Bus booster: City Council's Rhodes-Conway champions mass transit

Being able to ride a city bus easily and conveniently is so important to Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway that, when she bought her first house in December 2005 at the age of 34, she chose it in large part because it was one bus ride away from her job on campus.

As the primary champion of the city bus system on the Madison City Council, her ideas about how to improve Metro matter, especially now when the quality of Madison's bus system is so much a part of the regional transit authority (RTA) referendum debates.

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz proposed creating an RTA last summer. In August and September, respectively, the County Board and the City Council passed resolutions to approve setting up an RTA to handle money for a commuter rail plan that could cost up to $285 million. However, all transportation options -- road construction, expanded bus service, commuter rail -- could be affected by an RTA.

And, at least on talk radio, the effectiveness of Madison's bus system is crucial to forming people's opinions on the need for an RTA, especially one with a countywide taxing authority.

On Thursday, the Dane County Board pulled back from holding a countywide advisory referendum this spring, instead opting not to consider a referendum until after the Legislature gives approval for counties to set up RTAs. Middleton Supervisor Mark Opitz's resolution was a substitute for Fitchburg Supervisor Jack Martz's resolution to place an RTA referendum on the April 1 ballot.

Rhodes-Conway believed an immediate referendum in the RTA would have been premature. "The state Legislature has not even taken the necessary actions to make an RTA legal," she said.

That authorization will determine the kind of RTA that would possible: one supported by a sales tax or some other tax, one covering the entire county or a smaller metropolitan planning area, etc. Voting before those parameters are known makes no sense to Rhodes-Conway.

Using the bus

Although she has been a bus rider since middle school and high school when she rode city buses to school in upstate New York, she hadn't ridden city buses in more than a decade before moving to Madison in 2002. Bus rides weren't necessary when Rhodes-Conway studied biology at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she lived on campus. And it wasn't practical to use public transportation in metropolitan Los Angeles, where she lived while she went to graduate school in ecology at the University of California-Irvine and had her first job as an environmental policy analyst. She is now a policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

"I wasn't on a train line, and the bus took too long to get there," Rhodes-Conway said.

But when she moved here in the fall of 2002, her first apartment was on Jenifer Street near Baldwin and she worked off the Square. "I began to ride the bus. A bus pass was one of the benefits with my job. I've been a bus rider ever since," she said.

Three years later, when she was looking to buy a home, she bought a three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot house near Oscar Mayer because she could afford its $173,000 price, and because there were two bus stops near it that allowed her to get to work without changing buses.

"We don't have a true workforce transportation system in Madison," Rhodes-Conway said in January.

Basic workforce transportation includes being able to get to work no matter what shift you work, she added. Currently, Metro Transit service is different on weekends than on weekdays and stops at midnight.

Rhodes-Conway noted, for example, that hospital shift times are a problem for bus riders. However, "if we are able to extend hours, stops must be well-lit and we must address potential riders' safety concerns," she said.

Overall, "I think our buses are very safe. We've had some issues with rowdiness of high school kids, but the bus system is fundamentally safe."

Workforce transportation also means "you have to be able to get close to where you are going," according to Rhodes-Conway. She claims Metro does not pay enough attention to people who are not going downtown.

For example, she would like to see improved service to the airport. "There is one bus that goes there. It is physically possible to ride a bus there at some times of the day, but it is not convenient," she said.

It should also be easier, she said, to go from the east side to the north side of town and wonders if a route to the American Family Insurance campus on the Sun Prairie side of the interstate would be a good idea.

Unlimited ride passes sponsored by employers such as hers are a key to increased workforce transportation, according to Rhodes-Conway. She said the university is a great partner with the transit system. The bus service will collect 95.2 cents for each ride that unlimited pass holders take this year.

In addition to UW-Madison, Edgewood College provides unlimited ride passes to their students and staff and Madison Area Technical College provides them to its students. Employees of the city of Madison and St. Mary's Hospital also get them.

