ITP Watch

The one statistic that creates the most controversy when we point it out is the fact that The Rapid’s buses operate, on average, about 90% empty. The Rapid’s supporters (including the Grand Rapids Press uncritically regurgitating misleading data released by The Rapid) do everything they could to “refute” this number, but the fact is that we use The Rapid’s own data. How do arrive at this number? It’s easy, just look at the information that The Rapid is required to report to the federal government each year. This data is stored in the National Transit Database. You can access the entire set of data by clicking here.

The set of data you want is listed under Annual Databases. 2010 is the latest year available as this article is being written, so we’ll use those numbers. Click on the RY 2010 Database link to see the various areas of data that are available. From there, we are interested in the Revenue Vehicle Inventory spreadsheet. This spreadsheet doesn’t look very easy to use because each transit agency is represented by a number, not its name. The Rapid is transit agency number 5033. How do we know that? Check out The Rapid’s 2010 National Transit Database profile here. The Rapid’s ID number is 5033.

We then scroll down to number 5033 in the “trs_id” column on the spreadsheet. The first thing you’ll notice is that there are 41 lines of data relating to The Rapid’s buses. We are interested in the lines that say “MB” in the second column (MB means bus, although you’d have a hard time figuring that out from the database files). Only looking at the MB column limits us to The Rapid’s fixed-route bus service. We’re not looking at The Rapid’s paratransit or van pool service.

Looking further to the right, we see the two columns that interest us. Columns “S” and “T” tell us the seating and standing capacity of the buses The Rapid operates. To make it fair, we need to do some math so that all buses are counted and averaged on a weighted basis. Basically, this means that if there are 25 buses with a capacity of 75 and five buses with a capacity of 91, we need to weight them appropriately. When we multiply all seating and standing capacity by the number of buses, we get a total fleet capacity of 10,580. The Rapid has a total of 129 buses in operation. We then divide 10,580 by 129 to get an average bus capacity of 82.02 (this was 80.48 in 2009). To make this easier, we’ve highlighted the spreadsheet and added columns to add it all together. Download it here.

How do we know how many people are on The Rapid’s buses, on average? Download and view the 2010 NTD Fact Sheet on The Rapid here. Check out the row near the middle of the page called Mode: Bus. This breaks The Rapid’s services down into the various modes of transit. We’re interested in the Bus information. Look to the right and make a note of the Annual Passenger Miles and  Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles columns. If you divide Annual Passenger Miles by Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles, we get 7.39 (this was 7.37 in 2009). That’s the average number of people on a Rapid bus at any given time.

With these two data points, we can determine that average capacity utilization of The Rapid’s buses. Average bus capacity is 82.02 and the average number of people riding Rapid buses at any given time is 7.39. We divide 82.02 by 7.39 and we come up with 11%. Therefore, The Rapid’s buses operate 89% empty.

On April 22 of 2009, just two weeks before the millage election to raise property taxes to fund the $50 million Silver Line bus in Grand Rapids, the unelected board of the Interurban Transit Partnership (The Rapid) suddenly changed the route. This is only vaguely referenced in the minutes of that meeting.

Mr. Varga [CEO of The Rapid] noted . . . that staff has received some suggestions for changes to the route alignment that has been reviewed internally and by City staff. . . He reminded the board that by having already submitted an LPA [Locally Preferred Alternative] to the FTA [Federal Transit Administration], that was accepted by them, any significant changes in the cost or scope of the program, could result in failure to get approval from the FTA.

Mayor Heartwell commented that we have had discussion, involving many entities, regarding alignment changes and noted that process is important when dealing with this issue. He noted that a resolution was developed that we will take to the PTT [Public Transportation Tomorrow Task Force] to evaluate and bring back to the ITP Board regarding consideration of alternate routes for the Silver Line.

A motion was made by Heartwell, supported by Holt, to adopt the resolution regarding further evaluation of the Silver Line routing. Motion passed unanimously.

The resolution itself is not in the minutes and not available on The Rapid’s web site (unsurprisingly).

The Grand Rapids Press reported the next day on The Rapid’s sudden change in plans after so much planning:

Now Rapid staffers are exploring the possibility of stops near Wealthy Street and Division near Logan, and considering whether the current plan to use Lafayette Avenue through Heritage Hill is the best way to access Michigan Street NE.

The vote came after Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell introduced a resolution that was not on the agenda. Among other things, the resolution says the board is aware of alternative routes being studied by Rapid staff and believes they warrant serious consideration and input from all “constituents.” Heartwell said he developed the resolution after talking with residents from the Heritage Hill neighborhood and representatives from Grand Valley State University.

