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Local officials learn BRT from Cleveland
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 12:49am
With 40-degree weather requiring an extra overcoat and a brisk wind flowing off of Lake Erie, Cleveland might not seem like an ideal travel destination in early November.
But for a contingency of local mass transit officials, Cleveland was the destination for an information-gathering trip last week. The visit, which was coordinated by the Metro Planning Organization, featured officials from the Metro Transit Authority, Mayor Karl Dean’s office, the Regional Transit Authority and leaders from other local municipalities.
The purpose for choosing Cleveland was the city’s brand-new $200 million Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, which consists of super fast buses traveling in dedicated lanes with fewer traffic stops.
The trip was conducted in association with the Northeast Corridor Study, which at its end will likely recommend more mass transit options to Gallatin, Hendersonville and northeast Davidson County.
MTA board member Thomas O’Connell, who attended the Cleveland trip, said a BRT system had many benefits. One was the way it accelerated the implementation of new traffic technology, which cut down a 30 commute to 20 minutes.
“Despite differences with Cleveland in terms of transit organization structure and city layout and development environment, I think BRT would make sense in Nashville,” O’Connell said.
The $200 million system came courtesy of funds from the federal, state and local levels. During his run for mayor, Dean expressed interest in a BRT system in Nashville. It was one of his most difficult cuts in the previous operating budget, but Dean has maintained BRT is a possibility in the future as Nashville looks to build and upgrade mass transit options.
Dean has often spoke of improving mass transit as having an economic development impact and in Cleveland, that has been the case. The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently estimated the new BRT system will have a total economic impact of $4 billion along its corridor.
O’Connell pointed out the BRT corridor in Cleveland is larger and more densely developed than the options most-mentioned for Nashville – Murfreesboro Road, Gallatin Pike and West End.
Many local mass transit officials have said dedicated funding is needed locally in order to add options like a BRT system. O’Connell agreed that the BRT system demonstrated a need for dedicated funding and applauded the significant planning effort that went into installing Cleveland’s system.
“[Cleveland’s RTA] revealed an extensive understanding of funding sources and requirements to get to implementation,” O’Connell said. “They worked closely with stakeholders all along the Euclid corridor, and ensured that public input was a meaningful part of the planning process.”
The local officials’ trip was funded by a grant to the MPO.
Thomas O’Connell is employed by SouthComm, which also owns The City Paper
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Filed under: City News
more logical, affordable, and flexible than a train.
BRT would be great for the outer counties such as murfreesboro, gallatin, hendersonville. I hope Metro Officials are planning a trip to Charlotte so we can build a lightrail within Davidson County.
I would prefer we look to examples that have run for more than a few months. Lets not follow Charlotte until we have seen whether it will work in the long run. There have been months where even Star did not suck. With gas prices going down we will see if the Charlotte Lynx is a worthwhile tie down of transit funds.
better yet some real Charlotte light rail numbershttp://www.johnlocke.org/policy_reports/display_story.html?id=177light rail sounds good but the costs of such a system far exceed the benefits. $521.9 million in construction costs and taxpayer funding of 91% of all operation costs ($9 million +) should yield far more results than a 0.005% reduction in vehicle emissions and 0.079% of traffic. Charlotte was sold the same light-rail bill of goods as many other cities also not geographically workable. It is a sexy solution to a very non-sexy issue (transportation). If someone wasn't selling Charlotte on light rail there would be someone trying to sell monorail (funniest Simpson's episode ever) or mag-lev or subways or trolleys.Bus transit allows managers to reconfigure and realign when shortcomings occur. Light rail will always run on the same set of tracks, no matter how poorly located they may be. I bet there are some people that wish the Star ran somewhere else now (Rutherford or Williamson)but there is no way to move the system to somewhere more lucrative or helpful. Light rail would be the same thing.
Charlotte light rail carries on average about 6,200 passengers daily. The taxpayer subsidy is $9,500,000 per year (excluding initial capital costs). This equates to $1,532.25 per passenger.The capital outlay for the light rail system would have purchased 5,700+ transit buses. The bus transit system in Chalotte still is responsible for carrying over 75% of the transit using public but receives less than a quarter of the budget. Rail use has increased in Charlotte but at a rate far less than the increase for bus services. That is even after figuring in that half of the rail ridership were previously bus users. Charlotte is indeed spending money on transit but is spending it on the wrong one.
JeffF- ridership is about 16,000 riders a day. Charlotte has made some mistakes in their development of lightrail, so let's learn from their mistakes and develop a better lightrail system that is more cost efficient. Let's defeat the gas buzzlers and have other options than our cars: lightrail, streetcars, BRT, mag-lev.