For the Interurban Transit Partnership (The Rapid) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the need to make a change in service was spotted more than a decade ago.
Peter Varga, CEO of The Rapid, said the agency began looking to make a major investment in the region to increase ridership and build economic growth within the city of 190,000 people. A task force was created and multiple scenarios were examined to meet those goals, when one option — which was still uncommon in the U.S. at the time — emerged as the best possible option.
The Rapid was going to build bus rapid transit.
“BRT was the most cost effective way to move along the corridor,” Varga said. “And the preferred alignment had the highest potential in economic and ridership growth, so the BRT was the best alternative compared to all the light rail or streetcar plans.”
Building Rapid Transit
Studying the possible routes for the BRT line, planners opted to run a 9.6 mile system along the Division Street corridor running north-south into the city’s downtown area. It runs into the core of Grand Rapids where about $2 billion in economic development is occurring due to investments in the city’s Medical Mile.
At the southern end of the line, Division Street is more economically depressed, so the BRT line opens up potential for economic investment.
According to project reports, the Division Avenue corridor had the highest total population, highest density and transit dependent population compared to other routes studies. The corridor is also abutted by several blighted “Renaissance Zones,” designed to lure in development.
Many BRT systems opt for articulated buses due to their increased capacity, but The Rapid chose diesel-electric hybrid Gillig 40-foot buses designed to operate as a BRT bus. Gillig doesn’t make an articulated bus, but the agency chose it because they have a 100 percent Gillig fleet, so it made sense to keep a single bus builder from a maintenance efficiency standpoint, leaders said.
Division Street also allowed the BRT system to run in dedicated shared right-of-way along 65 percent of the route, which still allows for cars to make right turns and during non-peak hours becomes non-dedicated.
“I’d say the strongest resistance was the dedicated lane component of the project simply because it’s a new phenomenon in Grand Rapids, let alone the state of Michigan,” said Conrad Venema, planning manager and Silver Line project manager. “We had to assure traffic engineers it’s OK. We could point to other projects in other cities.”
Key to getting support for the project was a strong coalition of local leaders. Grand Rapids Mayor George Hartwell along with mayors of suburban cities Kentwood and Wyoming championed the project, along with the Division Avenue Business Association.
“I think there was a general idea of how good BRT was going to so they were really supportive,” Venema said.
Jason Fox, a project manager for CDM Smith, served as lead for the Silver Line project and said The Rapid set up an intergovernmental agreement set before the project began, which really helped coordination of the project.
We knew that all the stations would be the same, have the same amenities, the same tactile strips, we used the same photometric displays,” he said. “This inter-local agreement really gave consistency to the project throughout.”
Vermena said construction went surprisingly smooth with minimal utility issues.
While it was determined the general locations of where stops would go during The Rapid’s planning process, Fox said a couple of stations needed to be moved a few hundred feet due to congestion issues.
“They had ideas and they talked to the public and cities to get their feedback,” Fox said. “They wanted to place the stations where they made sense as far as things like employee concentration.”
Fox said the main issue facing the design of the route was plans by Kentwood and Wyoming to widen Division about 4 feet on both sides of the curb line in 2015, which impacted three stations. Given they didn’t want to tear down stations built last year, Fox said they coordinated with the cities and agreed to build the station platforms to the future curb line. The regular platforms are 25 inches thick, so in the areas impacted by the widening, the temporary platform concrete is 4 inches thick with fiberboard so less will be removed. Snow melt accommodations and a junction box also were tied into the planning of the stations for when the city comes through.
“And they agreed to adjust the slope of the road so we’re still getting the 15 inches for level boarding,” he said.
Brand, Recognition, Training
BRT was an exciting concept for The Rapid and municipal leaders, but getting people in Grand Rapids to see it wasn’t just a bus route meant getting an education plan together.
“People didn’t know what BRT was. It’s a new public transportation mode for Grand Rapids and the state of Michigan, so it was a challenge to have people understand that even though this is a bus, it’s a completely different existing local bus service,” Verema said. “It was confusing people. We have buses on Division Avenue, so why create this mysterious Silver Line?”
The route and plans to implement the BRT system was studied extensively, but coming up with the name Silver Line for the new green colored line was a little less scientific.
“It sounded good. It just sounded good,” Varga said. “We wanted to give it a special distinction and we wanted to make it feel special, so Green Line didn’t seem to suite that, but Sliver Line did.
“We did realize there was an existing Silver Line in Boston, but we figured we weren’t really competing in the same transit market. It turns out that the other Silver Line, that was one of the important things for them too — to give it a special name that says high quality.”
Jennifer Kalczuk, external relations manager for The Rapid, said the ad campaign rolled out for the Silver Line talked about blurring the line between bus and rail to be a different experience.
“Public education was a big part of it because there were a number of new things we didn’t have before like ticket vending machines for fare collection when we didn’t do off board collection before,” she said.
Kalczuk said in advance of the opening the agency worked to get the word out on the three cities served by the Silver Line with flyers, posters and giveaways along with outreach at local events. When the BRT buses were unveiled, locals were welcomed to see it and take pictures. During a classic car show, The Rapid took a Silver Line bus to the event and displayed it among the classic cars.
