LANTA has known for years it needs to increase the frequency of bus services around the Lehigh Valley.
Recent growth in commercial development and population has brought more public attention to the need, but not more buses on the road.
“What we’ve been doing in the last few years is playing keep up,” said Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority Executive Director Owen O’Neil.
At a recent Lehigh Valley Transportation Study meeting, O’Neil said higher-frequency transit isn’t “nice to have,” it’s something the Lehigh Valley needs to do sooner rather than later.
“If this is going to work, and we’re going to be able to accommodate this growth and maintain quality of life and maintain natural resources, we really need higher-frequency transit along several different corridors in the region,” O’Neil said.
To do that means more money, and LANTA officials are sounding the alarm on the flat funding for transit that has kept the bus service from being able to grow.
“Within the next couple of years, if we don’t see some type of additional resources... we will be in a position where that one bus an hour, we’ll actually be going backward from that," O’Neil said. “We’re going to have to start saying, ‘Ok, now we need to start making decisions,’ we have pull back service from here, pull back service from here, because we just won’t be able to afford it anymore.”
The Moving LANTA Forward report, begun in 2008, finalized in 2010 and updated since then, identified a high-frequency bus service plan with faster routes covering eight of the busiest corridors through the Valley’s three dense city centers.
The report was the first comprehensive look at public transportation in the Lehigh Valley since 1985, when LANTA’s Metro service was launched.
The enhanced bus service plan, EBS, would connect the downtowns of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton with popular stops like the Lehigh Valley Mall, Wind Creek Bethlehem casino, park-and-ride facilities and entertainment destinations.
O’Neil said the routes serve as “the spine of our service,” with higher-demand corridors that serve multiple purposes and all-day demand, compared to single routes to employment centers.
O’Neil said the plan was to identify the corridors, build routes along them and then increase the buses on those routes.
“Our funding for operations and capital has been flat, and we kind of see it being flat for awhile. Being flat, we won’t be able to do anything more,” O’Neil said.
LANTA officials are trying to implement at least the first phase of EBS, getting the route from LVIP VII off Route 412, through Southside Bethlehem, to the mall and Walmart in Whitehall Township, in a way that doesn’t require new resources.
“The important thing is really building frequency of service... We’re going to need higher-frequency bus service and the resources to be able to do that, to meet those needs with buses,” O’Neil said.
The goal is that, instead of seeing a bus every hour, eventually there would be a bus every 10 to 15 minutes.
“The frequency of service is really the key. Higher frequency service, regardless of mode, that’s when you start to get people making modal decisions to take transit, even if it’s a bus," he said.
If residents see a bus coming every 15 minutes, every 10 minutes, every 8 minutes, that’s something where people say, “Ok, I’m gonna take the bus,” according to O’Neil.
LANTA currently has 84 buses, and all the buses the authority has recently bought replaced older diesel buses with compressed natural gas buses.
To take the first step of the bus service plan and and increase frequency, the authority would need at least another 10 buses and a 10% increase in operating budget, O’Neil said.
To do all the phases, LANTA estimated it would need 17 more buses, and that figure was developed before all of the Valley’s warehouse growth. To do the two routes on the map, LANTA would need $2 million more to get the services up and running.
LANTA officials are talking to state legislators about reauthorizing Act 89 and focusing not just on re-enacting it, but providing resources to allow the transit system to grow.
Bringing light rail is a common topic among Lehigh Valley commuters, but unless those plans include multiple stops throughout the Valley, buses are the best public transit option in Lehigh and Northampton counties, O’Neil said.
O’Neil said LANTA sees ridership needs to warehouses, hospitals and medical offices, and developments in suburban office parks, “where a lot of growth is happening,” but there isn’t the population density to attract light rail.
“We have a lot of needs for public transportation in the region,” O’Neil said. “The priority needs to be increase the level of bus service in the region. That’s really our biggest priority.”
Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
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