“Nothing you’re seeing here today is final. And I really want to stress that.”
— Jarred Toups, Foursquare
At the Restorative Justice Center on Broadway Avenue in Kingston on November 13, project manager of Foursquare ITP (Integrated Transportation Planning) Jarred Toups stood in front of a laptop screen projected on the wall and shared insights collected from an Ulster County Area Transit (UCAT) transit survey.
“The two most popular goals we heard were frequency and coverage,” said Toups. “The number-one request was increased frequency.”
The first of two presentations to be held that day was lightly attended. Toups explained to attendees that the survey presented a series of tradeoff questions designed to determine how existing transit users and non-riders would choose to allocate limited resources. It was part of the route optimization study under way since February. That study aims to discover the best way to arrange bus routes so riders can get where they need to go faster and with fewer delays as UCAT’s numbers continue to grow. For the first time in the transit agency’s history, UCAT is set to surpass ridership numbers of a half a million individual rides. With six weeks left in the year, 474,979 riders have been clocked so far. Ridership has surpassed 40,000 a month every month since January.
The conundrum, as always, is how best to address pockets of underserved residents wherever they may be in the 1161 square miles of the county, while remaining attentive to the cost of fuel, the maintenance of infrastructure and vehicles, and the wages and benefits necessary to attracting drivers to operate buses in an expanding transit system.
Because density more than any other factor determines the effectiveness and efficiency of a public transportation system, the most populated municipal centers are prioritized for service.
The City of Kingston has a population density of 3210 people per square mile. Downtown New Paltz reports 4388 people per square mile. In its urban area, Ellenville reports 2048 people per square mile. These municipal centers also report higher concentrations of jobs, another indicator of increased ridership numbers.
The highest density blocks of Kingston host an estimated 17 jobs per acre. There are eight jobs per acre in the highest-density blocks of New Paltz.
“Travel in and out of Kingston was definitely the predominant patterns we saw following the major highways,” said Toups.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Pine Hill — almost at the northwestern border of the county, with a population of 360 in 2022, less than one person per acre, and an employment density of less than one job per acre — might have been left out in the cold. But nothing could be further from the truth. Route Z buses from Belleayre to Woodstock and Kingston stop at the intersection of Main and Elm streets eleven times on weekdays and six on Saturdays. The same bus that provides service at 8:58 a.m. returns at 9:08, 11:38 bus returns at 11:48, and so forth. Is that concentrating UCAT’s limited resources in areas where it will benefit the most residents?
“A lot of the county really lacks the density that’s associated with successful fixed [route service,” Toups explained. The south of the county suffers from the most gaps in service relative to its population.
Ulster County director of planning Dennis Doyle acknowledged the inequity.
“Marlborough’s asking for service. Wallkill’s asking for service,” said Doyle. “We started to think that maybe what we can do is provide microtransit … down in the southern half of the county, two days a week. So it’s not a fixed group service, it’s microtransit service, but it’s more service than they have right now.”
Even with fareless service, everything comes at a cost.
“You may have a free fixed-route system,” said Doyle, “but microtransit may have lots of minor charges associated with it. To be practical, to be real about it, there’s got to be money coming from somewhere.”
With a service analysis now complete, Foursquare’s study team has released preliminary recommendations, presented in two scenarios of numbered, color-coded bus routes, with various changes described along the paths of the routes.
Toups came under fire from meeting attendees immediately.
In both scenarios presented, the mile-long section of Kingston along Wilbur Avenue still lacked bus service. With no sidewalks, a senior living assisted facility along the road and the ongoing development of 146 combined acres of publicly accessible forests underway, meeting attendees thought of a bus running through that section of town as a no-brainer.
“I could recall riding the bus in Kingston when the Citibus still operated,” said Julia Cross. “I remember the C bus used to travel through the Wilbur Avenue. We also had the A bus, which traveled solely up and down Broadway.”
Neither scenario included weekend service between Kingston and Woodstock.
Eddyville, St Remy/Rifton, Wallkill and Marlborough still lacked bus service.
The meeting began to lose focus. Attendees picked favorite issues relevant to their experience and expectations. Toups invited those gathered to inspect printed maps of both versions of the suggested new routes, which were mounted on easels around the room.
Getting the service on the road tomorrow, said Toups, meant overcoming two big challenges. A driver-operating shortage “is a nationwide issue that was already somewhat of a problem before Covid, and Covid really just exacerbated it.”
The second challenge, as he saw it, was a lack of awareness among the public of the complexity of the decision-making involved in transit and vehicle infrastructure issues.
“Right now, UCAT has their main facility just in Kingston, and having a bus start all the way as far down as Ellenville, you have to be able to send the bus driver all the way down there and all the way back,” he said. “As UCAT looks at converting to electric fleet …where are all of our chargers, how far can the vehicles go on a single charge, does everything have to return to one spot to charge?”
Pending input from the public and stakeholders, finalized recommendations of the routes are expected to be introduced by springtime.
To take part in the survey, go to https://app.maptionnaire.com/q/ucat-rop.
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