any significant project w/o creating acres and acres of replacement wetlands plus the cost of acquiring the right of way gets astronomical.  If it's a primary residence, the owner is guaranteed   125% of appraised value plus any and all expenses are covered. Can't find a equal replacement. you get to upscale.  I always tell friends, you want the new highway to take your house, not be the new neighbor to the highway.

Another thing,  it looks tight Covell to Collindale  with those walls on the south side. Look at Access Kent parcel viewer. MDOT owns more ROW behind the walls. Why they built the walls is a mystery to me. There's a 100 foot all the way. 

I think it was to get the sidewalk along there, or keep the sidewalk. 

[arcturus]

Isn't GVSU playing catch up with available housing out there?  Will it not become more of a self contained community LESS reliant on daily commuting?  Campuses across the country are seeing huge, privately funded student housing developments.  With GVSU's large enrollment so dependent on commuting it seems to be ripe for this type of development which makes me wonder whether traffic estimates factor this.

Rapidly growing Jamestown/Georgetown/Zeeland residents won't even use LMD except for a small portion.

[MJLO]

15 minutes ago, arcturus said:

Isn't GVSU playing catch up with available housing out there?  Will it not become more of a self contained community LESS reliant on daily commuting?  Campuses across the country are seeing huge, privately funded student housing developments.  With GVSU's large enrollment so dependent on commuting it seems to be ripe for this type of development which makes me wonder whether traffic estimates factor this.

Rapidly growing Jamestown/Georgetown/Zeeland residents won't even use LMD except for a small portion.

I don't think the problem is student housing but more cross commuting between campuses.  No matter where they live most students have classes both downtown and in Allendale.  Aside from that students aren't counted in population stats unless they are full time residents.  The only option for  incoming residents from Tallmage, Allendale, and Blendon is LMD in addition to the students.  Wilson is the only direct connection between I-96 and I-196 between US-31 and the Kent County line.  Even then it's not exactly a straight line with no turns.    Agreed it won't affect resident's of Georgetown, Hudsonville ect as they have direct access to the Ford FWY.

[arcturus]

42 minutes ago, MJLO said:

I don't think the problem is student housing but more cross commuting between campuses.  No matter where they live most students have classes both downtown and in Allendale.  Aside from that students aren't counted in population stats unless they are full time residents.  The only option for  incoming residents from Tallmage, Allendale, and Blendon is LMD in addition to the students.  Wilson is the only direct connection between I-96 and I-196 between US-31 and the Kent County line.  Even then it's not exactly a straight line with no turns.    Agreed it won't affect resident's of Georgetown, Hudsonville ect as they have direct access to the Ford FWY.

Pew is mostly graduate studies.  There might be some intermingling but would think it would be a small portion of overall enrollment.

[JoeSchmo]

1 minute ago, arcturus said:

Pew is mostly graduate studies.  There might be some intermingling but would think it would be a small portion of overall enrollment.

Colleges of Education, Nursing, Business, Health Professions, and Engineering are all based downtown.  Not including graduate studies on top of that.  I might be missing some too.

[Pattmost20]

Just now, JoeSchmo said:

Colleges of Education, Nursing, Business, Health Professions, and Engineering are all based downtown.  Not including graduate studies on top of that.  I might be missing some too.

Most of my friends who went to GVSU had classes both Downtown and Allendale, I feel like it is quite common.

[GRDadof3]

4 hours ago, arcturus said:

Pew is mostly graduate studies.  There might be some intermingling but would think it would be a small portion of overall enrollment.

Pew might be but the new business school, the engineering center and health sciences are all mostly undergrad. I'll bet there's at least 5000 students who attend classes downtown. 

If you haven't been out to Allendale to see the explosion in private housing, you should drive out there. It's quite crazy. It stretches beyond 48th Avenue and down Pierce almost to 56th now. 

https://goo.gl/maps/quYVbaC1THfJYwyk8

Not to mention that Allendale Twp was named one of the fastest growing townships in Michigan recently. I don't even think that figure included student population. 

[Guest]

Does anyone remember how difficult it was for MDOT to secure the land for M6?  I'm sure it wasn't like it is today, mostly due to M6, but there had to be some things in the way.

[demhem]

21 hours ago, arcturus said:

Isn't GVSU playing catch up with available housing out there?  Will it not become more of a self contained community LESS reliant on daily commuting?  Campuses across the country are seeing huge, privately funded student housing developments.  With GVSU's large enrollment so dependent on commuting it seems to be ripe for this type of development which makes me wonder whether traffic estimates factor this.

Rapidly growing Jamestown/Georgetown/Zeeland residents won't even use LMD except for a small portion.

Do you mean commuting between campuses? At least when I attended a decade ago it was not heavily reliant on commuters (unless you count those living immediately off-campus as commuters). It seems to me that it is largely a residential campus and has been for quite some time now. Something like 90% of freshman lived on-campus when I attended. The amount of student housing that they have out there both university and private is pretty wild. 

[JoeSchmo]

I was trying to look up ridership data.  The latest I could find, was in 2009, GV bus ridership hit 2,000,000.    That might have been about 5,000 commuters/day during the school year. 

The estimates from a recent Mlive article, estimate going forward 10,000 to 13,000 daily riders.  If this is the case, this is significant for a road that has 40,000 cars per day.

[demhem]

25 minutes ago, JoeSchmo said:

I was trying to look up ridership data.  The latest I could find, was in 2009, GV bus ridership hit 2,000,000.    That might have been about 5,000 commuters/day during the school year. 

