Lessons from the League of Extraordinary Bus Advocates

Last month, Greater Greater Washington and the Greater Washington Partnership co-hosted the League of Extraordinary Bus Advocates, a panel discussion moderated by Stephanie Gidigbi, Director of Policy and Partnerships at NRDC and composed of Scudder Wagg, Senior Associate at Jarrett Walker + Associates, Steven Higashide, Director of Research at Transit Center, and Alex Pazuchanics, Manager of Mobility Services for the City of Seattle. (Monica Tibbits-Nutt, executive director of the 128 Business Council, was unfortunately not able to join us for the actual panel).

The discussion focused on lessons the greater Washington region can learn from other cities, both nationally and globally, on how to improve our bus network. Video footage from the discussion is embedded below, along with our summary of some of the key takeaways of the evening.

Lesson One: The cities that have been most successful at providing frequent, reliable, and dignified bus service are the cities whose municipal governments have made improving transit a priority. Over the last several years, cities like Seattle, Houston, New York, and Portland have been able to make significant improvements to their bus networks and build public confidence in the bus by:

1. Making internal investments and building staff capacity to focus on advancing transit projects.
2. Passing policy agendas that prioritize investment in transit and transportation equity.
3. Making external investments by prioritizing funding for transit projects.

Lesson Two: Innovation is not a silver bullet. Oftentimes municipal governments are their own worst enemies when it comes to building public confidence in our bus networks. We lose a lot when we ask questions about how to attract “choice riders” (which assumes that not all riders have choices) or set low expectations of what the bus can be and already is. As Steven Higashide said, “technological advancements are not the secret sauce to decarbonizing cities.”

Lesson Three: One of the biggest challenges facing bus prioritization across the country is that the real estate of the right of way does not start from nothing—it has already been assigned, and reassigning it is often politically difficult because folks perceive that change as a taking from whatever its original use was. In order to instill public confidence in a project that changes a space’s right away, it is important to be clear about the process of evaluation and implementation.

Lesson Four: To make bus system redesigns equitable, we must specifically use racial and economic lenses that prioritize increasing access to opportunity for neighborhoods that have historically been neglected. We must also be explicit about the metrics we are using to measure outcomes.

Lesson Five: Many of the changes that would have a dramatic impact on the quality of bus service are fairly low-hanging fruit that have not been made largely because the communities who have traditionally relied on transit haven’t had the same amount of power as those who rely on public roads. We need to focus on building power in the places where people need transit the most and be intentional about seeking input from folks who don’t have the ability to engage with the current public process.

Lesson Six: While the business community is an essential ally in the fight for better transit, the push for transit improvements needs to be done in a broad coalition of stakeholders that is led by a community group or local nonprofit. If you are part of a business group that wants to take a proactive stance on transit start by reaching out to local community advocates and be sure to compensate them for their time.

Lesson Seven: Winning transit improvements will require a concerted effort from transit agencies, elected officials, and advocates and will be most effective if done on a regional scale. Advocates need to be focused on expanding the imagination of what is possible. Elected officials should be focused on passing policy that will advance transit improvements and looks at the relationship between transportation policy and land-use policy. Transit agencies should be focused on improving the user experience.

Lesson Eight: Expanding equitable access to bus service doesn’t always mean free fares. Cities across the country are expanding transportation equity by decriminalizing fare evasion, implementing low-income fare structures and pushing service expansions that are specifically aimed at increasing access to service and opportunity in low-income and historically marginalized communities.

Lesson Nine: Operating a bus is a really tough job. Bus operators don’t get enough respect and appreciation both from riders and the agencies they work for. Ensuring operators are being fairly and appropriately compensated and have a seat at the table in any negotiations for transit improvements is key to bolstering a successful transit network. In recent negotiations, WMATA and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 689 came to an agreement to couple any increases in bus ridership with an increase in operators salaries.

Lesson Ten: If the Washington region is serious about improving its bus network, it should be focusing at a regional level on decriminalizing fare evasion, prioritizing running more buses, making space for dedicated lanes, and giving buses priority at chokepoint intersections.

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The end of our discussion was accompanied by a short question and answer session. Because we were not able to get to all of the audience questions, we thought we would turn them over to you all and see if we could get some answers in the comments below.

1. Baltimore has 6 miles of bus lanes now (and 7 more in the pipeline). Yet enforcement is a struggle, even with $252 citations. What are successful strategies for dedicated bus lane enforcement? Bus cameras are not an option (per the Maryland Transit Administration).
2. Is it necessary to restructure and renumber bus routes to attract new riders unfamiliar with the existing bus system?
3. We should be pushing for real transformation; that’s hard to do, but it’s an explicit choice to stick with the same old approaches, just cheaper. How do we effectively neutralize the inevitable push toward cuts as a solution when it seems clear that some kind of big change is needed? How do we get decision makers behind potentially costly changes where some stakeholders may feel some pain?
4. What section of WMATA is dedicated to setting/adjusting bus timetables?
5. What can riders do to make the system more politically accountable for improving frequency and reliability? Now, it’s a black box. No one is responsible.
6. What is the best way to execute a shift in city politics and implementation to embrace not just one-off implementation of bus lanes but a new culture of bus lanes across the city?