Connecting communities: The future of public transportation in Birmingham
The city of Birmingham’s bus system is not as frequent and efficient as it needs to be, said the city’s director of transportation, James Fowler.
“Our system is in need of a revamp to focus on getting ridership up,” Fowler said.
Ridership does appear to be on the rise compared to last year, but that will depend on how the final six months of 2022 go. Through June, 1,967,601 people rode Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority buses, compared to a total of 2,568,619 riders last year.
If the first six months come anywhere close to being duplicated from July through December, the city is on pace for just under 4 million riders in 2022, according to numbers provided by the transit authority.
Increasing ridership and other modes of transportation outside of an automobile is a priority of the city, Fowler said. They’ve had conversations with the authority and new director Charlotte Shaw.
“We’re really excited about the new BJCTA leadership,” Fowler said.
The U.S. landscape in the past 100 years has been built around cars, and it will take several decades to undo that and provide more options for residents, Fowler said. There is a good bit of space given up for automobile storage.
As the city repaves roads, they look for ways to add bike lanes and bus lanes, Fowler said.
The Birmingham Xpress-Rapid Transit line began service on Sept. 22 and is the first step the city has taken in “a long time” to implement a system that benefits a wide range of people, Fowler said. During its peak hours, a bus will be available every 15 minutes, meaning people won’t have to wait as long, he said.
The buses run east from west to connect 25 neighborhoods along a 10-mile corridor between Five Points West and Woodlawn. The system uses BRT technology to improve travel time, lower costs and enhance service, and crosses 80,000 jobs.
[Public transit is] vital because we have to be able to connect people all over Birmingham.
Charlotte Shaw
Birmingham has also added Birmingham On-Demand, a microtransit service that serves as a way for users to get where they need to go within a smaller area.
The transit authority is also looking to add more complementary services and more targeted areas of service. For example, downtown ridership decreases after 7 p.m. So instead of running large buses that don’t get filled, there could be a service that allows the few people who aren’t home yet to catch a van that seats 20 people, increasing efficiency, Shaw said.
Shaw said public transportation helps keep “synergy” between communities, allowing people to access different communities instead of each city existing as a silo.
“It’s vital because we have to be able to connect people all over Birmingham,” Shaw said.
Increasing opportunities and services offers a chance to make public transportation strong again, the way it used to be “before freeways and cars,” Shaw said.
Ridership increased a bit over the summer due to high gas costs, which were slowly coming down as of press time. Not only that, but The World Games, held throughout the Birmingham area in July, showed that people will get on the bus. The red line from 20th Street to Protective Stadium downtown saw 11,000 people ride for the closing ceremonies alone, Shaw said.
“People are willing; they’re waiting on a larger event,” Shaw said.
Benefiting the environment is another key factor to public transportation, Shaw said. The transit authority is making an effort to move more and more to electric buses, lowering emissions.
“Our environment is really important,” Shaw said. “And we are our biggest enemies.”
Fowler said motor vehicles are the top cause of the environment warming up.
Shaw lived in Atlanta for 38 years, and asked if Birmingham wanted to become like its neighbor to the east, infamous for its traffic congestion, in the next five years.
“We have to stay ahead of the curve,” Shaw said.
Fowler added that roughly 40 people die each year in car accidents in the city of Birmingham.
“Cars are more dangerous than we realize,” he said. “It’s something we shouldn’t accept but we have accepted.”
But if residents are going to rely on public transportation and the area is going to lower traffic congestion, the service must be convenient and reliable, Shaw said. Expansion isn’t possible until options become convenient, such as getting down U.S. 280 faster.
The transit authority is constrained financially, as Alabama is one of just a handful of states that does not provide any state funding for public transportation, Shaw said. The authority does receive $2 million each year from a county sales tax, which was issued several years ago to pay back the selling of bonds, along with other sources of revenue such as funding from local municipalities.
Part of her work as the executive director is to build relationships and increase the funding they do get, as well as submitting grant applications. More federal money is available now due to the recently-passed infrastructure bill.
“For the next three years, money will come quickly,” Shaw said. “We’ve got our catcher’s mitt on.”
Some money is available through the newly-announced “Reconnecting Communities” initiative, unveiled this summer in Birmingham by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
The grant provides federal dollars to reconnect communities disadvantaged by past infrastructure projects, and the city of Birmingham will be taking part in the program, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said at the event with Buttigieg. Fowler said nothing specific is known now, but the city is looking into those opportunities.
Fowler said there is inequity in a world dominated by cars, as some people are not able to own or drive a car, or they might be disabled. In the world as it is, those folks have lost access to transportation, he said.
Public transportation provides connectivity between historically different neighborhoods, allowing for even greater unity in the area decades after Birmingham’s role in the Civil Rights movement.
“There’s no better way to connect people … in various neighborhoods,” Shaw said.