IMPACT: Fares, convenience part of bus ridership lagDate: 8/21/2023 Transportation is a necessity in modern life, but for people in the lower Pioneer Valley, where population centers are farther apart, public transportation can be a lifeline for those who work, attend school or need childcare. Despite this, riders consistently express a need for more frequent runs and direct routes to underserved locations.
In Hampden and Hampshire counties, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority operates bus service within cities and between metropolitan areas.
“Ridership continues to recover steadily from the declines experienced during the pandemic,” said PVTA Director of Transit Operations Paul Burns-Johnson. “Current ridership has increased to nearly 7 million passenger trips for [fiscal year] 2023, which is about 70% of pre-pandemic ridership, up from a low of 38% in FY21.
With ridership still lagging post-COVID-19, the question is why have riders not returned to full bus usage?
“In surveys, PVTA riders consistently indicate a demand for additional service frequency, later service and better weekend service,” said Burns-Johnson. “They also indicate a demand for more service to outlying communities and for connections to areas outside of PVTA’s service area. For example, riders indicated in surveys a desire for connections from Amherst to Greenfield, as well as service to Enfield and connections to both the [Franklin Regional Transit Authority] and the CT Transit.”
Similarly, comments submitted online to Union Station, a major hub for PVTA buses, overwhelmingly ask for more frequent buses and new routes to underserved places. Nicole Sweeney, commercial property manager for Appleton Corporation, which manages Union Station, said she sees many customers who want a route directly from Springfield to Six Flags, which does not exist.
With public demand high, PVTA has invested in some new routes in recent years. The G73 provides a direct connection from Northampton to Springfield with a stop at the Holyoke Mall. The B79 is an intercity route between Amherst and Worcester. From there, people can pick up the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Commuter Service to Boston from Worcester’s Union Station.
However, driver staffing shortages had led PVTA to suspend routes, reduce the frequency of runs and change stops in the past few years.
“PVTA is absolutely heroic in getting people where they need to go,” Sweeney said. “There will never be enough routes or enough buses to satisfy everyone.”
The price of bus travel may also be a factor in ridership. Fares were last raised in 2018, with a 20% increase. A single ride is $1.50, while a one-day pass is $3.50 and a 31-day pass is $54. There are discounts for those under the age of 13, over age 65 or those with mobility impairments.
Sweeney cited a brief period of fare-less rides in December 2022. While buses were free to ride, ridership through Union Station increased by 54% over ridership the same month in 2021.
“If you can remove some barriers, people will absolutely take mass transit,” Sweeney said.
She added that many of the people who took a bus to Union Station for the first time because the bus was free, spent money with the shops and vendors at the station, increasing their revenue as well. “It would be a huge benefit to the economy.”
However, Burns-Johnson said that fares comprised just 17% of PVTA’s total revenue before the coronavirus pandemic.
“PVTA has always relied on state and federal funding to provide the funds needed to operate the transit system. We are hopeful that the commonwealth will continue to provide the level of funding needed to ensure a more robust transportation service.” Pandemic-era funding through the federal pandemic relief CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act “allowed PVTA to absorb the loss of revenue in the short term,” he said.
Aside from federal and state subsidies, PVTA has recently applied for grant funding through a partnership with the Franklin Regional Transit Authority and the Amherst Council on Aging, to “provide improved connections for seniors and people with disabilities between Amherst and Greenfield with stops in the towns of Shutesbury, Leverett, Sunderland and Deerfield,” Burns-Johnson explained.
One of the other reasons there are not more bus routes in the Pioneer Valley is because “We don’t have a robust public transportation culture like they do in eastern Massachusetts. People are just now realizing” that they can take public transportation places they once associated with the need to drive.
The bus is not the only form of regional transportation in Western Massachusetts. While PVTA customers make up between 80% and 90% of ridership that goes through Union Station, the remaining riders are split roughly evenly between intercity bus lines such as Peter Pan and Greyhound, and rail carriers Amtrak and CTRail’s Hartford Line, according to Sweeney.
Train passengers “tend to skew older,” Sweeney said, in part due to the cost of rail travel as opposed to bus travel. While some people use trains for their daily commute if they work in Hartford or New Haven, most rail passengers are traveling out of the region. People who have a hybrid work environment will sometimes take a train once or twice a week into New York City and work locally the rest of the week, she said.
“People ask all the time, ‘Can I get a train to Boston?’” Sweeney said. “People want to eat there, and they want to take a train to do it.”
Sweeney said that Union Station has partnered with the Amherst Rail Society and Springfield Schools to bring children to the station with their families. “They get to see how beautiful the building is, and they might say, ‘Oh, I could go over there and catch a train to wherever, or go to my left and hop on a bus.’”
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