LTD shares updates on route changes, ‘Connect 2045’ engagement

Presenter: Lane Transit District’s fall service changes go into effect Sept. 6. At the Strategic Planning Committee Sept. 1, Senior Director of Planning and Policy Dave Roth:

Dave Roth (Lane Transit District): I wanted to talk about our fall service changes, which go into effect on Sunday, Sept. 6. So quite a few changes.

And I’ll preface this by saying that these changes are coming from our System Review Final Recommendations, which was a planning process that we went through in ‘23-’24 and which was adopted by the board in the fall of ‘24. So we’re still using that to guide our service changes across the system.

So we’re going to have changes to Routes 12 and Route 66 and 67 in terms of the routing of those.

Currently the 66 and 67 divert off of Coburg Road onto Chad Drive, Shadow View (Drive) and Crescent (Avenue), going around a little loop there before they continue on Coburg and Crescent. 

And transfers between the 66/67 and the 12 would occur on Shadow View, which is a side street off of Coburg Road.

The change that we’re implementing is we’re sort of shifting that loop over to the 12 and the 66 and 67 will remain on Coburg Road and Crescent. And so transfer activity between those two routes will occur on Coburg Road rather than Shadow View. 

This allows us to provide better service to the VA clinic that’s on Chad Drive, and it also provides better access to the WinCo grocery store. So that’s probably the most significant routing change that’s happening.

And we’re looking forward to seeing how that works. We’ll monitor that, we’ll be taking feedback from our riders along the way.

The next changes are on the 81 and 82, providing service to LCC. So some of the changes to those routes really, there are schedule changes that allow for 15-minute frequency to LCC going forward. So that’s an improvement from sort of South Eugene and downtown station area.

Then we’re adding trips to a number of routes on the weekdays. So 33 (which is sort of the Friendly neighborhood), 55 and 96. Those will see added weekday frequency. And then we’re adding Saturday service to a number of routes, the 13, 24, 28, 36, and 40.

And from my understanding, this is the biggest service add to Saturdays that we’ve ever done before. So this is a pretty significant change for us. 

And it’s sort of in line with the changing ways that people are using transit. They’re not just using it for peak-hour work commutes, but they want to use it for other activities and accessing things on the weekends.

So those are the changes that will happen starting on Sunday the 6th…

Why we’re not making bigger changes: The system review that was adopted in ‘24 was a revenue-neutral plan. So it was really looking at what we could do under existing revenue financial conditions.

Connect 2045 gives us an opportunity to kind of think bigger if there were more funding available for us.   

Presenter: He gave a presentation on Connect 2045 later in the meeting. Dave Roth: 

Dave Roth (Lane Transit District): So what is Connect 2045? Well, it’s a long-range mobility plan. And it’s a plan that guides LTD’s investments and policy decisions over the long term. 

It helps set expectations both with our riders, the communities we serve, the agencies that we partner with, as well as our own internal staff and board to make sure that we’re all on the same page with our priorities moving forward, as well as our role and actions to support mobility within Lane County.

You know, the intent of a plan like this is to help us when we’re faced with a decision on such and such: What does the plan tell us to do? What is the guidance? What is the policy support for that particular decision? 

It establishes priorities, funding sources. and it will provide us with some different future scenarios to be thinking about as we go towards the final plan.

In terms of, what do we do in the case of funding reductions, revenue-neutral, or if we have more money to spend, what might our services look like?

And then why are we doing this project now? Well, our current long-range transit plan was adopted back in 2014, and a lot has changed since 2014 in the world of mobility and transit.

I think in 2014, we just saw the introduction of Uber and Lyft up in Portland, actually, maybe just Uber at that point. So people’s travel habits and patterns have changed a lot in that time. So it is time to start this over again.

So what makes for a useful long-range plan? Well, vision. And I would add to that, vision and goals, you know, if you don’t establish a very clear vision or a set of goals or objectives, it’s kind of hard to get there.

So that’s a key first step. And that’s one of the things we’ve been working on right now.

So this really should be sort of the foundational document that we can all point to and say, ‘This is where we’re going. These are the things we need to do or work on to get there.’

Providing very clear and specific priorities to guide agency actions and spending. So I would say that this is a departure from the 2014 plan, which didn’t really have very clear priorities.

Again, clear strategies that are actionable by the agency. So, meaning that these are actions that we actually have the ability or the authority to take on. We’re not going to put things in here that we can’t do functionally.

And then near-term actions that both provide momentum and credibility. So this is sort of like the early strategic part of this plan. What are the early steps we need to get started on now, if we want to see some of these things happen in the future. A lot of this type of work takes many years or even entire careers to deliver.

So it’s important to acknowledge that and know that we have to take small steps at first. Recommendations are aligned with capacity. So let’s be cautious or careful to not bite off more than we can chew here. 

And then finally around accountability, having clear performance metrics for making sure that we’re achieving the outcomes that we said we would deliver, we want to deliver.

