‘System transformation’
Faster, more reliable bus service state goal
Bus service, which has taken a back seat to trains in the state’s transportation plans, is getting more attention as state and city officials seek ways to relieve roadway congestion and help people get around without driving.
While most of the attention in Gov. Ned Lamont’s CT2030 plan to improve transportation infrastructure has been about his highway toll proposal, the plan includes $100 million to create an express bus service connecting New Haven, Bridgeport and Stamford along Route 1, as well as upgrades to 100 bus stops across the state.
State Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti said CT2030 “is truly balanced between the rail side, the bus side and the highway side.”
In New Haven, a new proposal called Move New Haven, based on six years of planning, proposes to improve service by reducing the number of bus stops in order to move buses more quickly through the city, and make other changes to make riding the bus more convenient and waiting for the bus more comfortable.
With the express bus proposal, “the point really is to boost the frequency of the service to make it a new option,” both for commuters who may live in New Haven but work in Bridgeport and for people who want to travel on the weekends but want to avoid the traffic congestion, according to Lamont’s spokesman, Max Reiss.
“This is obviously a new option that would open up Stamford and Bridgeport job markets to New Haven and vice versa,” he said. “We’re trying to relieve congestion. … We know that’s something that employers want,” he said.
CT2030 designates also $348 million for new electric buses and additional maintenance and $8 million to add bus shelters and digital signs with realtime arrival information at the 100 busiest bus stops in the state.
Until now, there’s been “almost like this pareddown bus infrastructure around the state, where we have these sparkling new rail stations, but we don’t have shelters for people who take the bus every day,” said Max Reiss, Lamont’s spokesman.
In addition to keeping bus riders out of the weather, upgrading technology to give realtime arrival schedules is likely to attract more people to the bus, he said. Technology, in the form of a smartphone app, can also connect bus riders to MetroNorth and Hartford Line train service in a seamless way, Reiss said.
Doug Hausladen, New Haven’s director of the Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking., said Connecticut needs to compete with other areas of the country that have improved their mass transit, such as the Research Triangle in North Carolina and in Greater Detroit.
Bridgeport, Stamford and New Haven now rank 1, 2 and 3 in population among Connecticut cities, so it makes sense to ease transit between them, and “to treat the state as one region,” rather than focus on individual cities, he said.
“Connecting the three big cities, Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven, on Route 1 makes a lot of sense for a lot of people to get to work,” Hausladen said. Some of the work to make Route 1 express bus service workable will be on mundane projects such as adding sidewalks on the busy state road.
Better service is essential to persuading more people to ride the bus rather than drive, Hausladen said, and Move New Haven is focusing on improving service in the city in order to make it easier for people to access intracity bus and train service.
“Right now, it takes 90 minutes to get to the [Connecticut Post Milford] Mall from Dixwell Avenue, and that’s unconscionable,” Hausladen said.
Among conclusions of Move New Haven: fewer bus stops mean better service, especially if there’s a shelter at each stop and a sign that says when the next bus will arrive.
“This is the start of a very large system transformation that’s going to impact everyone that takes the bus,” said Doug Hausladen, director of the city Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking.
The goals of the plan are to increase frequency, reduce travel time and improve reliability of the buses, according to Richard Andreski, chief of the Bureau of Public
Transportation at the state Department of Transportation, a partner in the project along with the city, the Greater New Haven Transit District and the Federal Transit Administration.
Planners believe one way to achieve those goals is to reduce the number of bus stops.
“Right now we have bus stops every tenth of a mile in New Haven, so the bus doesn’t go very quickly,” Hausladen said. “So we’d like to go every quarter of a mile, which isn’t a great distance, but it does have an impact.”
On Whalley Avenue, for example, 14 stops between West Park Avenue and Dwight Street, a distance of 1.2 miles or 16 blocks, would be reduced to nine. Hausladen said some people react negatively when they hear of a quartermile distance but, in fact, “the furthest possible point you can be from any bus stop is an eighth of a mile” once a rider arrives at the route. That’s 660 feet, about two blocks.
The remaining stops would be improved, with bus shelters at each one and digital signs giving realtime schedule information. Fewer stops mean a bus can get through a route more quickly and safety is improved when a bus has to merge into traffic less often.
Move New Haven was the topic of a peerreview workshop Thursday that included presentations by transit officials from four cities that have rolled out improved bus systems and sold them to the public: Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, Providence, R.I., and Richmond, Va. Michael Helta, chief innovation officer for the Maryland Transit Administration, said that in Baltimore an 18 percent reduction in bus stops resulted in an equal drop in traffic accidents involving buses.