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April 7, 2006 Madison Metro Transit recently unveiled a proposal that would alter bus service throughout the city to a packed room of South Madison residents, one in a series of presentations by the department. The “Listening Sessions,” scheduled on a near-daily basis, have sought to answer questions about proposed service modifications throughout the city. Some 30 residents were on hand at the Harambee Center, 2202 S. Park St., to hear Metro’s proposals during a presentation by Madison Metro Transit Schedule Planner Colin Conn. Conn began the meeting, hosted by the Bay Creek, Bram’s Addition and Burr Oaks Neighborhood Associations, with a promising message for the local residents. “This is an area that I think gets some nice improvements,” Conn said. Some of those “improvements” come through new bus lines, drastically altered routes and some cutbacks – results of both a tight budget, as well as redundant and inefficient existing service. Route 5, for instance, will no longer service Olin Avenue or the lower part of State Street. Instead the route will travel from Park Street to West Washington Avenue, en route to the Capitol Square. “We will get regular, dependable, 'always there' service on West Washington Avenue, which is something I’ve never seen the system have, in a long time,” Conn said. The route will also reach the East Transfer Point in less than 45 minutes, a factor that Conn said will make the line more efficient and consistent. Olin Avenue service will now come as part of the new Route 13, which will continue up Park Street. The bus will then turn right on Johnson Street and pick-up the lower end of State Street that Route 5 used to cover, before heading around Capitol Square. During peak hours, Route 13 will run every 30 minutes, and during off-peak hours, it will run every hour. The modifications to Route 5 and the addition of Route 13 drew excited reactions by many in attendance. “In South Madison, people were actually applauding,” Conn said. That applause, however, did not resonate with all South Madison residents, particularly with regard to modifications to Route 27. The route has replaced on its northern side by Route 21 and in the southern side by a new Route 44. Within those modifications, the proposed route lost service to Fisher Street, a highly trafficked area and common stop for many businesspeople from the Bram’s Addition neighborhood. “There’s a lot of people that depend on that bus every morning,” Steven O’Lear, president of the Bram’s Addition Neighborhood Association, said during the presentation. “They travel from here all the way up north. They don’t have to make a change and they really appreciate that.” Conn said the suggestion was constructive, adding that the new route was originally supposed to service Fisher Street but had been altered. “Well, that’s a change we can actually make,” Conn said. In an interview several days later, Conn said the route changes had actually been made and Fisher Street would now receive transit service. However, the changes would cause the trip to be slightly longer. O’Lear said residents would not mind. O’Lear is not the only one concerned about Metro service changes. The Madison Area Bus Advocates, “an independent citizen voice on bus transit issues,” serves as a resource for concerned residents to share their thoughts and get feedback in an online forum focused on metro transit issues. The site posts local media coverage of Madison Metro Transit, related events and opportunities, as well as a travel cost calculator. Some members were present at Tuesday’s Listening Session to hear Conn’s presentation and to make their resources available to all Madison residents. The Madison Area Bus Advocates’ ongoing efforts to “inform people about the reality and the possibilities of a Madison Metro, to encourage system development, and to encourage bus ridership,” have contributed to the constant discussion within Madison Metro about the changing nature of the city and its transit system. “We’re in a rapidly expanding city, and we need to be responsive,” Conn said. Adding that the city is constantly making small alterations to bus routes, but after some time, redundancies and inefficiencies emerge in the system. As a result, major service changes need to be made every five or six years. Those changes include improved service to area schools, targeted service to highly trafficked areas and greater efficiency. “We had to knock about 40 hours a day out of our service, 8,900 hours a year,” Conn said. “You just can’t keep stretching and twisting what you’ve got.” Conn said the challenge is to redesign service to meet customers’ expectations while still remaining efficient and cost-effective.
Madison Metro will continue to hold Listening Sessions for residents until April 13, to obtain “passenger feedback to ‘tweak’ proposals” before they are presented, in their final form, at a public hearing in May or June. If the proposals are approved, service changes are scheduled to go into effect in late August or early September.
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Source: http://www.madisoncommons.org/article.php?storyid=208 |