“The interest here was in being fully transparent before the election,” Heartwell said. “We didn’t want to go into an important election, then suddenly afterwards make a change.”

What really happened behind the scenes? How “transparent” was this process?

A local resident who was concerned about this change filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the City of Grand Rapids to get more detail on the process behind this sudden change. Those emails were made available to Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility this year.

We now understand that the Heritage Hill Homeowners Association (HHA) held the Silver Line hostage through threats of opposing the millage and through a potential “veto” as part of its historical status. The leadership of HHA claimed that they supported the Silver Line, just not in their back yard. Mayor Heartwell went to bat to ensure that the HHA was satisfied, despite, as City Commissioner Roslyn Bliss put it, “honking off” Grand Valley State University because the Silver Line would no longer run to the new health sciences building on Michigan Street. The route was subsequently changed, almost overnight, as a result of these threats. The Silver Line route was moved from Lafayette Avenue to Ransom, just outside the boundaries of Heritage Hill.

Not only did the Mayor go to bat to appease HHA, he later called it an exercise in democracy. How this can possibly be considered an exercise in democracy is beyond us. The Rapid’s board, itself an unelected body, was dictated to by a single neighborhood association. Yet, just two weeks later the voters of the six cities sent a clear message to The Rapid: “NO SILVER LINE.” What has been the Mayor’s response to this? The Rapid is trying again this year for the same plan, while doubling the requested tax increase. Apparently, voters saying “NO” isn’t important to The Rapid’s unelected board. At the millage kickoff event this year Heartwell called those who oppose the millage “anti-community.” Somehow, when Heritage Hill residents oppose the Silver Line in their back yard, it’s “democracy in action.” When voters across the six cities say no to the wasteful and redundant Silver Line, they are “anti-community.”

Voters should ask themselves: Taxpayers in six cities (Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Walker, Wyoming, Kentwood and Grandville) are being asked to pay for the Silver Line, but who is really calling the shots here? Certainly not those who live outside Grand Rapids.

(To view the Silver Line’s “new” route, just outside of Heritage Hill, please see a Google Map by clicking here. The blue line is the Silver Line Route and the green box is Heritgage Hill’s boundaries.)

Below is a review of the timeline of events, with links to relevant emails (click on the date to view the original email):

