DEMAND MANAGEMENT MUCH IN DEMAND

DEMAND MANAGEMENT MUCH IN DEMAND BY VERMONT CUSTOMERS

Apparently lots of the greater Burlington region commuters take to the Link buses which for a typical commuter between Montpelier and Burlington can increase the household dollars available—after taxes—by upwards of $7,000 yearly.

With just a month to go in the operational year of the Link buses between Burlington and the outlying connections—Middlebury Milton, Montpelier and St. Albans—ridership sets a new record, about 200,000 for the year and a growth of over 11% after a 14% increase last year.  From another standpoint about 440 workers now make their way back and forth to work on one of the 50 Link buses.  At the current growth rate that number will increase to about 500 this time next year, a number approaching 2% of all workers who cross the Burlington border to their jobs each weekday.

Pretty good growth numbers considering little change in the employment numbers statewide, a decline in car travel 2010-2011, and a state population increase Census estimates at 11 persons a month since the 2010 official counts.

Some of the growth of the decade-old Link services operated mostly by the Chittenden County Transportation Authority (CCTA) occurred as the result of active programs to reduce solo driving, particularly by three of the largest employers in Burlington, the “troika” of Champlain College, Fletcher Allen Health Care (FAHC) and the University of Vermont  (UVM).  The “troika” works through their joint small entity, the Campus Area Transportation Management Association (CATMA) which undertakes a number of initiatives aimed at encouraging and rewarding their 10,000 employees and 16,000 students to switch from solo driving to car share, walking, bicycling and taking public transit.  Discount or free transit, for example, is offered students and workers by CATMA, including Link bus services.  And, the numbers taking Link and other transit services reflects the CATMA efforts to reduce solo driving which is called in transportation language the realm of “demand management.”  The goals of demand management may vary, but the central mission in demand management is to reduce the use of certain transportation facilities so as to avoid expensive capital expenditures to increase capacity—assuming increasing capacity is even possible in a given situation (consider the cost, for example, of widening Main Street in downtown Brattleboro or Bennington).

The future looks bright for “demand management” as increasingly young driving age population aged 15-30 no longer even have a driver license and efforts in the demand management remain in the early stages of development.  CATMA is beginning to work with the State’s largest public employer, IBM in Essex, for example.  Further, the largest State employer, the State of Vermont itself, until now stayed on the sidelines in providing support or alternatives to solo commuting.  But a sudden scarcity of parking in Montpelier caused by relocation of workers after loss of State facilities from the storm Irene in the fall of 2011 resulted just recently in starting demand management on the part of the State.  A few dollars a month cost to the State to convince an employee to drop solo commuting pales by comparison to the $600 for a ground level parking space per year and up to $30,000 to $40,000 per space capital cost in a parking garage. 

Meanwhile, CCTA this year added larger buses to handle the highest ridership Link between Burlington and Montpelier—also growing at the highest rate of 13% since last year.  Finally, the growth of Link services and demand management programs confirm the findings in a recent study touting the potential for commuter rail services along the corridors from Burlington to Middlebury, Montpelier and St. Albans. 

BURLINGTON, VT--NO NATIONAL TRAIN DAY TRAVEL!

MAY 11 NATIONAL TRAIN DAY—EXCEPT IN BURLINGTON AND WINOOSKI VERMONT

As a Burlington, VT resident and train enthusiast, got nice information on a free one-way May 11 trip on National Train Day to Bellows Falls, then an old fashioned train ride back to a ceremonial event in White River Jct., then on your own with a $12 Vermont special on the northbound Vermonter available—unless you live in Burlington and Winooski.

While lots of small cities and locations get connecting bus service from Amtrak City, not the Queen City in Vermont, just seven miles from the Essex Amtrak Station.  National Train Day on a May Saturday occurs when during weekends there is seriously deficient Chittenden Country Transportation Authority (CCTA) service on one of their busiest routes—Burlington-Winooski-Essex (Amtrak Station). 

The CCTA connection “problem” is a systematic issue relating to all regional transit agencies which provide limited or no connections at all stations stops of the two Vermont  Amtrak-supported trains which now cost $7 million in State dollars support yearly.  Every additional person who takes a trip on Amtrak in from a Vermont station directly reduces state dollars required to support the service. Yep, the mainline track in Vermont even got a $52 million upgrade to 80 mph operating speed level last year, a half hour cut from the timetable between St. Albans and Burlington to Brattleboro and Bellows Falls—but from Burlington to Amtrak at Essex on weekends, “you can’t get there from here.”   Well, you can, but the taxi fare with tip can amount to $20.  A taxi fare of $20 compares to about a 300-mile roundtrip Burlington-Brattleboro at the Vermont regular promotional rate of $24. 

(The Burlington-Amtrak connection compares, unfortunately, to connecting by taxi from North to South Station for about $15—you would think Amtrak would operate a shuttle service there.)

Now air travelers and bus travelers get far better treatment by CCTA.  Service to the airport operates at convenient times for most Greyhound bus connections seven days a week.  A traveler can connect on Saturdays to the airport from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.  And for the mid-afternoon arrival and departure of Megabus service to Boston, CCTA provides easy connection at the UVM Davis Center on the University Mall route. 

