Burlington’s leaders have given the green light to a two-part transit plan that contains operational suggestions for the city’s Link Transit bus system as well as recommendations for its brick-and-mortar facilities.
Burlington’s city council unanimously accepted this bipartite proposal last Tuesday after a consultant in the city’s employ went over the details of this figurative road map for the 9-year-old bus system, which currently serves locations in Burlington and four other communities.
Mary Kate Morookian with the firm Kimley Horn conceded that a great deal of effort had gone into shaping this plan so it would not only meet the needs of the bus system’s passengers but do so at a price that the city can swing.
Morookian said that, in the case of the bus system’s operations, her task was to come up with ways to streamline the service without any increase at all in its cost.
“Our goal was to make as many improvements as we could within the current budget,” the consultant explained in her report to the council. “We tried to adjust routes to make them as straight and efficient as possible to reduce the trip times…We wanted to get all routes to 60 minutes without increasing the budget, and we were able to achieve that with all but one of the routes.”
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The result of the consultant’s labors is a reorganization of the bus system’s five-color coded routes into six, less-circuitous routes – and a new, “on-demand” shuttle service for the northeastern part of the city.
Morookian said that the only route that will retain its current 90-minute cycle under the proposed reorganization is the orange line, which ventures as far east as Mebane with intervening stops at Alamance County’s headquarters and the main campus of Alamance Community College in Graham. Meanwhile, the rest of the bus system’s route map has been systematically overhauled to cut a half hour or more from the current maximum trip time.
Among the more noteworthy revisions is the creation of a new “pink” route from the downtown leg of the system’s blue route. The remainder of the blue route, which extends into Elon and Gibsonville, would then be combined with a stretch of the red route that reaches west Burlington to produce a more geographically localized trajectory.
Another significant change is the proposed addition of a “yellow” route to connect the public buildings in downtown Burlington with the county’s human services center in east Burlington and the county’s headquarters in Graham. In the meantime, the bus system’s green route, which serves some of Burlington’s denser, older, and less affluent neighborhoods, would be discontinued in favor of a new “on-demand” service, whose shuttles would be better able to navigate the tight fits in this part of the city.
Morookian told the council that these proposed changes have gone over well with the bus system’s patrons, whose opinions were sounded both before and after the new route map’s development.
“For the most part,” she added, “people are just really excited about the increased frequency and the opportunity for shorter, more direct routes.”
Morookian told the council that the proposed improvements in this transit development plan are intended to be phased in over a period of five years. In the meantime, she said that the city can also give some attention to Link Transit’s stationary infrastructure, which currently includes an operations and maintenance base in a rented building near the Burlington-Alamance Airport and a rudimentary transfer hub that comprises some covered benches along the 200 block of Worth Street – not far from the city’s police station.
As part of her assignment, Morookian was asked to find new, more permanent homes for the transfer hub and the operations and maintenance HQ. She told the council that she began her search by identifying 117 locations within a mile of the bus system’s existing transfer hub that could fit one or both these facilities.
Morookian said that, in the case of the new transfer hub, she zeroed in on locations within a half mile of the makeshift grand central that can accommodate several idling buses, charging stations for the bus system’s electric vehicles and an air conditioned building. She added that, after evaluating several dozen possible sites the top contender for this facility was a city-owned parking lot at 704 South Spring Street.
“It is already publicly owned,” Morookian went on to emphasize as she summed up this location’s assets. “It is an underutilized public parking lot that is a half mile from the current transfer hub. It’s flat, it’s graded, and it has additional space.”
Meanwhile, Morookian said that she reviewed another batch of sites for the proposed operations and maintenance base. She added that the high scorer in this assessment was a vacant, privately-owned parcel at 1155 North Church Street. According to county land records, this 3.4-acre tract, which is situated near the juncture of North Church and North Main streets, currently belongs to Lisa F. Kirkpatrick. But in Morookian’s estimation, it would be an ideal acquisition for Link Transit’s needs.
“It is a mile from the current transfer hub and a potential brownfield candidate,” the consultant explained. “We want this to be a really modern potential community facility, and we think that this site provides the space and the opportunity for that.”
Morookian told the council that both of these sites have been submitted to the U.S. Transportation Department for further evaluation, and if all goes well, the city will be able to seek funds from the federal agency to cover the lion’s share of the cost to develop facilities at these two locations.
In the end, Morookian’s suggestions for the bus system’s facilities and its operations were warmly received by the city council.
Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler was particularly pleased with the “budget neutral” revisions to the system’s route map as well as the prospect of federal grants to cover the other half of the consultant’s recommendations.
“So, it would have no significant budgetary impact,” Butler declared as he reflected on the bus system’s overall cost to the city. “What we do with a very limited amount of monetary resources is phenomenal,” he added. “I would say that there is no municipality gets more bang for its buck, and everyone should be very proud of that.”
Meanwhile, the bus system’s value to its regular users proved especially cogent to the city’s mayor pro tem Harold Owen.
“The people who need it the most are the ones we always have to keep in mind,” he told the rest of the council, “because this is their main way of getting from point A to point B.”
“It’s very empowering,” chimed in council member Dejuana Bigelow.
The council went on to vote 5-to-0 to accept the full complement of recommendations, which Butler insisted are going to be brought to fruition sooner rather than later.
“This is a plan that doesn’t go on a shelf,” he added. “It will get utilized.”
