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Trinity Metro has started a new public transit initiative called A Better Connection. Over the past year, the project has led outreach gathering local feedback to help develop and redesign a new network of bus routes.
According to Trinity Metro, the project's goal is to redesign the bus network and make it more useful to more people — not by looking at one route at a time but all of them together to determine how a better network structure can continually be used in the future.
“The project is to be able to make improvements to the network quickly; it’s not a planned 20-year project,” says Christof Spieler, director of planning at Huitt-Zollars, an engineering firm working with Trinity Metro on the initiative. Spieler was also on the board of Houston Metro and helped redesign more frequent services and connections for routes, implemented in 2015.
The plan includes a three-stage outreach process. The first stage took place earlier this year, when Trinity Metro planned public meetings and surveys asking about tradeoffs and fundamental choices within the system.
“For example, we asked them, is it better to walk long distances to stops where the wait isn’t long? Or is a short walk to a bus that comes less often better?” Spieler says. “Every transit agency has to confront these issues, but because we don’t have money to do everything, we have to make harder decisions making sure everyone's needs are being met with limited resources.”
So far, there are three main proposals: One simplifies the current offerings, adding more evening and weekend service, making the service more frequent, and expanding routes. The second alternative builds on the first, eliminating routes that are within walking distance of other routes and using those resources to make other routes more frequent. The third alternative, also building on the first, replaces hourly neighborhood routes with ZipZone on-demand service, which lets a rider request a ride via their mobile device if the starting point and destination are within the same zone.
“We’re extending some frequent services where we have high ridership and expansion of areas that aren’t covered,” Spieler says. “We’re looking at downtown routes, turning those into crosstown routes to better serve as connecting points. We’re seeing more rail connectivity in the Northside and at the Northside station.”
Trinity Metro continues to seek the feedback of riders as the agency hosts two more public forums via Facebook Live on Dec. 2 and 9.
“These kinds of networks evolve, and little changes get added on top of other little changes,” Spieler says. “When that happens, we get a network that gets messier. This is a chance to clean things up, and it’s a chance to rethink policy decisions.”
For more information, visit ridetrinitymetro.org.