• March 18, 2009. HHA president Michael J. Clark sent a letter to Peter Varga, CEO of The Rapid, demanding a change in the Silver Line bus route. The letter says, in bolded words, “While the concept of the BRT [Bus Rapid Transit/The Silver Line] is greatly applauded, the proposed route to use Lafayette NE is strongly opposed by this neighborhood and therefore, the board cannot support your request as presented at this time.”
• April 2, 2009. HHA president Michael J. Clark sends another letter to Peter Varga, stating: “With the alternative proposal presented to the Association Board members on April 1, 2009, we are in full support of the project. The specific route adjustment follows Jefferson to Ransom, Ransom to Crescent, Crescent to Bostwick, and Bostwick to Michigan Street. This new alignment removes the buses from the residential streets of Heritage Hill and instead uses the more appropriate non-residential streets. This revision reflects the desires of the residents and neighbors of the Historic District and we believe this new route will have no significant negative impact on the Heritage Hill Historic District.” (Emphasis is in original).
• April 17, 2009. HHA president Michael J. Clark sends another letter to the board of directors of The Rapid complaining that they want assurance that the route of the Silver Line will be changed, prior to the May 5 election. “The Heritage Hill Association currently finds itself in the very unfortunate position of potentially opposing the upcoming May 5th millage. . . At the subsequent meeting of April 1st . . . [HHA] happily accepted a route change suggested by the RAPID that would take the Silver Line off residential streets and specifically off Lafayette Avenue NE. * * * We have now been informed that the PTT will not present its findings until May 7th and that the route change(s) will not be voted on by the RAPID Board of Directors until its May board meeting. * * * [HHA] recognizes that as the millage vote is now less than two weeks away, action must be taken.” (Emphasis added).
• April 17, 2009. Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen emails Rapid CEO Peter Varga to complain about the Silver Line route: “I was disappointed to hear again, today, that the issue of the Silver Line route running on a Heritage Hill residential street will not be officially acted on until after May 5.” He later, in the same email, states: “It is important to resolve this as soon as possible – near or after the election is too late, in my opinion.” (Emphasis added).
• April 19, 2009. Grand Rapids City Commissioner Rosalyn Bliss asks Mayor Heartwell to consider a resolution at the upcoming City Commission meeting to support the Silver Line millage. Mayor Heartwell expresses concern that the vote would not be unanimous and he specifically mentions the Lafayette controversy. Bliss then replies to Mayor Heartwell: “It has gotten a little ugly. Peter [Varga] came up with an amended alignment that satisfied the HHA Board but honked off GVSU (it comes up Ransom rather than Lafayette, serving GRCC and Spectrum well but hitting two blocks away from Cook DeVos Center). The HHA is threatening to oppose the millage if the ITP Bd. doesn’t act in advance of 5/5. . . If HHA opposes, even if the millage passed (and it might not with their opposition) the State Historic Commission could deny the approval killing the ENTIRE project.” (Emphasis added).
• April 19, 2009. Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen again emails Peter Varga: “A group of folks met, today, to discuss the Lafayette Avenue route situation. I agreed to try to convey to you, Heritage Hill’s interest in getting a commitment from the ITP board, this week, to avoiding residential streets in Heritage Hill and on the Silver Line route.”(Emphasis added).
• April 21, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell emails Peter Varga with proposed resolution language, to be voted on at The Rapid’s board meeting the next day. The resolution clearly misrepresents the situation. Heartwell admits that the resolution may “be more than the ITP Board will be willing to say. * * * Resolution – The ITP Board of Directors is aware of the staff recommendation of an alternative route to the current proposal and believes it may have merit for both environmental and ridership reasons. Further, the Board strongly believes in the process of route evaluation established through the Public Transportation Tomorrow Task Force. Therefore, the ITP Board directs staff to explore other route options in keeping with this established procedure.” (Emphasis added).
  Why would the ITP Board be unwilling to discuss what is going on behind the scenes?
• April 21, 2009. Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen emails Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell: “I’m not really sure what Heritage Hill will approve but I know there are some who want to find a compromise. I’m willing to argue for your proposed language at the HH meeting tonight (7pm).”
• April 21, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell emails the president of The Rapid’s board, Don Lawless: “I received, last evening, a proposed resolution from the HHA. I have redrafted it and shown the draft to Peter and Jim Talen.” (Emphasis added).
  Now apparently the Heritgage Hill Association is dictating resolution language to The Rapid’s board.
• April 21, 2009. That evening, Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen again emails Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell announcing that the Heritage Hill Association has OK’d The Rapid’s board resolution. The final resolution reads: “Resolution – The ITP Board of Directors is aware of staff proposals for alternate routes for the Silver Line to the current proposal and believes these proposals warrant serious consideration and input from all constituents including potential environmental, historic preservation, and ridership interests. Further, the Board strongly believes the process of route evaluation established through Public Transportation Tomorrow Task Force. Therefore, The ITP Board directs staff to explore other route options in keeping with established procedure.” (Emphasis added).
  It’s a slap in the face to voters to say to them that the process is open to their input, yet one neighborhood association is dictating policy to a government body – and that government body is bending so quickly and easily. One could say that The Rapid’s board is even cowering. Two weeks later, constituents said NO to the Silver Line bus tax increase. Clearly that didn’t matter much.
• April 22, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell emails Rapid CEO Peter Varga and Rapid Board President Don Lawless: “I responded to Jim Talen’s email expressing appreciation (you were copied) but I wanted to ‘converse’ with the two of you off-line.” (Emphasis added).
• April 22, 2009. Rapid Board President Don Lawless emails Mayor George Heartwell, Rapid CEO Peter Varga, and Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen: “Thank you for all your hard work and support for the SilverLine. I will rely on George to present the resolution language and will ask for support from the board.”
• April 23, 2009. Rapid CEO Peter Varga emails Jan Earl of the Heritage Hill Association and Mayor George Heartwell: “I thank you all for listening and participating in a positive way towards a more reasonable solution. A very healthy exercise in democratic behavior.” (Emphasis added).
  Just how democratic is it that a single neighborhood association overrides months of work and dictates to a government body how to word a board resolution – under the threat of “vetoing” the entire Silver Line project?
• April 28, 2009. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell also emails Jan Earl of the Heritage Hill Association: “The efforts in the last few days before the ITP meeting are truly an illustration of democracy in action.” (Emphasis added).

So now we see how “transparent” this process was. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, along with Kent County Commissioner Jim Talen, worked very hard to ensure that the wishes of one powerful neighborhood association were followed – and the details kept as vague as possible for public consumption. This was to the point that the neighborhood association dictated to The Rapid’s board of directors how it would word a resolution and that it would vote on the resolution before the election… or else HHA would veto the entire project. This was also despite the fact that this last minute route change “honked off” Grand Valley State University. Democracy indeed!

