Christopher Haxel

Lansing State Journal

EAST LANSING - If 6,000 passengers actually ride the Route 1 bus in a given month, Bill Collette has offered to eat his hat.

The Ingham County Circuit Court judge was sitting in a restaurant near the bus route, which Capital Area Transportation Authority officials hope to replace with a $133 million bus rapid transit line.

“I just saw one go by,” he said, pointing out the window toward Grand River Avenue. “There's nobody on it. And this is the way it normally is all day long out here."

CATA says it serves up 1.7 million annual rides on the route, which runs from the state Capitol and past the Michigan State University campus before ending at Meridian Mall.

And it says a BRT line along that route, which would use elements of a light rail system such as stations and exclusive rights of way to create a mass transit system that is faster and more reliable than traditional bus service, would have a long list of upsides.

It would bring $99 million in federal money, faster cross-region travel and reduced congestion, they say. It could spur smarter, denser development along the 8.5-mile corridor and help convince a young and educated workforce to make the region home.

“It is the future," said CATA CEO Sandy Draggoo. "It is something that we could bring to the region that would change things, that would bring economic development.”

Collette, who is part of a group that calls itself STOP CATA’S BRT, was being cheeky with the hat eating comments, but his doubt is real. And his group, which mostly consists of Meridian Township residents, has been joined in opposition by the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, Michigan State University and the Meridian Township Board.

Critics say the plan would hurt local businesses, endanger pedestrians, waste taxpayer dollars and increase traffic congestion.

Their opposition has been potent enough that CATA is set to offer a slate of alternatives that could alter the original plan significantly but also potentially address many of the naysayers’ concerns.

But there is a vital question that will be harder to answer: Does the project really have the potential to create transformational change for the region’s most important corridor?

Growth of BRT

As recently as 10 years ago, few people in the United States had even heard of bus rapid transit, said Christopher Zimmerman, a vice president of Smart Growth America, a nonprofit that advocates for walkable communities and denser urban development.

But because many cities want to improve their public transportation systems in an era where funding for big-ticket projects is unusually tight, interest in BRT is growing rapidly, he said.

It’s a system that can be almost as good as light rail or significantly cheaper than rail.

"Those things can both be true but they’re not going to simultaneously be true," he said.

And, while rail lines require certain components, Zimmerman described BRT lines as “amorphous.”

Almost all have actual stations, as opposed to the shelters or signs found along traditional bus routes. The stations sell tickets, so riders don’t have to pay after boarding the bus, and frequently have raised platforms, which allow people in wheelchairs to board quickly. Many BRT systems receive signal priority, giving buses a head start over other traffic or a few extra seconds to catch a green light.

But dedicated lanes for buses are what experts say differentiates true BRT from BRT “lite.” And dedicated lanes are at least a part of every plan or alternative CATA has proposed.

In Grand Rapids, where the BRT serves a dense area that includes Grand Rapids Community College and tens of thousands of workers along the city’s Medical Mile, the BRT line generally runs in mixed traffic except for a few places downtown during the morning and afternoon rush hours.

The downtown loop is free to ride. The rest of the line requires a regular bus fare and runs along a thoroughfare that resembles South Cedar Street in Lansing, with plenty of fast food restaurants, strip malls and auto body shops. A parking lot with about 200 spaces for commuters sits at the line’s terminus, about 7 miles south of the downtown loop.

CATA officials say a similar system would be inappropriate for Lansing because there are major employers, schools and shopping centers throughout the Route 1 corridor.

“This is not like many BRTs where you pick people up and take them to the urban core,” said Debbie Alexander, who is managing the project for CATA. “This BRT is about taking people from a place where they live to a place where they want to do their business, whether that's work, medical, shopping, entertainment, whatever.”

Alexander said the BRT that most closely resembles CATA’s original vision is Cleveland’s HealthLine. It's been hailed as one of the country’s BRT success stories, but it's also a line that runs through a city much larger than Lansing and along a densely populated route.

CATA officials hope to emulate the HealthLine's center-running bus lanes, predicting that they would help shave about 10 minutes off current Capitol-to-Meridian Mall travel times. (That trip recently took a State Journal reporter 36 minutes to complete).

But the center-run lanes would require a median that limits left turns to major intersections, a major sticking point for some residents and business owners — especially in Meridian Township — who say the restriction would hurt local businesses.

Meridian Township’s board, which has no formal role in the project, formally opposed CATA’s plan in July. The Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce also cited the center-running lanes as a major concern when it came out against the plan in August.

MSU officials, meanwhile, have said center-run lanes next to campus could make it harder for pedestrians to cross Grand River Avenue, and that narrower medians would limit space for people to stand.

In a Sept. 2015 letter to CATA, MSU Vice President for Governmental Affairs Mark Burnham wrote that the university’s support for the project depends largely on pedestrian safety.

MSU President Lou Anna Simon was more direct, writing to Draggoo in June 2015 that she continues to have “very serious and unanswered questions about the overall BRT project.”

“As such,” she wrote, “we are not able to support the overall BRT project as it is currently conceived.”

CATA has maintained that pedestrian safety can be addressed as the design progresses.

MSU, Meridian Township and the chamber of commerce can't technically block the BRT. The roads in question belong to the city of Lansing and the state. But local opposition could be a factor in the federal government's support of the project.

Impact on development

Draggoo and Alexander have said BRT will be “transformative” for the region, spurring economic development and attracting millennial workers.

Downtown East Lansing and the Stadium District already feature dense, mixed-use development, and projects totaling hundreds of millions of dollars along the Route 1 corridor are in various stages of completion.

CATA officials say those developments will worsen congestion on the roads, but also present an opportunity to spur more construction that, if served by a BRT line, could snowball and eventually connect the development dots.

