New microtransit program will expand mobility across six Richmond region localities

The City of Richmond, the Town of Ashland, and the Counties of Henrico, Chesterfield, Powhatan, Hanover, and New Kent rarely have much in common, but later this year all six localities will enjoy expanded access to public transportation thanks to a planned microtransit pilot program run by the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC). Lasting three years, the test service will close mobility gaps in rural and suburban parts of the region via an on-demand system that will allow people to book rides in real time and get picked up and dropped off in designated areas.

Piloting progress

Ahead of the planned launch this fall, local leaders selected five zones in which GRTC will provide microtransit service: Ashland, Sandston-Elko, Powhatan, North Chesterfield West, and Washington Park. All of the zones either touch on or cross municipal borders in an intentional attempt to foster greater regional cooperation on public transportation access and to end the era in which Richmond’s bus routes stopped at the city line.

“With these zones crossing borders, this is not only expanding transit access in Henrico but across the region,” said Todd Eure, a GRTC board member and director of transportation for the County of Henrico. “If you have an appointment at Memorial Hospital, you don’t care if it’s Hanover or Henrico, you just want to get there. It’s the same with the Sandson-Elko area. New Kent County doesn’t have any transit service right now, so this is the beginning of GRTC reaching new parts of the region.”

Beyond just helping people move around within the five targeted zones, the microtransit pilot will connect tens of thousands of new residents to GRTC’s existing network of high-frequency routes currently providing fare-free mobility to the Richmond region. Of the 2,165 square miles which comprise the Greater Richmond region, GRTC’s fixed-route bus service currently only covers 9% of that area, leaving the vast majority of Central Virginia’s more than one million residents with no other options to get around besides owning a private vehicle.

“These parts of our region need more mobility options,” said Adrienne Torres, GRTC’s chief of staff. “They are home to families sharing a single car, retirees wanting to age in place, and others that don’t have the option to make all their trips by single occupancy vehicle and need an alternative means of transportation.”

The key destinations included in the five microtransit zones read like a wish list of major employers, shopping centers, and other top points of interest outside of the city: Randolph-Macon College, Amazon’s coming Henrico distribution center, Powhatan’s government center, a VCU Health Emergency Center, and Commonwealth Center mall.

Route replacements?

Although the contours of the Richmond region’s coming microtransit service are certain, many details still need to be decided upon by local leaders. The new vehicles will likely look similar to GRTC’s existing fleet of paratransit buses, but larger vans may work as well. Microtransit service should be easier to staff as smaller vehicles don’t require operators to have a commercial driver’s license, but will the service be run in house or by a turnkey provider? Riders will book a pickup via an app or a call center, but will they have to pay to ride or can they access microtransit with zero fares like fixed-route buses?

One of the biggest questions surrounding the pilot program is whether microtransit may one day replace fixed-route GRTC service in the five designated zones. Bay Transit on Virginia’s Northern Neck recently replaced a route serving Gloucester’s courthouse with similar microtransit service.

“We are not looking into microtransit in order to replace local routes,” said Sam Sink, GRTC’s director of planning and scheduling. “That is not really the purpose of our experimenting with microtransit, but for the Washington Park zone there may be potential to replace Route 93 which is a peak-only route. Since the 93 is not real robust local service microtransit might actually be an improvement for those folks who rely on GRTC.”

Eure is hopeful the 93 will quickly become redundant after the microtransit service launches this fall so that Henrico could repurpose its funding to other much-needed transit projects around the county. For those who live in the Washington Park zone, he’s also hoping the pilot program will offer far better mobility than the peak-only 93 ever could.

“In conjunction with the Richmond Raceway and the new Amazon site in that area, we expanded the footprint of what Route 93 currently covers so that this new microtransit program will connect residents to these major employment centers as well as some other city routes that terminate around Laburnum Avenue like the 1, 2, 3, and 91,” said Eure.

Should the pilot demonstrate robust demand for such service, Route 56 with its limited hours of operation could also transform into all-day microtransit service. Beyond those two routes, however, the microtransit pilot is likely to be more of a glimpse into the future of GRTC’s regional expansion.

Such service is an easy way to test demand in areas whose demographics and land use patterns are conducive to transit but don’t yet enjoy any public transportation. One of the region’s top contenders for future microtransit that could expand into a fixed route is around Short Pump in western Henrico.

“Other than Route 19 down Broad Street, there isn’t any other transit service in Innsbruck,” Eure said. “As the area infills with more mixed-use development, we at the county think the need for transit will increase, but we aren’t sure if fixed-route service would be best or if we should start with microtransit and transition to fixed-route service later.”

Much of the future of microtransit in the Richmond region will depend on money. A four million dollar grant from the Department of Rail and Public Transportation’s Transit Riders Incentive Program will cover the cost of the zones serving Chesterfield, Henrico, New Kent, and Richmond. Other sources will fund the Ashland, Hanover, and Powhatan service zones, including a potential DRPT demonstration grant. How to sustain microtransit service beyond the three year pilot program is for local leaders to decide.