Presenter: From Better Eugene Springfield Transportation, Rob Zako:

Rob Zako (BEST): I just want to give you some kudos. I’ve been around long enough. I remember when the 2014 plan was adopted, but I also remember, so this sort of series of plans, of like ‘Plan and then plan and plan and plan.’ 

There was a lot of planning going on that didn’t necessarily connect with the ground.

I really like everything you’re saying here: useful or maybe pragmatic or sort of focused. This is a really good approach or attitude towards this. So thank you.

Dave Roth (Lane Transit District): That’s good feedback. Thanks, Rob. 

Throughout the process, we’re looking to the community to inform how we’re making decisions along the way and informing what we’re thinking about as we’re developing the plan.

And then we also have a technical advisory committee, which is made up of agency partners and institutional partners. Their job is to advise us along the way and help us review materials.

And then we’re consulting again with local agency partners as well as internal staff. We have an internal working group that meets about once a month to review materials and just act as a sounding board.

And that’s really helping us with the internal engagement on the project. 

And then finally, the board will have to make some decisions at the end of this process. And that’ll be around adoption of the plan. And they’ve also played a role in engaging on the project.

Presenter: To discuss public engagement for the Connect 2045 project, Kerry Aszklar:

Kerry Aszklar (LTD, planning): Underpinning all of our public engagement is our community outreach framework in which we’re applying these principles to make sure that we’re meeting people where they are, we’re not talking past them, we’re not using jargon, but we’re really thoughtful about how we approach community engagement through multiple different strategies.

And that is really helpful as we use a multipronged outreach approach. Dave has mentioned a little bit about our technical advisory committee and our diverse community advisory committee, as well as our four work sessions with our board, but we also have additional meetings with jurisdictions, making sure that we’re hearing from staff of those jurisdictions across the county.

And also we have some small group meetings to kind of dive into a focus group sort of strategy on certain issues.

And then we also have our public events, such as the open houses. We’ve been doing a lot of tabling and other in-person events. I think in four weeks we had 17 tabling events, so averaging four per week. 

We really pounded the pavement during that time and that really has paid off. Combined with the open house feedback, we’ve gotten about 175 surveys. 

We’ve had this really quick postcard survey asking two simple questions, and we’ve gotten really good results. And about 80% of those surveys were from those in-person tabling events. So that has really been successful in meeting people where they’re at. 

Even if folks are traveling around or doing other things in the summer, we’re showing up at events that LTD has been organizing, events that our partners have put on.  And so I think that’s just a really good demonstration of how important partnerships have been in this project so far.

So we have a lot of engagement tools in our toolbox that we’re applying to this project, and we’ve been having some really great conversations so far.  

And we’ve had over 1,150 conversations. So that’s really just, again, meeting people where they are. If they don’t fill out the survey, we still are talking with them about their transportation needs. So that is just a snapshot of how our engagement is going so far.

We are digesting a lot of information and we’re reading through every single comment. We’re not using AI. I’m proud of that. 

And so we’re just digesting all of it and we’ll summarize it and post it on our website soon. And there’s more to come. Back to you, Dave.

Dave Roth (Lane Transit District): The next part of the presentation is sort of like basics around transit service today and sort of how it’s evolved. 

So we’ll start with sort of the highest ridership, highest-intensity model, which is EmX, which is our high-capacity transit, bus rapid transit system.

So BRT or EmX, it moves a lot of people in the region today. It represents most of our ridership on the system. It’s doing what it was intended to do, and that is to connect the region, the metro area, with a high-capacity transit line to connect people to important destinations.

The rest of our fixed route network, which is routes such as the 11, the 41, the 52, the 51, across the region, these routes follow a defined route and they may operate several times per hour, maybe up to four times per hour or once or even less.

I didn’t mention that EmX operates right now at a 10-minute frequency, which is a very high frequency. And that makes it a lot easier for people to use. So the best frequency we find on our regular fixed route network is 15-minute frequency. 

Going down the list, then we have on-demand or microtransit models. You could think of as the Uber or Lyft of transit, where we have a dedicated vehicle and a defined service area that is basically on call through an app,

And we do run a micro transit service down in Cottage Grove. It’s called the Cottage Grove Connector., We’ve actually recently increased the service on that. We added an additional vehicle and it’s providing better service and getting a lot of ridership within the Cottage Grove area. 

This plan will look at other areas that are opportunities for this kind of service, both in smaller cities as well as the metro area, where perhaps our fixed route bus network has some coverage gaps. So, we’ll be looking more at this in the plan. 

Next on the list is our paratransit or non-emergency medical transport service, or in our case, RideSource, branded as RideSource. This is a contracted service of LTD’s. So we administer and contract this out. 

Riders are ADA-certified or some other eligibility check required to use the service, and you can schedule that 24 hours in advance. And for the most part, it follows our fixed route network within about three-quarters of a mile. 

So if you look at the fixed route network, you expand that out by about three quarters of a mile. That’s where RideSource operates.

The next one is mobility subsidy programs. And I already talked about this earlier in my staff updates with you. One example could be a taxi-voucher-type program. This is a type of service that we’ve maybe experimented a little bit with in some different ways in the past. But this is something that we might consider in the future for some specific areas. And we’re thinking some of these very far rural areas that don’t have good access otherwise.

