Springfield transit study shows desire for more buses, more hours, less confusion

Springfield’s bus system is the subject of a comprehensive study that will likely mean changes and improvements as early as the fall of 2023.

Springfield City Utilities contracted with Olsson Associates to study the bus system and make suggestions for better operations. City Utilities executives presented some goals and preliminary findings to the Springfield City Council Jan. 3. Chief Customer Officer Brent Baker explained six overarching goals, one of which is to expand bus ridership as funding allows.

“It’s a long-term conversation, but starting it like this with a real comprehensive look and listening to what the community wanted, I think, is the right start,” Baker said. “A definite aim should be to help people ride the buses more, which should get cars off the road.”

Other goals are to offer direct service with travel times that get close to the same speed as driving in a private vehicle, to coordinate the growth of the bus system with land development in Springfield, for the bus system to be easy, convenient and intuitive to use, and for City Utilities to provide a base level of transit coverage throughout Springfield.

 “People want the buses to stop more often, the ability to get from Point A to B quicker — a little bit more direct route options,” Baker said.

Background on the Bus

The comprehensive evaluation of City Utilities Transit began in 2021. Community outreach efforts and surveys resulted in input from 406 individuals. About 33 percent of those surveyed said they were dissatisfied with the City Utilities bus system, while 38 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied, and 29 percent of the respondents were neutral on satisfaction. About 64 percent of the people surveyed said they ride the bus “at least occasionally.”

Springfield takes in about $4.5 million in federal transportation grants and about $40,000 from the state of Missouri annually. The majority of the operating revenue for the buses, about $7 million, is subsidized from City Utilities’ electric and gas services.

Whether Springfield residents ride the buses or not, it’s very likely that part of the bills they pay each month for electricity and natural gas goes to pay for bus service.

Free fares or lower fares

Bus fares — and the possible reduction or elimination of bus fares — are under examination, but fares are not the focal point of the comprehensive study. Executives from Springfield City Utilities briefed the Springfield City Council on the transit study at a meeting Jan. 3.

“No doubt, the conversation has been in Springfield, that fare-free or something about fares needs to be considered, so we’re not doing the study and ignoring that item,” Baker said.

City Utilities Transit operates Springfield’s bus systems on about $12 million per year. Fares generate just $800,000, or about 6.67 percent of the operating budget.

“We’ll look at what fares should be and what that conversation needs to be,” Baker said. “We’ll have a much better way of having that conversation in the future than we’ve had up to this point, when ideas were just kind of being brought up.”

City Utilities Transit Director Matt Crawford said most people who ride the bus are not riding it to get to work.

“Our best assumption is right now we have roughly 5,000 unique riders, and I would imagine the number of people using that to get to work is fairly low,” Crawford said.

Instead, the majority of bus riders are people who don’t own cars or don’t have driver’s licenses, but need to ride the buses to access services or aid organizations. A desire to continue connecting people with assistance came through in a survey conducted as part of the comprehensive study, Baker said. Springfieldians, by and large, cared about people who need to take the bus to access resources from aid groups.

“You can see the community come out in the survey that says, ‘Well, we’ve got a lot of really neat ideas, but we really need to take care of the people who need it most,’” Baker said. “‘We like the idea of economic development, getting people to job centers,’ and then we also think it’s an affordable option for transportation and would like to see us focus on that.”

Study will be used to drive long-term planning

Though the study will wrap up in the fall of 2023, its effects will carry out into the months and years that follow. Baker said that will mean more dialogue between City Utilities Transit employees, bus riders, and citizens of Springfield.

“We will use the vision to develop the service guidelines, what people have said they want and make sure we incorporate all of those,” Baker said. “We’ll bring that back and have some analysis, but also have some conversations in the community.”

Springfield City Utilities acquired the transit system in 1945. It is the only utility provider in Missouri that also operates its city’s public transportation system. City Utilities President Gary Gibson shared one statistic that shows how much city bus and trolley travel has changed since the post-World War II era.

“There were about 12 million individual rides, not riders, but 12 million individual rides compared to about 1 million today, and so as cars became more proficient, that kind of shows how use of the transit system has changed over time,” Gibson said.

While its operating model is unique, Baker said City Utilities can still take concepts that work in other cities and apply them to Springfield.

“There are some cities that are about our size that have explored ways to get people to ride more,” Baker said.

One suggestion is to make the bus-riding culture younger by encouraging teenagers, students who are in high school, to ride buses. Baker said it’s important for the buses to be safe and non-intimidating in order for that to happen.

Zone 1 Councilwoman Monica Horton shared that she grew up in Kansas City, and used public transportation there at a young age.

“That city is set up like a grid, and simplicity, where even a teenager could catch the bus, make those transfers from place to place, was just so much easier,” Horton said.

Intuitive navigation and ticket acquisition, along with a less intimidating bus route map are both long-term goals for Springfield, Baker said.

Regional transit?

Survey respondents also gave their thoughts on the span and reach of Springfield’s bus map. Based on their responses, they want bus routes throughout Springfield, not just in the most concentrated population centers.

“Most people want us to be able to cover the whole town and not reduce that,” Baker said.

Survey respondents also brought up the possibility of extending bus routes into suburbs like Ozark, Nixa, Republic and Willard.

Regionalized bus service with Springfield City Utilities as the operator would likely require an amendment to Springfield’s city charter, which would require a public vote, and the establishment of a regional transit authority by which Springfield and surrounding cities would share responsibility to govern and oversee the bus system.

“That gets into questions of governance,” Springfield Mayor Ken McClure said. “Is that still being maintained within City Utilities? Is that getting into the discussion of a regional transit authority and all that that entails?”

Bucking a trend that started in the ‘50s

Baker said car culture has been ingrained into the fabric of the United States of America since automakers started marketing their vehicles in earnest in the 1950s. The shift from World War II to consumer manufacturing, competition in the auto industry, suburbanization, motorsports and the development of automobile-based businesses like drive-ins and drive-thru restaurants, and even movies and music all contributed to a climate where given the choice, we drive our own vehicle from home to work and back again five days a week.

“This is a historical North American issue that we have had, so it wasn’t an accident that marketing how great cars are turned people away from riding buses,” Baker said.

“We are a culture that loves our vehicles, driving around town, as opposed to a larger city, for example, where it’s accepted you’ll ride the bus, you’ll ride the Metro, you’ll ride other types of things,” McClure said.

Study won’t write blank checks

Springfield City Utilities budgeted for the transit service to operate on $13.8 million in expenses in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2023. During the presentation to the City Council, Baker said that any recommended changes and revisions to services, like extended hours and routes, would come with financial considerations. If ridership doesn’t match service, it doesn’t make sense to keep offering the routes and running empty buses.

“If we added more routes at night and on weekends and there aren’t very many riders, we’re probably going to have to have an evolving plan,” Baker said. “If that didn’t work, if six months or a year in it’s not having many riders on it, would we need to go away from that resource?”

Electric, natural gas and water customers subsidize the public transit system in Springfield each year. The 2021 Agency profile for CU Transit, filed with the Federal Transit Administration, shows that City Utilities spent about $122.76 to operate one bus for one hour in 2021.

Budget records show that in 2020-2021, only $600,000 came from fares and $101,000 came from direct revenue advertisements on buses, while $6.9 million came from local funds, $4.5 million came from federal funds, and CU Transit got $43,401 in operating funds from the state of Missouri.