BRT FAQ #003: What’s the timeline, and when did it all begin?

Important BRT dates—past, present, and future—and the dominos that had to fall in order for us to be where we are.

August 12, 2015; 12:34 PM • by Ross Catrow

Every day, our readers, our friends, and our countrymen ask questions-to us, to each other, to the City, to the Internet-about Richmond’s proposed Bus Rapid Transit system. A couple times a week, we’re examining one small piece of the BRT with a microscope. As we go, we’ll be compiling an easy-to-read resource for any interested party.

If something new comes up, you think we’ve missed an important component, or you have more data for us, feel free to let us know in the comments or submit a correction (see the options at the bottom of this post). We want to have a complete a picture as possible.

The full list of BRT FAQs will always be available for you to leaf through.

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Important milestones

Fall 2015 — Construction manager selected
December 2015 — Timeline for construction announced
June 2016 — Final, final, final designs
June 2016 – July 2017 — Construction
October 2017 — You ride the BRT for the first time!

History

While it may seem like BRT has rapidly busted onto the scene out of nowhere over the last couple months, it’s actually been a consistent part of transportation conversations in the region for at least a decade. Below, if you’re so inclined, you can read through the chain of studies that began in 2003 and ended in 2014 with GRTC winning a $25 million grant from the feds. It’s a lot of boring dates and PDFs, but the key takeaway: this has been in the works since before iPhones existed.

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All the way back in 2003, the Richmond Rail Transit Feasibility Study (PDF)¹ looked at–I bet you can guess–the feasibility of rail transit in and around Richmond. One of its many recommendations was light rail down the Broad Street corridor, additionally the study noted that a more cost effective alternative to that could be a BRT.

Early 2008², the GRTC released their Comprehensive Operations Analysis (PDF) which laid out three phases of recommendations: 1) Immediate routing and service improvements, 2) Identification and implementation of transfer center sites, and 3) Development of a Bus Rapid Transit line. It’s that last one that we’re still talking about, sometimes in loud and angry voices, today. The COA laid out a BRT route that stretched from Downtown to Willow Lawn with an additional line from Main Street Train Station to Rocketts Landing. That should definitely sound familiar, as it looks super similar to today’s BRT route!

A map of the BRT route that has been available for about 2,500 days.

The 2008 COA projected that the BRT would be completed in 2012, which, oops! But hey, better late than never! Later that same year, the Richmond Regional Mass Transit Study (PDF) dropped, citing planned BRT systems in Albany, New York and Charlotte, North Carolina as possible models for Richmond’s own transportation needs. It also noted the substantial cost differences between light rail and BRT (5.5% of the capital costs and 24% of the annual operating costs).

And then who can forget 2009, the year we got a Downtown Plan (PDF)! I remember the charettes fondly! Anyway, as you can guess, the plan put the Broad Street BRT square in the “less than five years” category of transportation stuff to implement (oops, again!).

Over those next five years, though, GRTC worked on putting together the Broad Street Rapid Transit Study (PDF). Delivered spring of 2014, this is the foundational study for all things BRT–route, stations, fare collection, costs, everything. Meanwhile, in 2013 the Richmond Strategic Multimodal Transportation Plan (PDF) release put a Broad Street BRT at the very top of their high priority transit recommendations list.

Then, in April 2014, GRTC filed for a $25 million TIGER grant, which was awarded in September 2014. From there the project design kicked off with more documents, more public meetings, and lots of public opinion.

That about catches us up with the current timeline document, which you should totally familiarize yourself with:

Here’s your map for future BRT progress. Get excited for October 2017!

The 30% design phase was just completed a couple of months ago and ended with even more public meetings that detailed some of the changes GRTC has incorporated from public feedback (things like: more parking, more left turns, wider medians).

In late summer 2015, both the Urban Design Committee and the Planning Commission approved the BRT 30% design phase and gave some additional recommendations, including converting the 4th – 14th Streets section to a media-running BRT.

More BRT FAQs

Whose impetus was the earlier 2023 Richmond Area Long Range Transportation Plan. ↩
They started collecting data for this report in 2006. ↩

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Ross Catrow

Founder and publisher of RVANews.

August 12, 2015 12:34 PM · in East End Daily, Fan of the Fan, and more 9

Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.

Jonathan Marcus on August 12, 2015 3:42 PM said:

The Broad Street Rapid Transit Study, to which you post a link, cost over $1M and states that 47 per cent of Richmond residents have no bus service where they live, and goes on to prescribe solutions:
“Addressing these deficiencies is recommended to improve the customer experience and attract new riders.
Simplify the route structure to make it more understandable.
Increase service frequencies to the neighborhoods.
Provide service to new destinations with passenger demand.
Increase efficiency and productivity of each route.
Eliminate redundant/unnecessary service.”

