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New transit map before City Council on Monday

02/11/2017 10:18 AM by

After months of study and a series of public meetings, a group including city staff, GRTC and consulting transit experts recently released a draft plan that redraws Richmond’s bus routes with an eye towards more frequent service and the ability to travel farther faster. Some of the gains are made by combining multiple bus routes into one, more frequent loop, and by eliminating the need to transfer on certain lines.

The Richmond Transit Network Plan (RTNP) site includes a tool that illustrates how the proposed changes will impact how far a bus rider could travel in a given amount a time compared to the current routes.

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Current routing (from 25th/Nine Mile)

Proposed routing (from 25th/Nine Mile)

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City Council will take up Resolution 2016-R092 (PDF) this Monday, February 13, 2017, which serves “to express the City’s position on certain policy questions with regard to bus routes and stops in the city raised during the development of a Transit Network Plan for the city.” The resolution essentially supports the draft plan, and encourages it’s adoption concurrently with the imlemenation of the Pulse BRT system or within nine months of getting funding for the proposed plan.

Community advocacy group Leaders Of the New South have issues with the proposed changes, saying that “the recommended bus transit plan reduces transit service and the quality of life for impoverished minority residents while providing no new transit access to jobs”, taking particular offense at the combining of bus routes that service the greater Church Hill area. Issues include that “residents would have to walk at times over 4 blocks to a bus”, and that the closest bus stop to Armstrong High School will now be several blocks away. The group also asserts that the survey results reported by RTNP do not adequately reflect the racial and economic make-up of the city as a whole.

RTNP will be holding a public meeting on February 16, from 6:30 – 8:00 PM at the Huguenot High Community Center (7945 Forest Hill Ave).

TOP IMAGE via Leaders Of the New South


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