Voters should understand that their will isn’t very important. Voters said no to the Silver Line in 2009, yet The Rapid didn’t get the message. Apparently voting isn’t much of an important exercise in democracy – unless you live in a special interest neighborhood and have influential friends!

All of the original emails (many more than quoted above) are available by clicking here. All of the emails have also been uploaded to a third party web site, available here.

In today’s Grand Rapids Press, we are told that The Rapid does a better job than the Lansing bus system (CATA) because of two rather oddly-chosen metrics of performance:

Specifically, The Rapid’s operating cost per bus hour is $78.22 and $6.15 per bus-mile. While the average among peers is $101.41 per hour and $7.53 per bus-mile.

And in Lansing the Capital Area Transportation Authority (CATA) averages $105.54 per hour, and $8 per bus-mile. In Ann Arbor, the average is $102.53 per hour and $8.08 per bus-mile.

Yet, in preparation for this article, we sent the Press much more detail on an analysis between The Rapid and CATA. Our source for this data is the National Transit Database, a federal program where all transit agencies must report their operating statistics. The NTD publishes a whole lot of very specific data, as well as “fact sheets” which summarize the operations of each transit agency. 2009 is the latest year of data available. You can see the fact sheets for the two transit systems here: The Rapid and CATA (Lansing).

We also publish all of The Rapid’s historical fact sheets on our web site, here.

From these two fact sheets (as well as fuel usage data published in the NTD), we can come to several conclusions:

• CATA (Lansing) spends less and carries more passengers than The Rapid
• CATA transported 23% more passengers on 17% fewer buses than The Rapid
• CATA recovers 24% of its costs through fares while The Rapid only recovers 10% of costs through fares
• CATA has 47% more average passengers on their buses at any given time
• CATA pollutes 26% less than The Rapid too (see our story on The Rapid’s pollution record here)

Below is a chart summarizing these findings between the two systems:

It’s one thing to say it costs “x” dollars to run a bus per hour. It’s much more meaningful to learn how much it costs a transit system to provide service to each passenger. When we look at the stats, it’s clear that The Rapid has a long ways to go to improve things.

The folks at The Rapid keep pointing to a report issued by a company called HDR Engineering, which purportedly shows that The Rapid is doing a good job. It’s important to note that this is a company which designs and builds transit systems. The Rapid has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with this company. What do you think their answer is going to be when asked if The Rapid should build more transit systems?

Furthermore, HDR has a history of misleading municipalities. See here and here.This company seems to have cherry-picked other transit systems to compare The Rapid to. For instance, it compared The Rapid (with operating expenses in 2008 of $25 million) with Louisville (operating expenses of $53 million) and Flint, Michigan (operating expenses of $15 million). We have a hard time seeing how these systems are “peers.”

In fact, after reviewing this report, we noticed a gigantic glaring error. The report says that in 2008 The Rapid recovered 26% of its operating costs through the farebox. Yet, when you look at the data from the National Transit Database, we see that this is falsely inflating the truth, that The Rapid recovers much less. Check the column on the far right, “Farebox Recovery”:

Click to view full size

When you look at the source data (the same source HDR allegedly used, from 2008), you see that the real fare recovery is 15%:

When we corrected the HDR report, we saw that The Rapid is actually below average in it “peers.” The below chart summarizes 2009 data, the HDR report uses 2008 data.

And, when you add in all costs of doing business, The Rapid only recovers about 10% of its cost through fares.

Maybe The Rapid should ask for its money back.

In honor of Earth Day 2011, ITP Watch is releasing the results of our analysis of The Rapid’s environmental impact. The Rapid and its supporters have long justified repeated tax increase requests by pointing to The Rapid’s environmental benefit. For example, The Rapid’s web site, under the “The Rapid & the Environment” page, says the following:

For every passenger mile traveled, public transportation produces only a fraction of the harmful pollution of private vehicles; only 5 percent as much carbon monoxide, less than 8 percent as many volatile organic compounds, and nearly half as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Using data that The Rapid reports to the federal government, we can now demonstrate that this is categorically false. In fact, we have calculated that The Rapid contributed 40% more carbon dioxide to the environment than if every single Rapid bus passenger had been transported in a car – to the tune of seven million extra pounds of carbon dioxide. Even more shockingly, The Rapid pollutes more than if every single Rapid bus passenger were transported in an SUV!

How can this be?

According to The Rapid, its average bus only gets 4.45 miles to the gallon.  The Rapid’s buses carry an average of only 7.3 passengers at any given time (about 90% empty, based on the Rapid’s average bus capacity of 74 people).