In fact, the GRTC proposal for a BRT on Broad Street, where we already have bus service, does not implement these critical solutions specified in its own report.
Dominic Carter on August 12, 2015 3:57 PM said:

This is an excellent rundown of events leading up to Broad Street BRT. Thanks for putting this together!
Scudder Wagg on August 12, 2015 6:31 PM said:

@Jonathan, I’m not sure where exactly in the Broad Street Rapid Transit Study your quote is from, it would be helpful if you provided a specific page. Honestly that sounds more like it came from the COA out the Strategic Multimodal Transportation Plan. Nevertheless, there BRT helps to address at least the first, second and fourth items on that list. It would be very hard for any one project to address all of those issues at once. One should not harshly judge a project because it doesn’t solve every systemic issue at once.
Stuart S on August 12, 2015 7:03 PM said:

“The 2008 COA… also noted the substantial cost differences between light rail and BRT (5.5% of the capital costs and 24% of the annual operating costs).”
*****
These numbers are highly misleading, like everything else in the “BRT” marketing business. They compare wildly different infrastructure- a street running bus vs. grade separated light rail. Most of the costs of light rail are associated with purchasing new right of way, and in the case of the Norfolk Tide building multiple bridges and water crossings over the Elizabeth River inflated the cost. These costs would have been constant had a rubber tired option been used.

Without even digging into the numbers we can say this is misleading on its face because grade separated light rail was never considered an option for Broad Street. Richmond’s rail transit option recommended in the Downtown Master Plan is a street running tram, not full blown LRT built on new right of way. So a less deceptive cost comparison for “BRT” would be with a streetcar system. But even then it is hard to compare what “BRT” really costs since the systems usually include mixed traffic operations, or in the case of “The Pulse” just a bus driving mostly in mixed traffic. So do we only count the 2.4 miles of guideway as the “BRT” system? If so that would be like $27 milion per mile, not so cheap after all.
Scudder Wagg on August 12, 2015 7:18 PM said:

Stuart, if you but it as a streetcar it would still be a hell of a lot more expensive. Look at the Charlotte streetcar project, that’s $26 million for 1.5 miles and their stations won’t be nearly as nice as the BRT stations. Any way you cut it rail is much more expensive. Yes it’s nicer and the ride quality is better but the transit ridership in Richmond just doesn’t justify the investment today.
Ross Catrow on August 12, 2015 8:04 PM said:
Jonathan, the document you are quoting from is the 2008 GRTC Comprehensive Operations Analysis (beginning on the bottom of page 9) not the Broad Street Rapid Transit Study. The sentence about addressing deficiencies closes out the section of that report on “Adequacy Analysis”:

From the perspective of Passenger Comfort, there are several areas of concern where inadequacies were found. Passenger shelters need to be installed at more than 40 bus stops that meet the proposed threshold. In addition, passenger information is a major concern as no route information is available at bus stops, no system-wide map is available to passengers and the Ride Guide is complex and can be overwhelming to read. Addressing these deficiencies is recommended to improve the customer experience and attract new riders.

The bullet points you referenced then come from the next section, which lists three phases of recommendations. Here’s Phase I:
Phase I: Route Recommendations

Based on all of the analyses conducted to date, discussions with GRTC staff and management and field visits throughout the service area, a series of recommendations have been developed that help meet a variety of goals, including:
- Simplify the route structure to make it more understandable
- Increase service frequencies to the neighborhoods
- Provide service to new destinations with passenger demand
- Increase efficiency and productivity of each route
- Eliminate redundant/unnecessary service
Section six of that same document lists all of the proposed route changes, and section 7–1 describes implementation plans for those changes.

The COA recommends transfer centers as Phase II and a BRT as Phase III.
Larry Hedgepeth on August 12, 2015 9:21 PM said:

Thanks for printing the original BRT route map. It’s curious to see that three stations serving the Near West End (Westmoreland, Malvern, and Thompson) have simply disappeared.
Stuart S on August 13, 2015 12:27 AM said:

“…the Charlotte streetcar project, that’s $26 million for 1.5 miles…”
*****
That comes to $17 mil/mi. Cleveland Healthline is 6.8 miles at $200 million, or $29.4 mil/mi. So the streetcar was considerably less expensive per mile. And the Downtown Master Plan explicitly says the point of the “BRT” experiment is to transition to rail transit because of FTA funding formulas (which isn’t even true.) So basically we just tack the cost of the “BRT” onto the cost of the tram we were supposed to get in the first place. Big waste of time and money in my opinion.
Scudder Wagg on August 13, 2015 6:47 AM said:

Stuart, the Healthline project consisted of about $50 million for BRT and about $150 million in streetscape, sewer and other utility improvements. See here:http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/09/clevelands_healthline_gives_mo.html. Check your sources on costs before you make strong claims about the relative costs of different transit alternatives. As to the downtown master plan, their entire transportation section was misinformed on many counts. Rachael did a lot of good work with that plan but the transportation chapter was based on poor analysis and had a lot of errors and omissions, particularly the section you cite.