Promised Big Bus Fixes? Please Hold

Don’t expect those promised new express busways or mini-hubs anytime soon for New Haven’s beleaguered public transit system.

But fewer bus stops? Tweaks to service times and convoluted routes? Those more incremental fixes may be on a closer horizon — pending state budget and staff priorities.

Local and state transit officials offered those tempered expectations Thursday night during a public workshop hosted by the aldermanic City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) committee. The virtual meeting took place online via the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

The subject of the hour-plus workshop was the final Move New Haven Phase 2 bus study report, a years-in-the-making, state-funded regional transit analysis published last November.

State Department of Transportation and CTtransit representatives went into great detail on some of the more ambitious proposed improvements to New Haven’s bus system—such as the creation of a local Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system and mini-hubs to replace New Haven’s current Downtown-focused, hub-and-spoke model.

But state public transit chief Richard Andreski made clear that even moderate-sized fixes are a while away.

And just about everything, from off-board fare collection to extended weekend service, is dependent on state and federal funding not currently available.

“While we all want this world-class new bus system, I don’t think it’s a matter of waiting,” he insisted. ​“I think we need to move now. Customers deserve improved service.” He said bus service is a social justice issue in how it affects people’s ability to move about freely in their communities.

Prospect Hill/Newhallville/Dixwell Alder Steve Winter asked when exactly any of these proposed changes and improvements in service might actually be put in place.

Andreski replied that his division is pushing the governor to include funding for increased frequency and span of service on both weeknights and weekends in his Fiscal Year 2022 – 23 budget. Those service enhancements could be in place as soon as the end of 2021, pending the state legislature’s approval.

“As we look beyond 2021, that’s when we get into the Bus Rapid Transit improvement. We’ll have to find funding for that. They would include new bus stations, mini-hubs, lanes, transit signal priority. Those are capital intensive. Right now, it’s not in the DOT capital program.”

“Not An All Or Nothing Proposition”

The study — which began in 2008 as a New Haven streetcar assessment, was reborn in 2016 as ​“Move New Haven”, and can be read in full here —includes a raft of far-reaching recommendations for how to finally make New Haven’s bus system convenient, rational, and reliable.

Those proposed fixes include building out a local BRT system with new express routes on Grand Avenue, Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue, and Congress Avenue; new mini-hub stations in Fair Haven, Dixwell, and Westville; dedicated ​“bus only” lanes, transit signal priority, and off-board fare collection; and new, longer buses with enough operators to run past midnight on weekdays and with more frequent service on weekends.

“I’m proud to say that the work over the last six years has led to a greater and broader understanding of the depth of challenges and opportunities that we have” with the city’s, and the region’s, bus system, said city transit chief Doug Hausladen.

DOT Public Transit Administrator Dennis Solensky said that the state was planning on starting to implement some of the study’s more immediately realizable recommendations — such as getting rid of bus stops so that they are spaced every quarter mile, rather than every tenth of a mile — soon after the study was published in November. Then Covid-19 hit.

He said, at the pandemic’s worst this spring, CTtransit bus ridership was down to roughly 46 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Now, those ridership numbers are back up to around 72 percent of pre-pandemic levels on fixed route services statewide.

“We feel very confident that our customers will appreciate our reliability,” Solensky said. ​“We’re back in high gear here, and ready to move to the next phase.”

CTtransit Assistant General Manager of Planning and Marketing Joshua Rickman took the lead in walking the alders through a 60-page PowerPoint presentation on the study and its recommendations.

That presentation included slides on estimated costs based on different phases of implementation.

“Enhanced” bus service (i.e. more frequent and reliable existing service), expanded span of service, and new cross town service? $31.7 million.

Add on ​“BRT Lite’ (i.e. some of the express busways along the city’s most trafficked routes, like Grand and Dixwell and Congress and Whalley), and that total jumps to $39 million.

Full BRT? The total jumps to $38 million.

Rickman said that new 40-foot buses cost around $500,000 each, transit signal priority (that is, traffic lights that communicate that hold the green when they sense a bus is coming) costs around $25,000 per intersection and $5,000 per bus, and min-hubs cost around $8 to 10 million.