“I think one of the things that was most helpful was attending a number of festivals and events because we talked to people directly and they asked questions,” Verma said. “We got a lot of questions on the dedicated lanes, are they really still able to make right hand turns, access to parking lots and things like that that are a little more difficult to explain unless you’re talking to people.
“I think it was helpful to communicate with them as much as we can and let them see the bus, touch it and see how it was way different from the standard fleet not only in the paint scheme, but the fare box, the seats are all different because the bus stops at every station, so we could use these talks as a way to show them that BRT was a different experience.”
Bus Rules Transformed
Mike Wieringa, security manager for The Rapid, said the new system meant the agency had to look into creation of fare evasion policies and find see what other agencies do to tackle this issue. Part of it was looking at what bigger agencies did and scaling it down to fit the needs in Grand Rapids.
“It’s still pretty fluid, but basically it’s a combination of fare enforcement checks and an education process,” he said. “The first time, the offender is caught they’re educated on how the system works. My opinion is the majority of them just don’t know how to us it because not a lot of them are repeat offenders.”
Setting up fare evasion policies for the Silver Line meant also getting local government to set up fare evasion ordinances while also preparing to handle court, city attorney’s and local law enforcement.
“It took us a lot of work and meeting with city managers and traffic folks and the city attorneys to figure out what it was going to cost them, who gets what part of the revenue,” Varga said. “That was one of the things that took the most time in terms of preparing the ordinances."
Getting the line on track also meant training for drivers as well. BRT offers level boarding so drivers had to have a paradigm shift in training where they’re now asked to “kiss the curb” with the Silver Line as opposed to avoiding it with a regular bus.
Fox said it was a challenge to design stations with level boarding because training and height differences needed to be taken into account for all the stations where the buses need to dock within three inches of the platforms. They decided to use a place guide strip along the face of the platform designed for wheels and keep lug nuts from hitting the platform. A curb running mirror also aids bus operators in gauging their approach to see how far away they are from the curb.
“With my work on BRT, it’s very interesting because I’ve learned that every BRT system has its own signature as far as what they want the shelters to look like and it always makes each design interesting,” Fox said. “What I thought was the interesting feature of this project was you’ve got these stainless steel columns that are accented with lights that are always running white until a bus is approaching, then it turns green. That way if you’re across the street and you can’t read the real-time display, it gives you a visual cue a bus is approaching.”
Big Rollout Transformation
When the Silver Line launched in August, The Rapid targeted a ridership of 5,000 per weekday by the end of 2015, but the line has been so popular it’s already well on track for that goal — with just a slight drop in riders from the local bus along the same route — so there hasn’t been a need to continue extensive marketing efforts.
Fox said future expansion was taken into account for the Sliver Line. Even though 40-foot buses are currently used on the route, the station platforms can accommodate an articulated bus and extra conduit and fiber ports were ran to accommodate extra ticketing machines so they can be installed without ripping anything up.
Varga said economic development has been a key part of the Silver Line and while the city didn’t add in tax credits to build around stations, it has put a preference for transit-oriented development. Developments have been popping up near some stations, but it’s not directly attributed to the line.
“I think the Division corridor will be slowly growing over time,” Varga said.
The Rapid is now planning its second BRT route and the Silver Line’s success and educating the community has changed the conversation this time around.
“I think the issue was the shift in understanding of what BRT is to what it really is,” Varga said. “The level of understanding and now how it fits economically has been a big shift in the business community and I think one of the major things that occurred was a better understanding from the general public to see what we were talking about, that it wasn’t just another bus line.
“It was something of a distinctive shift that occurred and as we’re now talking about the Laker Line, people are understanding in a richer way what BRT means, so there’s less of an issue with the public process .”
Varga said the understanding of BRT is growing in the public, but now it’s time for the federal government to change its view as well.
“The federal government is looking at this still as a New Starts project,” he said. “But with what’s really occurring, the federal government needs to look at it in a different way. They have to look at it and realize it’s not New Starts anymore, really BRT is Small Starts now.”
“I think in terms of a larger scope and BRT’s…there has been a shift in looking at BRT very positively as a transit investment and the focus for many years has been on the development of light rail,” Varga continued. “Now in consideration of BRT vs light rail, you’re starting to see it in the large urban areas, the New York Cities, the Chicago’s, that now look at it instead of a rail option.”
Joe Petrie | Associate Editor
I came to Mass Transit in 2013 after spending seven years on the daily newsbeat in southeastern Wisconsin.
Based in Milwaukee, I worked as a daily newspaper reporter with the Waukesha Freeman from 2006-2011, where I covered education, county and state government. I went on to cover courts for Patch.com, where I was the main courts reporter in the Metro Milwaukee cluster of websites.
I’ve won multiple awards during the course of my career and have covered some of the biggest political events in the past decade and have appeared on national programs.
Having covered local government and social issues, I discovered the importance of transit and the impact it can have on communities when implemented, supported and funded.