But, Rhodes-Conway noted, the State does not have unlimited ride passes for its employees.

Expanding ridership

In 2007, Madison Metro had a fixed-route ridership of 12.7 million, just 700,000 rides short of its all-time high set in 1982.

If growth continues at its current rate, it could hit the 1982 record of 13.4 million in less than two years, according to Metro officials.

The growth in Metro ridership has been steady since 1989, when the number of riders dropped to about 9 million. Since 2000, when ridership was at 10 million, the number of fixed-route riders has climbed by 26 percent.

During the same period, paratransit ridership has grown by 12 percent.

Of course, Madison has also grown during that period. The city's population increased 6.9 percent between 2000 and 2006, the most recent year for which numbers are available, going from 223,389 to 208,054. That means the 10 million riders in 2000 is the equivalent of just over 9 percent of the population, while the 12.7 million in 2007 is the equivalent to 12 or 13 percent of the population.

"Fundamentally, we have a really strong bus system. We have incredible ridership numbers for a city our size. That we do this without having a transit authority is impressive. But that is not to say we can't get better. It is just saying we are starting from a strong place," she said.

Growing ridership remains the key to the future, according to Rhodes-Conway.

"We must talk not only about connecting outlying communities with Madison but improving transportation in town. If we really want people to change their transportation habits, we must make it possible and convenient," she said.

To make bus riding comfortable and enjoyable, Rhodes-Conway said, people must be able to go to the nearest bus stop and catch a bus within 10 to 15 minutes.

"No one wants to deal with a ride guide. No one wants to think 'Do I have correct change,' she said. "We need to remove the barriers to riding the bus and improve transit times."

She also advocates putting schedule information at more stops, not just in bus shelters. She also is interested in increasing the number of informal park-and-rides available to commuters by partnering with neighborhood businesses and increasing service density, which she defines as "more buses, more of the time and making the transfer points more helpful to users."

Bus angels

Metro Transit Director Chuck Kamp said Rhodes-Conway is unusual in being able to talk about global issues and things like how to make the bus schedule more user-friendly and "how technology can help us make our customers find the information they need easily."

Rhodes-Conway said she is very open to the public's ideas about removing barriers. For example, she touts a Middleton man's idea of recruiting bus angels: regular bus riders who would be willing to mentor new riders.

She believes the ad hoc Long Range Metro Transit Planning Committee created in September 2006 is the key to making changes in the system. She has served on the committee since its inception and chaired it until her election to the City Council in April. She vehemently supports the council rule that members not chair city committees.

The ad hoc committee's recommendations are due spring, perhaps as soon as March or April.

"I am glad she is as involved in the Metro's long range planning committee," Kamp said. "She understands we must look regionally. But how do we fund that?"

Kamp and Cieslewicz disagreed with Rhodes-Conway last month and this month about whether to add five more buses to the current bus wrap advertising pilot program. She voted against the expansion at both the Jan. 22 and Feb. 5 council meetings.

"As a bus rider, I am not fond of them," she explained. "As a City Council member, I understand the need for the revenue."

Although noting that they have agreed to disagree on bus wraps, Cieslewicz said, "She has been a consistent advocate for Metro. Much like many of the new alders, she really does her homework and asks a lot of good questions."

The mayor said he and Rhodes-Conway had worked together long before she got on the council in April. At her UW-Madison job, she has been the staff person for about three years for the Mayors Innovation Project, a national organization Cieslewicz and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson started shortly after Cieslewicz was elected mayor in 2003.

"I know her pretty well," he said, alluding to an MIP conference call they would be on the next day.

"I think she is a thoughtful, hardworking alder," Cieslewicz said.

"She is passionate" about transit, Kamp said. "She knows the world and the economy are changing and transit is on the right side of that and communities that embrace transit will be well-positioned in relation to gas prices, climate change issues and community health issues. How communities design themselves has an impact on public health. If people are out and about and walking to the bus stop, it is a healthier community. She embraces that and I want that viewpoint on the metro long-range transit committee."

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