New bus transportation system discussed at public meeting

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Community members trickled into Social Venture in Woodlawn on Tuesday, Aug. 23 to discuss and learn more about the proposed Birmingham Bus Rapid Transit Project. The open house public involvement meeting was the second of three sets of public meetings hosted throughout the city by Strada Professional Services, an engineering and consulting firm working on the planned project.

The last of the three sets will be held Aug. 24 from 5-7 p.m. in the Innovation Depot Training Room on 1st Ave North. Citizens are encouraged to fill out comment forms during the meetings. For those unable to attend, comments can be submitted online at birminghamtransitprogram.org.

At the meeting, community members were met with a packet of information summarizing the basics of the proposed $42 million dollar plan, which would create a 12.5-mile corridor connecting the city between Woodlawn and Five Points West through a bus rapid transit system. The new system would work in tandem with the existing MAX bus system, which also is slated to receive an overhaul with new, more efficient bus routes and possible changes to the way riders pay for and catch buses.

Darlena King, who has lived in Woodlawn since 1958, attended the meeting. As a long-time Birmingham resident and public transportation user, she said timeliness is the most important factor for public transportation. When she worked on the West end of Birmingham, she relied on public transportation to take her to work each day.

“I would have to leave my home at 7 a.m. to get to my job at 9 a.m.,” she said. “I had to transfer, and I would always have to wait.”

King said she isn’t sure what to think about the proposed BRT system yet, but she hopes the changes will improve Birmingham’s transportation system.  

“They need to know the needs of the people. It’s very important to me,” she said.

Transit Development Plan

The proposed BRT system is part of a larger Transit Development Plan put forward by the Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority. The plan is set for adoption in Spring 2017 and will include a variety of short and long-term transit changes coordinated with the City of Birmingham.

Part of the plan requires a complete restructuring of current bus services to make routes more direct, increase service frequency, provide more services in the evenings and on weekends, and create better coordinated bus schedules.

Darrell Howell, one of Strada’s project managers, said this restructuring will lead to some changes in current bus routes. Currently all Birmingham MAX buses travel downtown. Howell said because the existing bus system will soon be working with the new BRT system, not all buses will continue to travel through downtown. Instead, buses would deliver passengers to one of two transit stations on either end of the city. From these transit stations, those wishing to travel downtown would transfer to a BRT bus. He said these changes would allow city buses to serve more communities on the outskirts of town and travel more efficient routes.

“What we’re doing is route optimization,” he said. “We want to take existing routes and make them more efficient to improve their reliability. We’re creating a family of transit services for people to use.”

Changes are expected to begin in the 2018 fiscal year, and Howell said these changes will be part of a learning process for everyone. Twenty-year-old routes may change and new technology may alter the way in which riders catch the bus, but, he said, it is all to make transportation services more user-friendly and most of all, more reliable.

“The service as it exists now doesn’t allow folks to access opportunities,” he said in reference to the history of Birmingham citizens being denied or having to give up viable work opportunities because of a lack of adequate transportation.

In addition to the restructured route plans, the TDP plan also hopes to explore additional services for public transportation users to be able to pay off board using Apple or Android Pay, track buses on their phones, and use a type of on-demand service where buses follow a fixed route, but can deviate to pick up passengers within a certain distance.

BRT Plan

The big player in the proposed transportation program is the implementation of a bus rapid transit system creating an East-West corridor to connect 25 Birmingham neighborhoods. The 12.5-mile stretch will host 36 compact, open-air bus stops and be sandwiched on either end by a transit station in Woodlawn along 1st Avenue North between 56th and 57th Streets and a transit station at the CrossPlex facility in Five Points West. 

Ten new buses, each accommodating 40-60 passengers, will operate as part of the BRT system. Five additional buses will be added to the current Birmingham MAX bus circuit.

The project was created to apply for the USDOT TIGER Grant Award, of which Birmingham was selected for in 2015. Funding for the project will come from the $20 million in grant money awarded to the city, as well as a match in funding from the city.

Ronald Thompson, a Strada project manager, said the buses would traverse the city through a mixture of bus-only lanes and mixed-use traffic lanes. Though the project would require some road construction, he said project engineers are working to keep citizen impact to a minimum. Rather than widening roads, they hope to instead re-stripe or change the structure of existing roads to allow for bus-only lanes.

He said the system would work similar to the way in which light rail systems operate in cities like Atlanta, but at a much lower cost. He said the addition of traffic light preemption for buses will allow buses priority in moving through traffic lights and keep commute times low. They estimate a 15-minute ride during peak travel times.  He said this is just one of many benefits the BRT system will bring to Birmingham.

“There’s a number benefits in terms of moving people around, getting congestion off the roads and reducing pollution from all the cars on the road,” he said.

The project is expected to reach completion in time for the 2021 World Games hosted in Birmingham, but Thompson said the BRT’s benefits will long outlive the event.

“It will add the opportunity for economic growth,” he said. “It provides the opportunity for more people to get to work and generates a more walkable downtown too.”