“Our leadership in this region (has) told us that they want this to be the main street,” Alexander said.

“The community needs to make a decision,” she added. “Are you serious about becoming a world-class, advanced, growing community that is going to (convince) Michigan State University students to stay here?”

“We're saying we can help facilitate that,” she said.

It's true that public transit can be a draw for educated young adults.

“Very clearly, in every kind of survey or market study that’s done, they are less enamored of driving and want public transportation,” Zimmerman said.

But he noted that BRT is not a “silver bullet” in terms of economic development.

"There has been and continues to be a question about the degree to which BRT can catalyze development the way rail can,” he said. “And I think the honest answer... is that we don't know, because we haven't had enough experience with that yet."

A 2015 study from the University of Utah’s Metropolitan Research Center found that high-quality BRT systems in large cities did spur development, but Zimmerman said researchers need more data and time to have “really good answers.”

On a mobile device? Click here to see what Michigan Avenue could look like with BRT.

While there may not be enough data to pinpoint the benefits of BRT, that hasn’t stopped the Federal Transit Administration from funding such projects across the country, even in cities not much larger than Lansing, such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Eugene, Oregon.

Nor has it stopped Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero from backing CATA's BRT proposal enthusiastically.

The fact that other local stakeholders haven't been quite so enthusiastic is “disappointing," Draggoo said.

“We've been listening, and we've been addressing those concerns,” she said.

Mary Hoenshell, one of the anti-BRT group’s organizers, might consider supporting the project if it drops center-run lanes in Meridian Township. But she has larger concerns that have little to do with the details of the project.

“What is progress, with having businesses go out of business so that some developer can come in and build some big high-rise?” she asked. “I didn't move to Meridian Township because I want to be in an urban area. I want to be in suburbia.”

Kelsey Nyland, by contrast, said she would love to see the BRT built.

"I've heard of it in other cities, and it just seems much more efficient, and it seems like my time would be better spent," the MSU doctoral student said, looking up at the rain as she waited on Michigan Avenue for a Route 1 bus to take her to campus.

Nyland owns a car but rides the bus almost every day. She said most of her friends support the project.

"I've seen some (anti-BRT) signs," she said. "I'm surprised at some of the arguments, people worried about losing business. I would normally think it would get people further out there."

BRT route options

The five new options that Alexander and Draggoo outlined at a CATA board meeting on Sept. 21 include dropping the center-run lanes through Meridian Township or leaving the township out of the project altogether by shortening the BRT route.

A shorter route would create a “Capitol to campus” line, which chamber officials had requested. It would end the BRT somewhere near the MSU campus but require passengers traveling past the university to transfer back onto a regular bus at the BRT’s terminus.

Another option includes a loop into Frandor Shopping Center, which isn't part of the original plan. Alexander stressed that various elements of the proposals could be mixed and matched if board members so desire.

“More work would need to be done to determine if any of these ideas are viable,” Draggoo told the board.

CATA plans to host three community presentations next week to present new ideas and solicit feedback.

Board chair Bob Swanson said after the meeting that he would be “shocked” if members don’t eventually integrate some of the modifications into the plan.

Lansing’s BRT is currently in the Small Starts pipeline, which Alexander stressed isn’t a fire-and-forget application but rather a process that involves close work with FTA officials.

She said the project is at the 30% design phase, which means there’s still room for plenty of changes and none of the actual engineering has even begun.

It’s unclear whether altering the BRT plan would delay the project, but Draggoo told board members that changes are common with FTA projects of a similar nature.

But if CATA is offering a slate of alternative alignments, Draggoo has not backed down from her assertion that the project will continue to move forward, opening as soon as 2018.

"The mayor says let’s go,” Draggoo said. “We have a board of directors that has the authority to move the project."

“It’s got to be that we make it go.”

Contact Christopher Haxel at 517-377-1261 or chaxel@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisHaxel.

BRT update presentations

East Lansing

Hannah Community Center

819 Abbot Road

Monday, Oct. 3, 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Lansing

Allen Neighborhood Center

1611 E. Kalamazoo St.

Tuesday, Oct. 4, 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Meridian Township

Okemos Masonic Center

2175 Hamilton Road

Wednesday, Oct. 5, 6-7 p.m.

BRT alternatives

CATA originally proposed a bus rapid transit system that would run from the Capitol to Meridian Mall mostly using dedicated center lanes. In response to critics, CATA officials have proposed five possible alternatives.

Alternative 1

8.5 miles

$140 million-$145 million

Same as the current plan until Hagadorn Road, then transitions from dedicated center-running lanes to dedicated side-running lanes until Meridian Mall.

Alternative 2

8.5 miles

$125 million-$130 million

Same as the current plan until Hagadorn Road, then transitions from dedicated center-running lanes to mixed traffic until Meridian Mall.

Alternative 3

4.8 miles

$105 million-$110 million

The eastern end is the Delta/Grand River/Michigan triangle, where a transfer station would be built. Regular bus service takes passengers from the triangle to Meridian Mall. Would require additional land purchases for the transfer station.

Alternative 4

5.6 miles

$100 million-$105 million

The eastern end is near the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. A transfer station would be built at the current bus cutout just west of the museum. Regular bus service takes passengers from the museum to Meridian Mall. Also includes a loop from Michigan Avenue to Frandor Shopping Center, which would require property acquisition.

Alternative 5

5.6 miles

$100 million-$105 million

The eastern end is the Division Street parking garage. The bus would loop from Grand River Avenue to Charles Street to Albert Avenue to Division Street and back onto Grand River Avenue. A transfer station would be built at the existing cutout on the north side of the garage. Regular bus service takes passengers from the garage to Meridian Mall.