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. 

SLAYING THE SOLO COMMUTE DRAGON--THE VERMONT CASE

Slaying the dragon of transportation: the Solo Commute to Work

Part 1: How three major Burlington employers though a staff of four slayed the dragon of solo driving in the first decade of this century

No so many years ago the Burlington, VT “Campus Area Transportation Management Association”, CATMA for short, ventured into the land of solo driving with the purpose of shifting students and employees toward greener pastures: abandoning the solo commute to work, jumping onto public transit, leaving cars home during school sessions, getting into carpools, for those still insistent traveling by car shifting them part way by into using peripheral lots and taking shuttles to worksites or classes, and walking or bicycling part or all of any trip. The CATMA bosses—the troika of University of Vermont, Fletcher Allen Health Care and Champlain College—total 10,000 employees and and 16,000 students.

The huge CATMA bureaucracy of four employees documents through periodic surveys since 2000 an amazing alteration of the transportation landscape of its troika with a 18% reduction of solo commuting, students shifting in part from bringing their cars to using Vermont Carshare services, and through partnering with the Burlington area bus provider, CCTA, helping that service move about 500 commuters onto three radiating commuter corridors out of Burlington in the Link buses, services all started within the past few years.

The 2010 CATMA survey finding of 56% of workers still solo commuting compares to a figure of 74% in 2000, a drop of 18%.   In fact the solo driving of the employees at 74% in 2000 varied little from the Census 75% statewide average for all workers statewide. The drop of about 18% in solo driving 2000 to the end of the decade does not include another roughly 12% of the solo drivers who park in peripheral lots and bus shuttle to the workplace. All in all about 30% of the troika workforce of 10,000 switched off from “pure” solo commuting since 2000.

In the 1990s transportation policy makers and planners advocated shifting commuters from solo and the untested estimates were that perhaps 10% could be encouraged though rideshare programs and incentives to get to work in some other fashion than the solo commute. The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) initiated a “commuter choice” program and Vermont was one of the test areas aimed at the private and public employers (CATMA coordinated that effort). Commuter choice concentrated mostly on "demand management", that is, shifting solo commuters so as to reduce the number of cars on the highways, needs for parking, etc.  Still, a Vermont Department of Labor employee benefits survey last year revealed that transportation subsidies by employers ranged from 4% for employers of 1-9 workers and only 10% for the largest employers of 250 or more workers.  (Note a surface parking space which costs $30-$60 a month did not appear to be a viewed a “transportation subsidy” to the empoyers responding to the State survey.)

A combination of initiatives and fortuitous parallel developments contributed to the success of the solo commuter reduction by CATMA.  Regardless CATMA stands the mythology of the unchangeable solo commuter with the ubiquitous Ipod playlist, Starbucks cuppa, and personal parking space into just that: a myth.  In following posts, elements of the CATMA program will be detailed, parallel developments decribed, and some of the federal transportation benefits outlined.

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.