Discovering Transit in Montana

A lot of well-used transit systems have a few things in common:  they are easy to understand and use because they have information that is readily accessible.  The importance of readily available schedule and route information can’t be overstated.  Here’s a few grand examples:

1. Up-and-coming in the world of trip planning, is Google Transit. Google Transit is like the MapQuest of transit trip planning.  You specify your trip parameters (i.e. from University of Montana to Missoula International Airport, arriving by 6:45 AM) and Google returns the different trip options.  The service has expanded rapidly, and will surely be an industry standard in a matter of time.
2. Schedule information in a huge variety of formats is catches people in a way that is most convenient to them.  This obviously includes, but goes beyond, braille and large print schedules.  Schedule data should be presented though mobile web interfaces accessible via cell phone and BlackBerry and through schedules and route maps available for download to iPods and PDAs.
3. Telephone-based schedule information (through the 511 traveler information hotline) provides information to riders who are blind, and also to sighted riders who prefer an audio interface.
4. Real-time information takes the wait out of waiting for the bus.  GPS tracking devices on buses can give real-time arrival information to keep you in your warm office a few minutes longer if a bus is going to be late.
5. You’re idea here!  Agencies like TriMet in Portland are making their schedule information available to developers.  The theory is that ambitious people will use the schedule information to create software or web interfaces that suit their needs.

Every Saturday in the summer, downtown Missoula becomes a pedestrian paradise. Traffic is slowed, streets are blocked, and the Saturday Markets come alive. Pedestrians, vendors, bicyclists, and street musicians take over a small portion of the downtown and the auto is displaced.

The same thing happens a half-dozen times a year when a parade occurs - everything slows down and the community gets together for an event that reclaims the public street. Bike races, festivals, marathons, and concerts all represent healthy but temporary uses of streets.

While a few snow flakes are flirting with the idea of falling tonight, it seems an odd time of year to muse about parades and summer markets, but I think that sustaining the energy of a farmers’ market can become a year-round idea. With the bickering about Hillview Way carrying on, why not open the street to children with sleds for a few hours after each new snow fall?

From a people-moving standpoint, streets can have temporal uses as well. Highway lanes can become bus and carpool lanes, or even reverse direction during the busiest times of day. Streets such as 5th and 6th Streets in Missoula could become one lane each with a giant cycling lane. During special events when the volume is needed, the configuration could revert to a two-lane setup, with cyclists sharing the right-hand lane.

The benefit of time-based street uses is that they can be implemented incrementally. If programs are successful, they can be expanded. For example, Missoula could move to a car-free downtown one morning a week. If people enjoyed biking and walking in the streets, and if businesses approved the change, it could be expanded to include two mornings a week!

Don Shoup, America’s favorite (or at least my favorite) critic of parking policy authored a piece for the Journal of Planning Education and Research with this new angle to consider for transportation impact fees:

All new developments, per city and county zoning codes, are required to build a set amount of minimum parking. These minimum parking requirements at residences and businesses are always excessive. (Q: How many days a year is Kmart’s parking lot full? A: Zero.) If you think about it, these fees are inherently a form of impact fee. Requiring minimum parking lot sizes is an extra cost to the developer, and the developer and/or business rarely sees much benefit from excessively large parking lots. This amounts to wasted transportation infrastructure, a big heat sink, an impermeable surface, an eye sore, and a density lowering atrocity.

One better option that increases transportation revenue is to allow developers to opt in to a program where they could pay a fee per space in lieu of a certain amount of their minimum parking requirements.

Example: Wal-Mart wants to build a third store in Missoula (please, no!) and they are required X parking spaces per square foot of retail space. Let’s say they would be required to build 1,000 parking spaces. As a trade off, they could pay a fee, say $2,500/space, for up to 40% of those spaces. So instead, they build 600 spaces, and pay $1 million to the city. ($2,500 x 400 spaces = $1 million) This funding in turn increases transportation options (bike/ped infrastructure and transit service) to the area. Transportation options are improved benefiting the entire community, and Wal-Mart saves money overall on land purchase and construction of excessive lot capacity. The same would apply to transit-oriented residential and mixed-use developments.

This type of program has been implemented with success around the country. We should expand our local dialogue about impact fees, zoning, and transportation planning to include this possibility.

There’s an old Catch 22 in public transportation: People won’t ride transit unless it is frequent and convenient. On the other hand, transit providers can’t afford to increase service and frequency unless they have the riders to justify it.

In traffic engineering, the paradigm is different. The typical practice is to build roadways to meet demand in 20 years. This increased capacity induces demand. An example: when North Reserve Street was expanded to 4 lanes, development occurred at an accelerated rate, and the 20-year traffic projections were exceeded in a mere 6 years.

Currently, the Montana Department of Transportation is studying what to do about regional transit greater Missoula area. The consultant recommends a stepped approach to adding transit service: a little here, a little there - as demand increases. This method is inherently short-sighted. A twice-daily bus to and from Lolo is not enough to be convenient, so people won’t use it, and the trigger point for adding more service won’t be reached.

