The Tide by City of Norfolk.

After years of stagnating ridership, Norfolk hopes to rejuvenate its transit system by modeling it after the City of Richmond’s successful bus system update. Norfolk is hoping to attract more people to its bus networks and expand its light rail system to be more useful to riders throughout the Hampton Roads region.

When the Tide—Virginia’s first and only light rail—was first proposed 20 years ago to connect Hampton Roads’ two largest cities, voters in Virginia Beach overwhelmingly rejected it. Norfolk powered on and completed a line entirely within its city limits in 2011. To the chagrin of the Tide’s detractors, ridership overshot initial estimates of just 2,900 by over 68%. In the eight years since the launch, the number of passengers served each day has hovered around 4,500.

Stable ridership alone won’t help Norfolk reach its goal of 7,130 passengers by 2030, but the city has expert help. Richmond’s former Multimodal Administrator, Amy Inman, is at the helm of Norfolk’s newly-minted Department of Transportation (DOT). Hoping to boost the Tide’s passenger volumes, Inman and other Norfolk city leaders have looked westward to the Greater Richmond Transit Company’s Pulse bus rapid transit (BRT) line for reference.

Despite Richmond’s slightly smaller population, the Pulse has reached an average daily ridership of 7,326. That means within its first year in operation, the Pulse is already beating the passenger volumes Norfolk hopes to achieve within a decade. So can Norfolk do it too?

The Tide by City of Norfolk’s Transportation Division.

What Richmond got right

Leveraging her experience as one of the top players behind Richmond’s transit transformation, Inman knows just what Virginia’s capital got right. By running down Broad Street on an east-west axis across Richmond, the Pulse serviced one of the city’s busiest corridors and linked together Richmond’s hottest neighborhoods (Scott’s Addition and the Arts District), biggest employers (Virginia Commonwealth University, and state and city government), and areas with high transit dependence (downtown and Shockoe Bottom).

Although light rail has become woven into Norfolk’s downtown, the Tide as it is currently built fails to serve several key destinations across the city, such as Military Circle Mall, Norfolk International Airport, and Naval Station Norfolk. Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) is studying how to change that.

Geographic map of The Tide light rail system in Norfolk, Virginia. Image by Pi.1415926535 licensed under Creative Commons.

One possibility under consideration is a new north-south light rail line that would link Naval Station Norfolk (the city’s biggest employer), Old Dominion University (an institution with a student body of 24,932), the airport (which currently has no transit connection at all), and Military Circle Mall (a popular shopping center).

HRT faces a choice as to whether a second light rail line should either pass through “rider-rich urban neighborhoods [like Ghent] or take the path of least resistance along wide suburban highways” to the city’s northeast (and to its detriment), according to GGWash Editorial Board member Dan Malouff. Depending on which route HRT selects, a Tide extension could support another goal of Inman’s: making the Tide the backbone of an integrated transit system.

Over the coming months, Inman plans to lead a city-wide dialogue among transportation planners, local leaders, and residents on how Norfolk could shift its bus routes and expand its light rail to better serve its people.

“We want our redesign in Norfolk to be a modern version of what we did in Richmond,” Inman said. “We can’t talk about light rail without talking about these other multimodal changes. Mobility has to be integrated and work as a system. The Tide can’t thrive on its own.”

Norfolk leads the way

Although it’s just one of the seven major cities that make up Hampton Roads, Norfolk is by far the most urban of the bunch. Out of HRT’s 33 bus routes, 24 pass through Norfolk and nine serve areas exclusively within city limits. After HRT logged a record 18,653 missed trips last year, city leaders realized reliability is the top issue for riders. Norfolk’s higher reliance on transit compared with more suburban localities like Suffolk, Virginia Beach, and Newport News likely explains its willingness to take the lead on rethinking how transit works in Hampton Roads.

Working with Jarrett Walker and Connetics—the firms that helped shape Richmond’s bus route redesign—Norfolk wants to shift its current jumbled web of routes into a clear grid of arterials, with the Tide serving as the backbone of the system.

HRT bus in Norfolk by BeyondDC licensed under Creative Commons.

