A City Council meeting on Wednesday rewarded the hard work of 11 months of data analysis from Phoenix transportation specialists, by approving the addition of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route on 35th Avenue and Van Buren Street.
This marks one of the first steps of BRT’s expansion to redesign Phoenix transit as a key component of Transportation2050, the 35-year public transit plan voted into action in 2015.
The item was presented for consideration by Jesus Sapien, the public transit director for Phoenix. Council members gathered with officials from the transportation subcommittee and BRT staff to discuss potential corridors that would cater best to the city’s layout. The goal of said corridors, as described by Sara Kotecki, city of Phoenix BRT program administrator, is to provide accessible, reliable and efficient transportation to the communities that need it most.
“BRT offers design flexibility,” Kotecki said. “And there are common recurring elements found in successful BRT systems.”
BRT features six of these elements that set it apart as an elevated transportation option, from updated technology and equipment, to priority road-access points. Some specific components such as enhanced bus stations, advanced mobile-phone fare collection, and potential dedicated lanes set a higher standard for quicker daily travel.
Additional feature details can be found on the Bus Rapid Transit government website.
Beyond the advances of the system itself, The BRT team conducted research in three major categories in potential sites to synthesize which routes showed the most promise.
“This was a data-driven process,” Kotecki said. “We took a three-pronged approach, we looked at transit propensity, transit performance and ridership forecasting.”
These three main facets demonstrate the desire to prioritize community needs. Transit propensity, in particular, closely examines a variety of socioeconomic and geographic factors of Phoenix citizens, in order to locate where the system can benefit the most people.
Kotecki’s presentation stated that data was accumulated on employment, income, minority communities, those with disabilities, zero-automobile households, minors and the elderly, who had the highest need for efficient transit options.
“We have a commitment to deliver BRT to the fifth-largest city in the US,” said Kotecki, whose goals support representing these members of the community equitably.
BRT members also conducted elements of research during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to uncover patterns in each potential area, and to track any changes from the norm. Matthew Taunton, the consultant project manager for BRT, explained how the findings supported the implementation of a BRT route regardless of fluctuations.
“We had inventoried all bus routes within the city as part of the community engagement process … and we conducted the same transit analysis using data from this past fall,” said Taunton. “While the total system ridership is down, the trend lines remain very much the same.” He provided a map-layout comparison to help visualize this consistency.
BRT also covered its extensive community outreach efforts, which included a series of surveys, in-person interviews and virtual meetings to gather concerns and feedback, answering over 115 questions about the project.
After presentations, the remainder of the meeting was left for council members to vote on the BRT addition to 35th Avenue and Van Buren Street, which, in the words of Councilwoman Debra Stark, “passed unanimously” with a 4-0 vote in its favor.
As for the future of Phoenix transit services, Kotecki explained the next steps of the Bus Rapid Transit program to branch out to additional corridors along strong east-west contenders, possibly including routes on Camelback and 24th streets, and Thomas and 44th streets.
Contact the reporter at screvelt@asu.edu.
Sophia Crevelt is a staff reporter at Downtown Devil, pursuing a degree in journalism and mass communication at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School and Barrett, The Honors College. She works in public relations and reporting, with strong interests in arts and entertainment, community, poetry, music and film.