Using data The Rapid reports to the federal government each year, we can calculate that The Rapid’s buses emit 0.76 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger mile.  As a comparison, the average SUV emits 0.56 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger mile and the average passenger car emits 0.54 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger mile.  (For an explanation of why passenger miles are the preferred method of fairly comparing modes of transportation, please see our full Myths vs. Facts report).

The Rapid: not so green.

This means that The Rapid is in no way reducing pollution. Because of The Rapid’s low capacity utilization and its buses being larger than needed, a lot of fuel is being used to move around a comparatively low number of people. The buses are so empty that they are less efficient than if SUVs were used to transport every single Rapid passenger. The Rapid’s buses are a net adder of pollution to the environment. In fact, we were shocked to calculate that The Rapid’s buses added over seven million pounds of carbon dioxide to the environment, compared to the amount that would have been emitted if every single Rapid bus passenger had been transported in an average midsized car.   The reality is that The Rapid’s passengers produced 40% more CO2 emissions than if they had ridden or been transported in cars. The Rapid’s web site falsely claims that its services reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50%.

This result, admittedly somewhat counter-intuitive, is due to several factors. The largest factor is that The Rapid is buying bigger buses over time, yet the number of passengers filling those buses is low. A second factor is that autos are getting more efficient over time. According to data released by the US Department of Energy, transit buses have gotten 75% less energy efficient since 1970.  Conversely, passenger autos have gotten 30% more energy efficient in the same period. The chart below demonstrates this trend.

It should be noted that the above chart actually overstates the efficiency of The Rapid’s buses. The Rapid’s buses are carrying fewer passengers than the national average, making the pollution and energy efficiency picture worse. Between 2005 and 2009, The Rapid’s average bus capacity has grown from 70 to 74.  For some reason, despite low capacity utilization, The Rapid is scrapping older, smaller buses for even larger ones.

The Rapid has purchased five hybrid-electric buses and falsely claimed that these would double the gas mileage of a regular bus.  However, as The Rapid now admits, these buses only get 0.68 miles per gallon more than a regular bus – all for the additional cost of at least $200,000 per bus.  The hybrid-electric buses are still less energy efficient than SUVs.

Strangely, The Rapid claims that saving $4,000 per year in fuel costs by using these hybrid buses is worth spending more than $200,000 extra for each of these buses.  At that rate, it would take more than 50 years for the hybrid-electric buses to break even.

The bottom line is that The Rapid can’t reduce pollution in its current state because it keeps running very large buses with very low utilization. To make matters worse, the upcoming 31% tax hike on May 3 will add even more buses, many of them at non-peak times, compounding the problem.

You’ll also notice that a service called “Rapid Van” is referenced in the above chart. This is the Rapid’s van pool ride share service. This type of service, also known as a “jitney,” is far more successful at providing cost-effective mass transit. The Rapid Van service is dramatically better at reducing pollution than The Rapid’s fixed-route bus services, yet The Rapid only spends 0.5% of its annual budget on this service.  For more information on jitneys, please see the section of our Myths vs. Facts report titled “MYTH: Using the Rapid is the only way for many people to get to work.”

For citations and links to the documentation used in this report, please see the pollution entry on The Rapid Wiki.

Down The Rapid's Memory Hole

Another example of The Rapid’s continued baffling behavior! An article that The Rapid posted on their own web site, showing that spending too much money on public transit achieves the opposite of the intended effect, was suddenly removed when a commenter on the Grand Rapids Press web site pointed out the absurdity of The Rapid’s actions.

The original GR Press article, available here, announced that the failed “Silver Line” would be brought up for vote again next year. A commenter by the name of “ezkl2230″ posted excerpts from a recent study: “New public transit encourages gentrification, lowers ridership, study says.” The commenter went on to quote the study,

“That means renters and low-income residents — you know, the folks you think would ride public transportation — get priced out of the neighborhood and, once again, away from easy access to the very system that’s thought to serve them the most.”

The same commenter, a little farther down the page, pointed out that this information was posted on The Rapid’s own web site! A link was included, and sure enough, there it was!

Stunningly, a few days later, the study and news item were removed from The Rapid’s web site! The original link is here. As you can see, it is gone. Thankfully, Google keeps cached copies of web pages available, so a copy of the original page is still available here. In case that disappears, you can see a downloaded copy of the page, here, saved on our own server.

We’re reminded of George Orwell’s book, 1984, about a totalitarian society which makes uncomfortable news and history simply disappear, down the memory hole. From Wikipedia’s definition of memory hole:

A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.

You can access the study originally quoted on The Rapid’s web site here.