× Expand Illustration by Linas Garsys

Once Richmond led the world in public transportation. Today it is dead last.

In February 1888, Frank Sprague’s Richmond Union Passenger Railway began operation with 10 electric streetcars — the first such system in the world. Nearly 130 years later, the Richmond area trails the world’s 500 largest cities with the smallest footprint of full-service public transportation, according to my research as part of RVA Rapid Transit.

Yet, in the strange alchemy of human history, this poverty presents metro Richmond with an extraordinary opportunity for community development — but only if we move fast. The next 10 years will decide whether we want to be a real city or one more metropolis of unmitigated sprawl.

The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) in December published a vision plan for public transportation for metropolitan Richmond. It calls for bus rapid transit — seven-day-a-week, 16-hour-a-day service every 15 to 20 minutes — along six major lines stretching to Richmond’s beltway and beyond. The full report is online.

× Expand BRT schematic map (Image courtesy Benjamin P. Campbell)

As outlined, the Greater RVA Transit Vision Plan would be completed by 2040 — but that’s far too late. Right at this moment, planners estimate that at least 55 percent of our jobs will be accessible to transit through this program. Ten years from now, that will not be true.

The Route 288/Interstate 295 beltway, constructed at a state and federal cost of $1.1 billion from 1980 to 2000, is a ticking time bomb for development of public transportation. Even though metropolitan Richmond has room within the beltway to at least double its population, the beltway is determining where the newest automobile-centered development will go, pushing it to the forests and cheaper land of the surrounding counties.

Richmond began because a wide, navigable river was here. Then came railroads, then streetcars, then superhighways, then beltways. And now, in almost all other major cities in the world, there is fast, reliable public transportation. In America’s 30 largest cities today, 80 percent of the development is taking place around bus rapid transit (BRT), light rail or subway stations.

How did metropolitan Richmond come to have such a small footprint of public transportation? It is, to tell the truth (and telling the truth would help a lot in this situation), an artifact of racial segregation.

When federal courts struck down racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, Virginia’s General Assembly had in its hand a tool to maintain segregation not available to any other state in the North or South — a system of 41 independent “cities” that were not a part of any county. Historically, Virginia’s independent “cities” expanded periodically to take in new suburban development and reflect economic growth. But by 1970, few of Virginia’s historic “cities” represented their actual urban areas. Metro Richmond was already 250 percent larger than the historic “city” of Richmond. The General Assembly ended the right of the historic “cities” to expand, so that the newer schools and neighborhoods developing around them could preserve a high degree of racial segregation.

By 1970, metro Richmond had replaced its unified public transportation system with a dual transportation system. New expressways and boulevards, built through inner-city neighborhoods, served the new, segregated housing in the counties. But buses from the center stopped at the historic “city” line.

Nearly 50 years later, not much has changed. Viewed today as an economic region, metro Richmond is 1,200 square miles, taking in Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover counties. The historic “city” is 62 square miles. Confined to that tiny scrap of land, public transportation STOPS DEAD on U.S. routes 1, 250, 60 and 360. It doesn’t go to the airport, to the train station, to the community colleges. The GRTC Pulse Bus Rapid Transit segment set to open this fall will only run from Willow Lawn to Rocketts Landing.

Of course this hurts low-income people. Of course it hurts minorities and older people, students, immigrants and tourists — and anyone who prefers public transportation to sitting in traffic. But the greatest damage is to the community of metro Richmond. We stand by our divisions like tired Confederate pickets on the battle lines, while pretending that we no longer cling to segregation. Meanwhile, our inner life as a city — and our marketability all over this nation and world — diminish daily.

The state provided a mechanism for Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia — 7/10 of a cent on the sales tax — for regional transportation. Metropolitan Richmond would jump to the top of the world’s cities simply by using that mechanism to install a full BRT network. It would take less than five years! Almost immediately, we would be one of the nation’s top cities in access to jobs and residences.

Once, Richmond led the world in public transportation.

The Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell is co-chair of Metro Clergy for Rapid Transit, a member of the board of RVA Rapid Transit, a pastoral associate at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and pastor emeritus at Richmond Hill.