Increasing Transit Ridership is Necessary but Not Sufficient

This is Part One of Transit Conversations: A Series of Transit Equity Blogs by C3’s Director of Climate Policy Caetano de Campos Lopes

When searching for common ground in the promotion of public transit, the goal of “increasing ridership" is one with which nearly all transit stakeholders would agree. Public transit usage in our community, which can be simplified by Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) ridership levels, is far from where it should be, and its trend has been dangerously negative. After peaking in 2015, with ridership of about 2.4 million riders/year, CAT’s ridership decreased to 1.8 million riders/year in 2019, 0.7 million riders/year in 2020, and 0.6 million riders/year in 2021 — four times below 2015’s values.

Increasing ridership levels would signify better access to public transit, allow CAT to maintain its funding streams, and could make our community healthier and more climate and environmentally friendly. But all these benefits would only be achieved if bus occupancy levels (or “the number of riders on board at any given time”) also increase drastically! If ridership increases by simply multiplying the number of buses and their frequencies, but with no effect on bus occupancy levels, air and climate pollution could actually increase. 

According to C3's Transit & Equity report, diesel or compressed natural gas (CNG) buses must have an occupancy level of at least 9.5 riders to achieve a “climate/environmental breakeven" with the emissions per passenger of a light-duty vehicle with the average occupancy level in the United States of 2.2 passengers per vehicle. In 2019, CAT had an average of 5.5 “riders on board at any given time", which means that CAT buses were barely doing better than a car with only the driver on board.

Therefore, for us to really talk about transit in Charlottesville as a viable channel for reducing climate/environmental emissions, buses should have average occupancy levels of about two times their pre-pandemic levels or six times their current levels. This calls for a drastic reengineering of our transit system. Mild changes such as changing the location of a few bus stops and improving the frequency of all routes to every 30 min (or even to every 15 minutes, in the long run) might not be sufficient to reduce air and climate pollution.

From the “climate/environmental breakeven” perspective, the vast majority of CAT routes do not perform well. As displayed in the table "CAT Routes' Key Performance Indicators, 2019 ", the pre-pandemic average bus occupancy in our community was only 5.5 riders per bus. An acute concern exists for the occupancy levels of Route 1, Route 2, and Route 9.

When thinking about what's working well and what's not, we can observe that the Free Trolley and Route 7 alone are responsible for about two-thirds of CAT's ridership, while only accounting for about one-third of CAT's total miles traveled. Route 5 is another important route, and when considered together with the Free Trolley and Route 7, accounts for 70% of ridership and over 50% of miles traveled.

In the relationship share of ridership vs share of miles traveled, we can see that Route 9 is of particular concern as it accounts for almost 5% of miles traveled but less than 1% of ridership. Other routes that have alarming performances in that relationship are Route 1, Route 3, and Route 4.

In summary, CAT's champion routes (that are evidence of a fixed-routes system that is working well and should remain as is) are Free Trolley, Route 5, and Route 7. Routes of major concern (that should be profoundly revised, redesigned, and/or substituted by a non-fixed-route system) are Routes 1, Route 2, Route 3, Route 4, and Route 9.

What makes a fixed-routes system successful is more than the “share of the population that lives within 0.5 miles from a bus stop” or simply each route’s frequency. A close look at CAT’s champion routes shows us that what makes these routes the most successful actually is also part of the recipe for making these routes the most equitable. The key ingredients that all of them share are: placing more focus in denser, more diverse, and lower-income neighborhoods while serving places that have multiple businesses/services (where people go to work or would like to visit) and avoiding “residential only” areas.

As found in C3's Transit & Equity report (which analyzed the feedback of nearly 300 survey responses and/or focus groups with community residents), the following factors are also key for a more equitable and used transit system: shorter and “straighter” loops that allow higher frequency and users to go faster from their origin to their destination, and the quality of the bus stops and surrounding pedestrian and bike infrastructure. 

If willing to profoundly revise its fixed routes model, CAT might conclude that instead of having 12 routes it could have a more nimble system with fewer fixed routes, focusing on serving denser areas in a faster and straighter way. In which case, CAT might be able to meet its ambitious long-term goal of having “all routes with a 15 minutes frequency” by simply reallocating its current fleet. 

Lower density areas of our community will still need a solution for their public transportation needs and could be served by an auxiliary non-fixed-route transit system. For these neighborhoods, C3 suggests complementing CAT fixed routes with a micro-transit system, which will be the topic of our next conversation. Don’t miss our blog due for release next week (the week of March 21st).

Public transit is a fascinating, multifaceted, and dynamic topic. What is “right” or “wrong” is highly dependent on what questions we ask and how we formulate them. Join us in our "Advancing Public Transit in Virginia - Time to ACT on Climate!" webinar on Thursday, March 24th Noon-1pm to help us learn together from your thoughts and questions. Also, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to sign our ACT on Climate! letter.

To read Part Two: Microtransit: Up to Speed in a "Smart" and "On-Demand" Era

To read Part Three: What's Fueling Transit?