Seems like a service on Saturdays should be possible—the train southbound a.m. is generally right on time about 9:20 a.m. now and returns—again with much better on time performance at 8:17 p.m.—17 minutes after the last CCTA departure from Amtrak to Burlington!   No problem on with three early bus runs in time to catch the southbound.  This suggests there could be a connection both ways on Saturday—perhaps one about 9 p.m. assuring accommodation of some northbound delay which a rider is willing to take a chance on—preferably just a dedicated bus which departs five minutes after the northbound train arrival.  Otherwise how many want to bet on making connection to a bus ride that costs a dollar or so versus a $15-20 taxi ride? 

On Sunday, no problem at all, no bus service at all by CCTA to Essex/Amtrak.  On Sunday a skeletal service—a single run in the a.m. to align with the southbound Vermonter, a noontime run to service local needs, and a third trip leaving within five minutes of scheduled Amtrak arrival. 

Meanwhile, I plan to celebrate National Train Day on the day before—Friday—with a day trip to Brattleboro.  Maybe CCTA could celebrate National Train Day…with a bus to Burlington from the northbound Vermonter!

VERMONT COMMUTER RAIL--"WHY" AND "WHY NOW"

WHY VERMONT COMMUTER RAIL PASSENGER SERVICES AND WHY RIGHT AWAY?

Count the reasons for commuter rail passenger services in Vermont, but the most important remains the ability of self-propelled rail diesel cars (RDCs) to smoothly move hundreds of existing daily commuters crowding buses and handle growth in excess of 20% each year. Simply, as the post-auto age evolves and households deal with the reality of constrained incomes and competing needs, increasing numbers delay getting a driver license, curtail driving or quit cars altogether. Those necessary trips switched from cars--like getting to and from work—come to light in the form of surging commuter bus numbers. In the Burlington to Montpelier 40 mile corridor served by 22 buses each workday in less than a decade about 260 commuters, about a third of the total market, will travel by commuter bus during the coming twelve months.

The explosion in commuter bus usage in Vermont, particularly the three corridors leading to Burlington deserves such descriptives as breathtaking, unprecedented and astonishing. But so too are the first decade of the new century numbers in Vermont and regional numbers in just about every statistic related to the car. All kinds of numbers show the sea change. New England states recorded a first ever single digit increase in overall car travel, totally 3% for the 2000-2010 decade with Rhode Island actually declining slightly. New England—and Vermont—car travel now moves toward a likely negative number for this decade, reversing the region's upward trend dating to the Stanley Steamer. National data shows a first ever decline in the younger age population getting driver licenses.

The commuter “Link” services out of Burlington began about 2005 and one employer survey data cited covering “before” and “after” the introduction of the Link services reflects partly the impacts of the commuter bus service introduction. The Link” services operated by the Chittenden County Transportation Authority (CCTA) now operate along the corridors to St. Albans, Montpelier, and Middlebury—46 buses weekdays which did not exist in 2000. This coming year about 500 commuters will utilize the commuter buses out of Burlington including the 260 traveling on 22 buses each weekday in the Montpelier-Burlington corridor, about 225,000 individual trips overall.

Other factors working against driving include: (1) flatlining of Vermont driving age population 200-2030 while over 65-year-old population doubles, a population which drives 40% less miles per year and drives less at peak times; and (2) employer side initiatives which drive down commuting and driving, again driving down mostly peak hour traffic numbers. Burlngton has the the first “transportation management association” (TMA), CATMA, currently composed of the troika of the University of Vermont (UVM) Champlain College and Fletcher Allen Health Care (FAHC). CATMA runs a bus service, manages parking, and provides a wide range of planning and commuter choice programming for the troika's 10,000 employees and 12,000 students.

The CATMA periodic employer and student survey picked up the downtrend of solo driving during the 2000-2010 period. But a dramatic drop in solo driving—about 15 percent overall—accelerated after a “free” universal pass on all CCTA buses began in 2003. Latest national data shows solo driving to work hovers around 90% while the latest comparative number for CATMA member employees is 54 percent with about a quarter of those solo drivers using a shuttle bus to complete the work trip. Again, these CATMA numbers drive home the behavioral changes finding expression in part through the introduction of Link commuter buses and a universal bus pass during the 2000-2010 period.

          The RDC, the rail stations, and Vermont planning law

The RDC, the type of equipment used at the end of scheduled rail service in Vermont in the 1950s, can carry 140-180 passenger in two-car units, about three to four times the capacity of buses used now. From planning perspectives commuter rail service cannot be matched by any other transportation type in furthering the Vermont planning law goal: “maintain the historic settlement pattern of compact village and urban centers surrounded by rural countryside.” Consider the stations along the base 40 mile Burlington-Montpelier route: Montpelier across from the State House, Montpelier Jct., Middlesex, Bolton, Richmond, Essex Jct., Winooski and Burlington's Union Station. Add to this route IBM at the main plant parking lot and a second Winooski stop within a block of Vermont Community College and two-blocks from Champlain Mill, the Winooski City Center Roundabout, and Vermont Student Assistance Corporation. One authoritative study calls for a base service with about an hour between Montpelier and Burlington, including stops, would be ten trains weekdays in each direction, including the current Amtrak runs.  A Burlington-Montpelier service would naturally extend to Barre downtown and Berlin.

While transportation policy still remains mostly invested in highways, the “customer”, the Vermont citizen, changed the direction of their transportation choices some years ago—and catching up in transportation programming must include commuter rail services which serve not only to meet current demands and economic as well as community development needs --but inevitably leads to a network of rail passenger services, a network as important if not more important in the future than the existing major highway network.

Clearly the market for commuter rail exists today. Are there transportation funds available to start such a service?—that is the subject of the next blog.