“Funding is the key challenge here,” Andreski said. During the pandemic, he said, state tax revenues are down, particularly those that go into the state’s Special Transportation Fund, such as motor fuel taxes and those resulting from new and used car sales. ​“That’s putting pressure on the fund,” he said.

He said the state would almost certainly need federal financial assistance to make some of the more ambitious Move New Haven recommendations a reality. That was the case with the Hartford-area CTfastrack express busway system, he said.

“This is not an all or nothing proposition,” he reiterated. There are opportunities to make smaller improvements without waiting on the feds.

“Bus stop consolidation will improve travel time immediately,” Andreski said. ​“Incremental service adjustments we can make in the near term.” He said ​“more bus service, more frequent service, more reliable service is a priority.”

Who ultimately decides which recommendations are prioritized, get funded, and ultimately implemented? asked Downtown Alder Abby Roth.

“That is a conversation between the City of New Haven and other area leaders, the commissioner, governor, and legislators,” Andreski said. ​“I think that’s a conversation.” He said DOT staff and department leaders have ideas and will make recommendations. But, at the end of the day, ​“it really is a policy call for the leadership.”

Hausladen noted that the state and city already have consolidated some bus stops on Upper State Street, reducing six stops on each side to three on each side, with the remaining stops now spaced every 1,100 feet rather than every 500 feet. He said the city Traffic Authority has also signed off on additional bus stop consolidation on Whalley Avenue and Grand Avenue, though those plans have not yet been implemented due to staffing challenges and Covid-related delays.

He also said that the city and state are working on renovations to four bus shelters on the New Haven Green, as well as on a traffic signal priority pilot at six different city intersections, including Chapel and Howe, Chapel and Dwight, Chapel and Orchard, Chapel and Norton, George and Day, and George and Park.

And he said that the state recently added a new crosstown route caled the 237B, which provides direct service from West Rock to Hamden.

“A lot of this is budget dependent,” Hausladen said about the Move New Haven recommendations, ​“and big vision dependent.”

“Foundational” Improvements Needed Now

During the public testimony section of the hearing, three frequent bus riders and close watchers of local public transit pleaded with the state to act quickly on what one testifier, local grad student Robert Hale, described as ​“foundational basic things” that would make the bus system better now without having to wait years for millions of dollars in funding.

Downtown resident Miriam Grossman said that the CTtransit third-party app is unreliable. She called on the state to create its own app that would reliably let riders know where a bus is and when it will arrive at a stop.

She pointed out the baffling lack of integration of the New Haven and Bridgeport transit systems, which prohibited one from using the same bus pass when traveling by public transit within the two regions.

“And there are some gaps in service,” she said. Specifically, at Union Station. ​“You see the Yale shuttle or the Quinnipiac shuttle,” she said, but if you can’t ride on either of those two, you wind up waiting an inordinate amount of time for a city bus. ​“The buses don’t track the train schedules,” she said.

Hale also focused his criticism on bus access at Union Station.

“There’s a monitor and a shelter that never displays any upcoming buses,” Hale said about New Haven’s train transit hub. ​“There’s also no display inside the station building of which buses are coming. And there is no vending machine for tickets” either at Union Station, or on the Green.

“Yes, Bus Rapid Transit would be good,” he said. ​“But you’ve got to get these foundational things right. I’m glad there was talk of not waiting until the feds come through to start rolling out improvements. I hope that that attitude stays.”

Win Davis, the executive director of the Town Green Special Services District, stressed the importance of reducing bus stops to be spaced out every quarter mile rather than every tenth of a mile. ​“We can do quite a bit just by implementing a reduction of stops,” he said, which does not require purchasing anything new. ​“We would like to see that much sooner than 2022 or 2023.”

He added that bus stops — particularly on the Green and at Union Station — need to have real time GPS information that improve people’s understanding of the system. ​“With predictability and efficiency, we will see ridership increase,” he said.

“I totally understand that funding is hard to come by right now,” he said. But some of these fixes can and should happen sooner rather than later.