The GEORGE Bus Situation
Last week George Southern (no relation to GEORGE bus) wrote over at the Falls Church Times that the City of Falls Church GEORGE bus system was potentially on the chopping block. At last night’s City Council meeting, City Manager Wyatt Shields did in fact recommend ending the GEORGE bus service. The bus service is expensive - eliminating it will save the City about $450,000 each year. Last year the service provided about 70,000 passenger trips. I haven’t seen any reports of what the annual capacity of the system is but it seems to be very underutilized.
Recently, Mike over at Blueweeds posted about GEORGE and linked to a report that discussed the history of the bus service. It’s a fairly interesting account of the difficulties in getting a public bus system up and running. It makes me think that if GEORGE is eliminated it might be very difficult to institute a bus system in the future.
There are several aspects of this issue that I’d like to look at. My plan is to split them up into a series of blog posts. Specifically, I think it would be interesting to think about what GEORGE currently provides, consider how GEORGE might be used differently, understand the costs related to offering a bus service, consider innovative ideas for alternatives to standard bus service, and maybe even come up with some practical suggestions for improvement.
I’ll get started by looking at what GEORGE currently offers. Right now the service runs only during weekdays. It does not run at night or on the weekends. During the morning and afternoon rush hours there are two buses running. Each bus runs in a circle around half the City, serving one Metrorail stop. In between the rush hours there is just one bus running, basically following a route between the two Metrorail stops.
If you look at the routes and schedules it seems pretty clear that the system is configured to take City residents to the Metrorail stations so they can commute out of the City and then bring them back home at the end of the day. Obivously, other uses are possible but the most efficient use is for commuting out of the City.
This is a very valid use of the bus system. It increases the appeal of living in the City which, in the long run, increases the value of the houses. In this budget cycle we’re all learning that raising property values has a big impact on revenue to the City. It is obviously hard to say if the $450,000 per year investment in GEORGE leads to a $450,000 (or more) increase in City revenue as the result of increased property values - but I’m guessing most people would assume it doesn’t. The City gets value (or should get value) from the bus system in other ways so this analysis shouldn’t be the only thing considered. However, it does get me thinking about how to make the bus system more effective.
In my next post I’ll talk about other functions the GEORGE system could be optimized for.
Hopefully, while George takes city residents to Metro to help support the economies of other jurisdictions it is carrying workers into Falls Church to help our economy. I don’t think we have any information to conclude whether the riders are coming or going. Lack of knowledge may lead us to make the wrong assumptions
Gary, I’m with you - I don’t think we really know who is using George and for what purpose. I’m mostly looking at how the routes and schedules are set up - they’re not particularly conducive to things like helping non-residents commute into the City to work.
It would be great if we could do a detailed study of how the bus is currently used and what it would take for non-users to consider using it. But a report like that would be expensive. Even a high school class project that looked into the issue could be valuable.
The Village Society endorses and encourages the use of mass transportation in the city limits of Falls Church. Currently the GEORGE bus is our only capability and while we fully understand the cost burden to the city, we believe that remedies can be, and should be found to continue the service to our community. There are three areas in particular that need to be evaluated; the cost impact, the environmental impact and the human impact to our citizens.
1. The cost impact at it currently exists is a big budget number that can be reduced as indicated in the City Manager’s Budget presentation. However, another approach is by making changes to the operating hours by reducing the “platform hours”, i.e. starting the morning bus (both 26E and 26W) at 6:30am instead of 6am and ending at 8:30am instead of 9:30am and during the evening start at 5pm instead of 4:30pm and ending at 6:30pm instead of 7:30pm would reduce the platform hours by approx 6 hours a day, plus the elimination of the daytime route, which is served by regular metro anyway, would further reduce platform hours by another 4 hours totaling a reduction of approximately 10 platform hours for the whole system (each route is a little different in start and stop times). The projected WMATA platform hour cost for 2010 is $99 an hour, so the annualized savings from this step alone would be $257,400, reducing Est. cost to $310,600 from the projected $568,000. That cuts it close to half. Raising the riders fee to $1 instead of 50 cents would help the revenue side while maintain ridership.
Another option that we feel has a lot of promise is to join another system such as Arlington’s ARTS system. Many other surrounding communities operate their own bus system and perhaps an economy of scale could be realized. The ARTS system in particular would have benefits to both Arlington and Falls Church residents as ARTS would run to West Falls Metro allowing those riders to not only get the train but the bus system that runs out to Reston and beyond. Falls Church riders would be able to ride all the way to Rosslyn and other employment areas of Arlington.
2. You have recently been sent a memo from the Environmental Services Council – Climate Change, Energy Efficiency Task Group date March 10, 2009. In that memo the task group outlines the environmental savings that maintaining a mass transportation bus system can provide. In this era of reducing CO2, the memo points out that 102,900 lbs. of CO2 can be saved from going into the air. Not bad for a little 2 square mile city.
3. The human impact is an area that is personal to each citizen and harder to judge. Having the community bus system has allowed many citizens that are neighbors the opportunity to get to know one another. It has allowed those that have difficulty walking to Broad Street or Washington Street to catch the Metro buses the opportunity to ride instead of drive the 1 mile with parking problems and expense. Even thought the 26E does not run on neighborhood streets, those riders do have easy access to a system close by and convenient. Riders in particular enjoy the safety aspects of not having to walk on the streets especially at night.
In the final analysis, mass transportation is the future for our region and we must embrace it and learn how to manage it so that it provides the service that our community needs and another reason why people move our community.