So what’s Inman’s number one goal for the route redesign? “I’d like for Norfolk to come out of this process with a well thought out transit network of frequent, reliable service where transfers happen throughout the system. We have an opportunity to think broader than traditional public transit in this redesign,” she said. “Of course there will be fiscal constraints, but we don’t have to have constraints on our vision.”

Some residents use multiple transportation apps to piece their commute together, according to Inman, so the city is working with six micromobility companies to see how such services could provide riders with affordable “last-mile” connections, and ensure refocusing transit service towards reliability and efficiency doesn’t reduce coverage. Norfolk is looking into the possibility of creating a “one stop shop mobility app” that would allow riders to switch modes and pay for the bus, light rail, bikeshare, and scooter rides through a single interface.

“We want people to have a seamless connection to microtransit. People shouldn’t have to have several different apps just to get to work in the morning,” said Inman. Such an upgrade would also solve the longstanding issue of the Tide not being fully integrated into HRT’s ticketing system.

A Vision Zero revolution

With pedestrian deaths across the Commonwealth set to hit a record high this year, Richmond’s renewed focus on street safety is quickly becoming a statewide priority. Although Norfolk has not yet adopted Vision Zero, city leadership has already launched a comprehensive push to lower—and one day eliminate—traffic injuries and fatalities, including redesigning streets to boost safety and mobility.

Bicycling in Norfolk by City of Norfolk.

Inman believes a new mindset has taken hold in Norfolk—one in which city leaders see doubling down on the promise of light rail and walkability as the natural path to revitalize and grow urban neighborhoods. “This city wants to be a leader. When you come into the city of Norfolk we want our street design to scream multimodal. I want us to be a place where the vision of multimodal life can become a reality.”

While shifting the built environment of a city from a car-centric landscape to one that prioritizes people will likely take generations, Norfolk has begun tackling low-hanging fruit. As Inman’s 70-person-strong DOT began updating its traffic signal system earlier this year, they made leading pedestrian intervals the standard. A few seconds to start crossing the street before cars begin turning may not seem like a lot, but it helps protect people on foot in a city that long put their needs behind those of cars.

Tired of witnessing her coworkers engage in a high-stakes game of Frogger at the intersection of Saint Paul’s Boulevard and Main Street in front of City Hall, Inman had her traffic engineers program the light with one of Norfolk’s first pedestrian-only light cycles. This means cars on all sides sit still as people cross what was once a dangerous intersection. Similar safety improvements should be rolled out first at intersections where drivers have killed people, and then around areas of high foot traffic such as libraries, schools, and community centers.

One of the more visible signs of Norfolk’s multimodal design spree has been the proliferation of bike lanes and bike boxes around town. Inman says the green paint springing up at junctions across the city is just one way Norfolk “wants multimodal users to know they have a place in our system.” Once the bus route redesign is complete sometime next year, the DOT plans to install dedicated lanes that will not only serve HRT’s bus fleet but also cyclists, scooter riders, and school buses.

New bike lanes by City of Norfolk.

A collaborative approach

Norfolk’s DOT plans to spend the rest of the year coming up with a data collection and public involvement plan so that an extensive community outreach process can hit the ground running on January 1, 2020. The city plans to deploy a mix of stakeholder engagement, surveys, and public fora to understand what Norfolk wants out of its bus route redesign.

Seeing as constituent demands triggered Norfolk’s transit rethink, Inman is confident she has the right partners on board to ensure this is a substantive dialogue with the public: “Engagement begins with the City Council members. They know their constituents and Norfolk’s communities best.”

Kelly Straub, a Public Relations Specialist with the city, hopes the process will get residents to step outside their bubbles and listen to one another. “While you may not be riding the light rail or the scooter, other people in our city rely on those to get around,” said Straub.

At all meetings for the route redesign, Inman begins by reminding attendees that people and their needs must be at the heart of every decision the City of Norfolk and HRT make.

“This isn’t just a big modeling exercise. This isn’t algorithms. We want to talk to people and figure out where they live and where they need to go. Everybody has a voice and everyone needs to be at the table because at the end of the day this is a public transit system, and it needs to work for the public,” said Inman.