Streets & Transit

TEXigander

I am surprised I didn't see anything about this information in the news. Right now it's pretty popular to talk about mass transit records in the news all across the country. Based on the press release the average weekday ridership for route 1 is about 6,500. The route was up more than 25,000+ riders form April 2007 vs. April 2008. Anyhow, I figured I'd post this information on here for discussion in case there are any other mass transit buffs like myself.


Record Numbers Turn to CATA for Transportation

Lansing, MI-CATA increased fares and pass prices on April 7, 2008. Ridership normally drops after fares go up. Contrary to that trend, CATA recorded its highest April ridership ever with customers taking 1,154,241 CATA rides. This marked the 6th time in 7 months that CATA monthly ridership exceeded 1 million rides. This total represents a system-wide (all services) increase of 5% compared with April of last year...


here is the link for the full press release:
http://cata.org/news/releases/recordnumbers.html

david_shane

I did see that news! It's ironic in a way - the extension of Rt #12 is to connect both LCC campuses. The old "preferred method" for taking public transit from Main Campus to West was to take a bus out to the Lansing Mall, where you were supposed to meet an EATRAN shuttle you had called ahead to arrange - I doubt very many people ever did that. Maybe it would be all CATA now anyway.

I still don't think CATA does a very good job responding to special events - (thousands of people headed downtown for July 4th fireworks and a sold-out baseball game tonight? Let's shutdown completely for the holiday!), but it's good to see this.

david_shane

Oh, I agree. Time is valuable, and more frequent service itself increases the use of public transit. Plus once you hit that "at least every 15 minutes" threshold, I think most people no longer feel obliged to look up bus schedules - they just show up at the stop and know they won't have to wait too long for the next bus. It's a mentally nice place to be.

hood

It's good to see CATA making its way into Eaton County, I guess we'll have to see where it leads.

If CATA was to have free reign to make routes in Eaton County, where would they go? Saginaw is the obvious route, it's just a question of how far it goes. I think the other very likely routes would be St Joe, Willow, Creyts, Canal and Elmwood/Snow; W Michigan Ave seems probable, but it is pretty close to St Joe and Saginaw. I think that would be an adequate route setup, although it may be worthwhile to extend the N Grand River route further and add a Lansing Rd route also. Are there any other routes that I'm not thinking of?

hood

After looking at the map a bit I'm thinking a W Michigan to Creyts To Millitt to Canal to W Michigan route would be about perfect. It would be able to right in front of most of the factories and warehouses in that area. I think a route like that would allow them to serve all those streets with a higher frequency service than they otherwise would be able to support. And yeah, W Saginaw would be an obvious choice for a second or third BRT route, although I'd like to see a Cedar St BRT route also.

hood

A free to ride route like the one you discuss could probably do the city a lot of good, it would be such an easy thing to do also. I hadn't even thought about the lack of a route like that here. It may be worth writing CATA or the city on this if you haven't already.

gbinlansing

It may not have been on this page I also brought up the idea of connecting Lansing's Classic Neighborhood, Old Town, Downtown, and REO town. I thought it might be interesting and fun to have classic urban buses run a loop through the three areas. I'm thinking of just rebuilding the coaches on modern chaises and motors. It would be very cool if they were REO Speedwagons, or other Lansing or Michigan build buses. Living in REO town it would be great to have a free service on such a route. I was thinking there could be another loop going up Michigan to Sparrow and back to Washington Sq. I know that soon there will be the new bus line up Michigan but it might be too expensive to just ride down to Washington Sq. for lunch. I think that both of these mini lines would be great for tourist as well. When they have shows and conferences at the Lansing Center I see people walking around down there looking for some place to go eat and shop. A free ride to our historic neighborhoods would be fun for tourist and great for business.

I know that it would be a greater expense, but a small track lite-rail trolley would be very nice and a tourist attraction itself. The small city Racine Wisconsin has a classic trolley line that people ride just for fun.

gbinlansing

That is very interesting I had not heard of the other trolley lines. Before they dug up Washington Ave in the 60's you could still see the rails for the street cars, they had trolleys that went all the way to Lake Lansing. History tells us that GM had something to do with the demise of urban street car and trolley lines, so of course Lansing had to get rid of their's. and I think that the motor/bus way of thinking is why the new Michigan Ave line will be buses with rubber wheels. I think the plan looks good that kind of line works pretty well in Boston with the silver line but what most people say is it's still a bus. So I am hoping that the buses themselves will look really cool and the least like buses as possible, if it is cool and easy they will ride! I think zoned fares would be the way to go, get a ticket when you get on and pay as you leave for just how far you rode. I will write CATA with these ideas maybe someone will take a look at the ideas.

I was by the new train station the other day, it's still not open and weeds seem to be growing all around the new building, do they have an opening date set?

david_shane

What is up with the Entertainment Express though? I have ridden it a few times and always been the only, or almost only, rider. The vehicle itself has terrible suspension and wooden seats with no cushioning - which wouldn't matter so much if Michigan Avenue wasn't in horrible condition in some places! Oh dear.

gbinlansing

I have never seen that fakey trolley bus in service. They use those things for tourist tours in the little town I lived in out east and I always thought they looked bad and the people on them always looked kind of embarrassed, which leads me to why you were the only one riding the trolley. They are fake looking and to use a phrase "nerdy" young people out for the night are not getting on that bus. I think late night bus service is a great idea but with a regular bus on a scheduled route. Perhaps have the service be free or a dollar after mid-night. That could bring a lot of people downtown to the clubs and back safely. Late night bus service was very popular in Boston a place full of students and were the T closes at mid-night.

hood

Yeah, I think the Entertainment Express can probably be considered a failure at this point, it always looks empty. I could imagine it being much more successful if it were free, I'd also agree that it'd probably be better off served by traditional buses.

Has there been any discussion of how late the proposed BRT will run? That could alleviate most of the need for the Entertainment Express, unless they went ahead with offering a free late night bus service.