Transportation / Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

Parking the Cars

“There is an understanding that we can’t continue to grow the number of automobiles coming in and using city streets,” says Cynthia Hoyle, transportation planning consultant for the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (CUMTD). Home to the University of Illinois, the 140-square-mile planning region covers the City of Champaign, the City of Urbana, the Village of Savoy, and the Village of Bondville. A committee of representatives from each of the regions, as well as the university, the Illinois Department of Transportation, the CUMTD, and several nonprofits, is currently well into the second phase of its Mobility Implementation Plan, or miPLAN, a program created to enhance mobility choices in the region.

During phase one of miPLAN, the program’s committee conducted market analysis, surveyed current transportation trends, compared Champaign-Urbana to a number of similar size regions as well as larger regions to help guide future growth, gathered information by using the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index to determine the impact of transportation costs at a neighborhood level in the region, and collected input from the community through a series of public meetings to identify the transportation modes that residents are most in need of, both now and in the future. Phase two involves implementing solutions, to the greatest extent possible, for the discoveries of phase one.

Although the majority of the region’s commuters currently drive personal vehicles (80 percent in Champaign, 69 percent in Urbana), the committee found that a good many of them cannot really afford to. In 2007 the miPLAN committee partnered with the Center for Neighborhood Technology to determine the affordability of regional transportation trends. While living on or near the university campus—where walkability is high, housing costs are low, and transit access is reasonable—is quite affordable; families living on the outskirts of the CUMTD region and earning an annual salary of less than $30,000 cannot afford the costs of the vehicles that often become their main form of transportation.

As of 2009, nearly 90 percent of the region’s 130,000 residents now live within a quarter mile of a weekday bus route, the average work commute is under 15 minutes, and an annual transit pass can be had for a lean $60 (down from $235 in 2008). Sales of annual passes spiked to 3,300 the first year the fee was reduced.

“Now that doesn’t sound like a lot,” says Bill Volk, managing director for CUMTD, but considering that more than a third of the region’s residents, 54,000 people, already have access to discounted passes through the university ($48 a year for students, free for staff), the increase in sales was significant. “And so far this fiscal year,” Volk says, “we’re almost 100 passes above what we sold last year—with only a minimal loss of revenue.”

The district also implemented a revised metropolitan route network within the downtown/university region that includes four routes operating on 10-minute frequencies, “so that if you do bring a car into the core, you won’t need it to move around,” Volk says, “and that has increased ridership.”

Transit Efficiency

As ridership increases, so does the efficiency of the fleet. In August 2009 the district began upgrading its gas-powered fleet with the addition of nine hybrid buses and will soon introduce 22 more, retiring inefficient buses along the way. With the help of grant funding from the Illinois EPA, roughly half of the 50 buses on the fleet have also been retrofitted with diesel particulate filters, an upgrade that helps to prevent asthma, lung damage, and other health effects among residents.

Walkable, Bikeable Streets

Beyond hybrid buses and cheaper passes, the cities have been allocating funds to revamp car-centric roadways that have been historically unsafe for pedestrians and bicycles.  Investments include creating bike lanes, building refuge islands for pedestrians at bus stops, installing additional sidewalks and larger sidewalk cafés (any café with outdoor seating alongside the sidewalk), adding bus shelters, and improving the lighting on poorly lit streets. “You can’t just say ‘you can’t drive vehicles anymore,’ ” says transportation planning consultant Cynthia Hoyle. “You have to provide alternatives, and so there’s been a concerted effort—starting with the Long Range Transportation Plan—to elevate pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit in planning.”

Efforts are also being made to encourage residents who have typically relied on personal vehicles for the majority of their transit needs to try biking or walking. To this end, the CUMTD has been working with local organizations and nonprofits to educate the public (PDF) and motivate residents by sponsoring speakers on the benefits of "active transportation," holding bike commuting classes to promote safe cycling, hosting bike to work days, and participating in Safe Routes to School, a national program that aims to make walking or biking to school a safe and viable transportation option for school children.