Burlington transit priorities: Coverage or Ridership

NRU
Nov. 16, 2016
Leah Wong

The City of Burlington wants to provide residents with more options for moving around the city as it becomes more urban. To encourage a modal shift and reduce the congestion associated with a growing population, the city’s approach to transit planning will need to be adapted. In this way Burlington will be able ensure the system meets the changing needs of residents.

On Monday Burlington committee of the whole heard from consultants TODERIANUrbanWORKS principal Brent Toderian and Jarrett Walker and Associates president Jarrett Walker on how the city should plan its public transit network given its new planning paradigm.

Toderian told committee the city needs to shift its approach to transit planning from viewing transit as a luxury, to seeing it as a necessary service that can help Burlington achieve its intensification goals.

“The way you’ve thought about transit in the past is fundamentally different from the way you need to think about transit in the future,” said Toderian. “As a city that was growing in a suburban pattern you had the luxury of thinking about transit as a ‘nice to have’... In deciding to grow up and not out, it’s no longer a luxury.”

Walker told committee that transit is a win-win. More people in cars increases congestion, while having more people on transit makes it easier for everyone to move around the city. As well, having more transit users increases the network.

When it comes to growing its transit network, Walker said Burlington has to decide what balance it wants to strike between increasing ridership and providing transit service across the city.

“The question [you need to answer] is not just about how much transit, but also what is the purpose of that transit.” Walker said if higher ridership is the goal, service should be based on demand, but if Burlington wants most residents to have some service, service should be deployed based on fairness of population. Service determined by fairness leads to empty buses in some areas, while in denser areas buses may be overcrowded.

He noted that presently 55 per cent of transit service operates in a way where the goal is to attract greater ridership, while the other 45 per cent is designed to serve residents in different parts of the city where there is lower ridership.

Setting a goal of increasing ridership is a business decision—choosing to provide service to an area because it will have high ridership—while coverage is about ensuring a wide range of residents have access to service. By deciding what goals it wants its transit system to achieve, Walker said, the city will have the metrics needed to show whether or not investments in transit are paying off.