So again, this would just be basically a way to provide a discounted fare for trips taken by taxi or transportation network companies (TNCs) also Uber, Lyft.

Next on the list is bike share, scooter share, micromobility. I think people are pretty familiar with the regional bike share program here. 

Currently, the Eugene side of the system is contracted with the city of Eugene. The Springfield side of the system is actually contracted with LTD, today. We’ve talked a lot about this. There’s some interesting opportunities for LTD to potentially play a bigger role.

But this is a type of service that, again, it’s not going to work for everybody, but it does work for a lot of people. You’re seeing hundreds of thousands of trips per year on bike share. And it provides options for shorter trips, mostly within the metro area and the current service model.

And it could also provide better connectivity, first-last-mile access to transit as well. It does already, but there’s opportunities to improve that through better coordination as well. 

The last two are the van pool. We actually have a contract for van pool right now that we work with Enterprise. And this is a type of service that can provide opportunities for people to commute in a van with a group.

And prior to COVID, this was a much more heavily used type of service. We don’t see it used as much down in this area as it was.

However, it’s interesting, if you look in Salem, I think they have a very healthy vanpool program, but it’s something we do right now. It’s fairly limited scale.

And then finally, volunteer driver programs. So this is something that LTD could help coordinate or stand up for unique mobility needs.

There is a volunteer driver program out in Florence right now that’s being operated. And it’s something that we could look at here as well, to try to provide some lower-cost options for folks.

There are some new things happening. I mean, you recently saw in Portland the introduction of autonomous vehicles. So those are starting to show up, but probably not a direct role for LTD in a privately-operated service like that. But you never know. In the future, it could look different.

We’ll be meeting with jurisdictions this winter. We’re going to go meet people where they’re at. And so we’re working on going out to various city councils and organizations on a bit of a road show where we’re going to do ‘State of the District’ and ‘Connect 2045’ on the road.

We’ve got a staff team that’s going to be traveling around the county doing these presentations. We’ll be back to the board for the second of four touch points in the spring, and then again, ongoing public engagement that will continue throughout the process.

Presenter: LTD Strategic Planning Committee member Claire Syrett:

Claire Syrett (LTD Strategic Planning Committee): Thank you. This was really great and I wanted to kind of second what Rob had said earlier when with the slide about what makes a useful (word emphasized) long-range plan and the dedication to having very clear and specific priorities, clear strategies.

You know, I think sometimes some of these longer-range plans can be very high level and, and have, you know, wording in them that leaves a lot to interpretation or is just, you know, very general and vague.

And so I think having out front this commitment to having a vision that’s grounded, but also specific and clear, and then talking about like, yes, an updated, you know, as we go forward. 

So I wanted to add my kudos to that.

And then we didn’t really delve into the public engagement overview that you gave, but  I really appreciate how this is laid out as well and the intentionality around it.

And you’ve said a couple of times we are going to go where folks are, right? And that is super important, I think is going to make every bit of your public input much more valuable and have a material impact on the end product. 

So I wanted to compliment you on that as well.

Presenter: Rob Zako:

Rob Zako (BEST): John Fregonese, a legendary planner in Oregon, used to say ‘Vision without action is hallucination.’ And so I think that plans that lead to action are what we need.

Presenter: Highlighting some coming attractions, LTD’s Dave Roth:

Dave Roth (Lane Transit District): We have some really good consultant support. So Parametrix is our prime consultant and then Nelson\Nygaard is a sub. They do a lot of transit planning nationwide.

And then we also have a firm called LOCUS, and they do a lot of really interesting analytics around travel patterns and travel behavior as it relates to transit.

And one of the things that they’re going to be doing is they’re looking, they’re using cell phone data, which is available in aggregate and anonymized to basically look at where people are going within Lane County and in particular the, the metro region based off of cell phone data.

And they’re, they’re looking at the types of destinations people are going to and how they’re getting there. And they can break out different travel modes. And then also they’ll be doing this assessment where they look at travel time competitiveness for fixed route transit to locations.

So that some of that work is going to lead to a follow up project, which will be sort of a relook at our network, potentially a network redesign project, where we will take some of those insights and think about where we might establish new or different routes.

So there is more of the data analytics and technical work that’s happening as well.

Presenter: They are also hearing from neighborhoods. Dave Roth: 

Dave Roth (Lane Transit District): When we go out to individual neighborhoods, we’re hearing very specific feedback from them, you know, especially neighborhoods that don’t have great access to transit. 

And, you know, it might not be practical or financially viable for us to provide like a new fixed route network to that particular area.

But we’re talking with them about other options. And again, it could be some of the things like shared micromobility or microtransit to get to those areas, but we can’t do everything for everybody. So that is part of the process of prioritizing those different investments.

Presenter: LTD is underway with its next long-range plan. Its last effort, just before the pandemic, was called Transit Tomorrow, and was scrapped by the board after widespread public opposition led by youth and neighborhood moms.