Conversely, ASUM Transportation offers bus service so frequent that you don’t even need a schedule, and their ridership is through the roof. Buses have standing-room only. In less than ten years, ridership has increased from under 4,000 rides per year to over 300,000. (That’s about a 7400% increase.)

While 10-minute service from the Bitterroot is a little excessive, the consultant and the state need to keep in mind this old idea: that if you build it, they will come!

A public meeting regarding the plan will be held on December 5th from 4:00 to 6:00 at the Grant Creek Inn in Missoula.

I didn’t plan how I was going to get out of Missoula to visit my Grandparents in Havre soon enough.  I figured that some combination of sharing a ride, taking the bus, and hoping a train would get me the 278 miles from Missoula to the Havre.  I was wrong. 

First, my requirements:

1. I had to work Tuesday night in Missoula until 11:30 PM.
2. I needed to be in Havre by noon on Turkeyday.
3. I could have caught a ride with my parents from Helena to Havre no later than Wednesday afternoon.
4. All told, I had a 36.5 hour window of time to get from Missoula to Havre.
5. It’s a 4.5 hour drive, but I don’t have a car/don’t believe in using a car unless I have too.

Here is a catalogue of the problems that I encountered:

1. I couldn’t take Amtrak from Whitefish to Havre, because I couldn’t get to Whitefish.  The bus to Whitefish is not synchronized with the train in either direction, so I would have had to spend a night each direction in Whitefish.  Couldn’t afford a room, too cold to camp, didn’t want to be delayed by two days.
2. I couldn’t take the bus to Helena in time to ride with my folks, because it was an 8-hour-ride.  The bus to Helena (an hour-and-a-half drive) goes to Butte first.  After a layover and a change of carriers, I would arrive in Helena 7 hours and 55 minutes after I left Missoula — too late for my parents’ schedule.
3. I couldn’t use the campus-sponsored rideshare program, because nobody was going where I was.  The trips available on Facebook-integrated GoLoco.org would get me to Helena, Whitefish or Great Falls, but before or after my 36.5 hour window.

I don’t mean to nag and complain about this, but I am pretty dedicated to getting from A to B in any way but the Single-Occupant Vehicle, and I couldn’t do it.  People who need or want public transportation should be able to get around this state with at least moderate conveinence.  If I wasn’t able to borrow my girlfriend’s car (she took the Greyhound to Billings), I may have been stuck away from my family for the Holiday.  A few goals/solutions that come to mind:

1. Public Transportation should be timed such that it is roughly competative with driving when possible.  There should be direct bus routes (at least once a day) to and from most major towns in the state.  Helena is the capital, and you can only get to it by bus from Great Falls or Butte once per day.
2. A mid-way hotel stay should not be necessary when traveling across Montana by bus or train.  Connections to and from different bus/train legs should line up with each other for easy transfers and efficiency in travel.
3. Corridor bus transportation should be frequent and cheap.  Rimrock Trailways could get wheelchair-accessible coaches and apply for federal funding to increase service from Whitefish to Missoula and back; several times a day would serve commuters and those connecting to Amtrak’s Empire Builder.  This model could also be extended to the Havre-Great Falls-Helena-Butte-Dillion corridor segments.
4. Restoration of Amtrak’s North Coast Hiawatha route should be expedient.  Daily trains serving southern Montana would allow for bus resources to be re-approapriated to other areas that need the boost.

We got our first snow of the year (in late November!) last night. Big, wet, heavy flakes fell all night on Sunday. This morning I awoke to an alarm clock flashing 12:00 — the power had gone out, and I had already missed my first class.

I took the opportunity to walk downtown and run some of the errands that I’d been meaning to do. The power was out downtown, including the stop lights, and I couldn’t help but notice how slowly and peacefully everything was functioning. Drivers slowed to a stop at the signals that were off and waved to other drivers and pedestrians to pass. Everyone on the road had two concerns — being safe and being courteous — and being in a hurry sank to the bottom of everyone’s priorities.

Imagine the reduction in fatal crashes in a world where motorists were always as alert and aware and courteous as they are the first time bad roads hit each year.

Welcome.  This blog was created as an exploration into transportation options in Montana.  It will aim to discuss getting people out of their cars in this big state.  We want people to start thinking about how they get around.  About their carbon footprint.  About their health and that of their community.  About slowing down and enjoying their commute.

This blog will aim to discuss challenges and problems in Montana’s homogenous auto-oriented transport network, but will also be a place to celebrate the courteous driver, the user-friendly bus map, and the new bike trail connection. 

Some open ended questions will guide us in that discussion: What are the weaknesses of our transportation system?  How does this affect our lives and communities?  Is Montana geographically disadvantaged?  What challenges do our ruralness present?  How can we improve access for those with limited mobility?  For those willing to trade their mobility to make a difference? 

Indeed, we think that transportation options - bus, bike, train, and of course the foot - can reclaim our rural and small urban landscape and change our communities for the better in the process.