OpEd: Vote Yes to Transit Choice

Richard Murphy co-chaired the 2010 "Keep Ypsi Rollin'" ballot campaign that established the city of Ypsilanti's charter millage for transit. He serves as vice-chair of the city of Ypsilanti Planning Commission and previously represented Washtenaw County on the board of the Southeast Michigan Regional Transit Authority.


What a "Yes" Vote on May 6 Means For You


Whenever I talk to someone who is moving to Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti, I include the advice, "you don't need a car to live here--but you will need a good friend who has a car." Even if you're fortunate enough to find housing in your price range, and close enough to your job or school, and arrange most of the rest of your daily routine around walking, biking, or transit, you'll periodically need to get somewhere that's beyond reach of those modes.  I've lived in the two cities for 15 years now, about half in each, and have spent most of that time either car-free or as part of a two-adult-one-car household, so I'm very familiar with the ups and downs of our local transit options.

On May 6, voters in Ann Arbor and in Ypsilanti city and township will vote on a funding question for AAATA ("TheRide")--a "yes" vote will mean the transit system gets better ("More buses, more places, more often"), providing basic mobility to more people who rely on transit as their only option, while making it an attractive option for others, like me, to leave the car at home. The May 6 ballot will truly be a decision point for us as a community: do we value having an attractive, high-quality transit system as a choice, or are we satisfied with what we have now?

TheRide's solid foundations: Over the last decade, TheRide has worked hard to bring more resources into the system with innovative partnerships while making incremental improvements within their budget constraints:
 

•  Installing bike racks on all the buses for easier travel on that last mile from your stop
• The partnership with University of Michigan that brings in money for TheRide while keeping the U's traffic off the streets
• The getDowntown program and go!pass, which offers options for other downtown commuters, replacing hundreds of cars a day that would otherwise be heading downtown, and the tens of millions of dollars in parking structure construction they would demand
• The AirRide, a popular and amazingly pleasant service that other communities around metro Detroit are trying to figure out how to replicate
• The recent #4 service increase that has streamlined trips between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti for work, school, and social services, yielding a 40% increase in ridership in just the first year

Because of these continuous service improvements, AAATA has built a transit network that is the envy of similarly-sized communities around the country--with high ridership levels and low per-rider costs to show for it. A 2013 comparison of TheRide to 20 "peer communities" around the country showed that our transit system has 50% higher ridership per service hour than the peer group--on average, 34 people board an AAATA bus every single hour that it's in service--and 17% lower costs per rider. Additionally, AAATA has a relatively high "farebox return", the percentage of costs paid directly by riders, demonstrating effective use of existing resources: TheRide's riders pay a 25% higher share of costs than The Rapid's riders in Grand Rapids, or SMART's riders in metro Detroit.

What's the millage mean to you?

When Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti voters go to the polls on May 6th, they'll be deciding whether they want to continue this upward trend with a "yes"  vote, or to limit TheRide with a "no" vote, preventing additional improvements and possibly even forcing them to cut back some of the recent core service expansions that were added as pilots.

A "yes" vote is a vote for better bus service in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti in a number of ways:
 

• Working a retail job, headed downtown for a show, or sending your teenagers to Top of the Park?  The millage would expand weekday evening service until 11pm or later on most routes, and dramatically expand weekend service, recognizing that all our transit needs aren't all focused on a 9-5, Monday-Friday schedule.
• Live on one of the one-way-loop routes on Ann Arbor's west side or eastern Ypsilanti township, and don't want to ride all the way around to get where you're going? Several routes that currently make large loops will see both more direct and more frequent service, cutting travel time in half for a lot of riders--new crosstown routes like the Maple/Stadium "G" and Harris Road "O" will connect all these together.
•  Concerned about your aging parents, or neighbor, or self? The door-to-door A-Ride service will see expanded schedules and offer access to more shopping and medical destinations. One of the most poignant testimonies I heard during Ypsilanti's 2010 discussions was an older gentleman who tracked me down in the farmers' market to say, "I do so hope this passes--I won't be able to drive soon, and I don't want to have to leave my home and move into assisted living."
• Want to have a backup plan in case your car breaks down, or when you and your partner have a scheduling conflict for the car--or for when Yet Another Polar Vortex hits, and you just don't want to risk the icy streets? Even if you don't ride TheRide on a daily basis, having it there as an option is worth something. For me, the proposed millage will be less than $40 a year--if that lets me avoid renting a car even once during the year, I come out ahead.

What's the alternative?

Whenever I talk about the May 6 vote, I'm asked to talk about the opposition group, and I have to admit I'm not paying close attention to them. With a name like "Better Transit Now", I actually had high hopes that I'd get to see an alternative plan for, well, better transit.

Disappointingly, that group's website and media presence seem to avoid any actual discussion of transit service, and focus instead on demanding better use of AAATA's existing budget--albeit without any specific recommendations (at least on their website) about specifics, requiring some amount of guesswork to understand the goals.

As I mentioned earlier, TheRide stacks up well on standard service benchmarks like productivity (riders per service hour), cost per rider, and farebox return (what share of costs are paid directly by riders). While the opposition points to "overhead" and service planning costs as problems, a big part of AAATA's cost effectiveness is their continuous service improvements in response to feedback from the community. Unless "less overhead" is supposed to mean cutting back on mechanics and dispatchers--an approach that would number the transit system's days--it would require cannibalizing the planning functions and community engagement that support TheRide's good numbers.  Trying to move more money into running buses without having the capacity to work with the community to understand ongoing needs is an approach that would likely hurt ridership and drive down revenues.

Even if specific cost savings could be found in existing operations without harming the quality of service, the big picture of state and federal transportation funding would limit how much improvement is possible. All else held equal, a dollar of internal savings could fund a dollar of additional service--but a dollar raised via the proposed millage would fund three to four dollars of additional service.

Overall, I'm glad the opportunity is finally here to vote in support of increased transit service. Having attended meetings around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti for the past few years, I've heard a lot of needs come up that could finally be addressed if the millage passes. I'm planning to vote in favor of it, and hopeful it could mean one less car for my household.