The estimates from a recent Mlive article, estimate going forward 10,000 to 13,000 daily riders.  If this is the case, this is significant for a road that has 40,000 cars per day.

This infographic is from Fall 2016: https://www.gvsu.edu/cms4/asset/6B065790-A2AE-2B1E-88DF36DD5F665A68/route_50_by_the_numbers_infographic_-_w17(2).pdf

[JoeSchmo]

8 minutes ago, demhem said:

This infographic is from Fall 2016: https://www.gvsu.edu/cms4/asset/6B065790-A2AE-2B1E-88DF36DD5F665A68/route_50_by_the_numbers_infographic_-_w17(2).pdf

Denhems on it.

With that, it shows during peak times, 14 buses are spaced only 4 miles apart on a 56 mile loop.   The project goal, I am sure was to increase volume first (articulating buses with standing room).   Calling this a BRT I am sure helped the $57 million FTA grant.

[arcturus]

Do these numbers average the lower ridership from May through nearly all of August?

[JoeSchmo]

3 hours ago, arcturus said:

Do these numbers average the lower ridership from May through nearly all of August?

The infographic mentions that those are stats based on the fall of 2016.  I am guessing daily ridership is lower in the summer...and lower on weekends.

[JoeSchmo]

Change of topic slightly.   While I was looking up ridership, I saw the Rapid ridership has been suffering since 2013/2014 with 25% lower ridership since.   This seems pretty substantial.

https://www.ridetherapid.org/about-the-rapid/performance/rides#monthly-ridership

I could only think, is this because of lower gas prices  and/or raising property values?

Edited June 7, 2019 by JoeSchmo

[Pattmost20]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmo said:

Change of topic slightly.   While I was looking up ridership, I saw the Rapid ridership has been suffering since 2013/2014 with 25% lower ridership since.   This seems pretty substantial.

https://www.ridetherapid.org/about-the-rapid/performance/rides#monthly-ridership

I could only think, is this because of lower gas prices  and/or raising property values?

Transit numbers are down in most cities. I would probably put more of the blame on low gas prices, but I'm sure property values play a part.

[RegalTDP]

14 hours ago, Pattmost20 said:

Transit numbers are down in most cities. I would probably put more of the blame on low gas prices, but I'm sure property values play a part.

Also Uber/Lyft. 

[MJLO]

16 hours ago, Pattmost20 said:

Transit numbers are down in most cities. I would probably put more of the blame on low gas prices, but I'm sure property values play a part.

I think the biggest component missing in this discussion is that the economic cycle was emerging from the worst recession in 80 years at that time.    Just as GRCC's enrollment peaked at almost 20,000 around 2010-2011 and is now back around 13-14k,  I have no doubt economic circumstances boosted peoples need to take the bus.  Now that we have been in one of the strongest upswings over the last 7 years it has created the opposite affect with people doing much better and not needing to take the bus.

[HavingAhoot]

How/why does the rapid still not have an app. Also is the wave out yet? Rode the bus monday aft and had to get money out an ATM at a convenience store to get change for that to hop on the bus. Am I being to picky here? 

[organsnyder]

Wave cards have been available for a number of months now. I ordered them for my family from the Rapid website and have them set to auto-reload via credit card.

For route schedules and bus status, there are a number of different apps that provide real-time data (my favorite is Transit).  It would be nice to be able to manage Wave cards via an app, but now that I have them set up I don't see much need to do so.

[demhem]

1 hour ago, organsnyder said:

Wave cards have been available for a number of months now. I ordered them for my family from the Rapid website and have them set to auto-reload via credit card.

For route schedules and bus status, there are a number of different apps that provide real-time data (my favorite is Transit).  It would be nice to be able to manage Wave cards via an app, but now that I have them set up I don't see much need to do so.

I second the Transit app. I use it in every city I visit where I'm using transit. I would imagine that The Rapid won't create their own when there are perfectly capable third party developers creating great apps already. 

[MJLO]

What are y’all talking about I use my rapid app almost everyday to track if busses are on time or not.

[HavingAhoot]

I'll have to download that 3rd party app. I still dont see an actual Grand Rapids  Rapid App MJLO. Does it not seem smoother and easier to have an app you could load money onto and have it scanned while getting on the bus? I guess once I have the wave card things will be easy but this doesn't make things easy for people visiting here. People are carrying less cash nowadays.  

[MJLO]

18 minutes ago, HavingAhoot said:

I'll have to download that 3rd party app. I still dont see an actual Grand Rapids  Rapid App MJLO. Does it not seem smoother and easier to have an app you could load money onto and have it scanned while getting on the bus? I guess once I have the wave card things will be easy but this doesn't make things easy for people visiting here. People are carrying less cash nowadays.  

I bought my wave card at central station and created an online  account  it automatically reloads at $10.   It tracks my usage and also shows when/how long until I reach weekly and monthly unlimited usage.   I don't really use it though since my Spectrum badge gets me on any bus.  I guess I didn't realize the wave app was 3rd party.  I have a metro card for New York, and one for the CTA but I've never tried using the app for either.  I've never thought about it I've always just loaded my cards when ever I am visiting and need to.   Some good info below on how to use it.  I thought it was pretty convenient.  There is a chance I am not millennial or urban enough to realize it's behind the times lol.   Also the app I was referring to is the bus tracker which definitely helps me plan on when to leave to get to whatever stop and all that. 

https://www.ridetherapid.org/the-wave