This summer I met Brady, an architecture student at Iowa State University. Not only is he a cool dude, but he also rode my bus route and has some good ideas about urban design. Brady decided to try his hand at redesigning the CR Transit routes (discussed here) and his result can be seen here. He also shared comments after the second open house and talked a bit more about his route design thoughts here.
Earlier this week we saw the big reveal of recommendations for the transit study, so I thought it would be fun to share Brady’s ideas and think about how they might work. I like both sets of ideas because I think they cover short term and long term planning. The transit study changes can be quickly implemented to improve our current system, while Brady’s clean slate design shows where we could go in a few years to potentially fix some of the current downfalls that can’t be fixed with band-aids.
Brady’s coverage looks good, and I like the looks of combining more, smaller hub and spoke system elements with a few linear routes as connectors. I did my personal test where I figure out how I would get to my usual destinations from my home. I like that there are more northern routes, closer to my house, but I would have to transfer once or twice to get to work downtown. I don’t know that this would be bad if the transfer timing was right, but it would interrupt my usual book reading. A new benefit would be that I could transfer on the north side of town and get to the Lindale area without going through downtown or catching an infrequent bus (note, I’m assuming the routes would be more frequent in this scenario since that is a basic need to improve to this point and gather the ridership to back this kind of change). I could also visit most of my friends, run several errands, and go out to eat without making a downtown “pit stop” when it doesn’t make sense. With Edgewood, 33rd, Boyson, Blairs Ferry, and 1st Ave linear routes, you can travel around the city about as directly as driving. Brady mentioned that he found it hard to cover the west side of Cedar Rapids and the Marion area, but I’ll throw East Post Rd. out there as a contender for a Marion and east Cedar Rapids connector. There could be a stretch along Boyson, one to Lindale, and then a southern connection to cover that area.
In order for us to reach a point where we could really start looking at this level of a system shift, we would need the changes currently being prepared to help increase awareness and ridership. We would also need to get to a point where we’re able to handle more frequent service, and start employing timing models or staff dedicated to figuring how to make transfers seamless or at least painless. We aren’t there yet, but I, as Brady also stated, don’t want Cedar Rapids to stop with this first study. It is just a stepping stone in a long path of continual improvements to truly make our metro area a vibrant center, so don’t stop sharing ideas once the first round of changes is approved. Keep pushing for a better system.
Thanks to Brady for posting his ideas!
Tags: cedar rapids, corridor, open house, Transit experience
