HomeMy WebLinkAboutCANCELLATION_NOTICE
TO: TRANSIT ADVISORY BOARD
FROM: CHRISTOPHER STRONG, TRANSPORTATION DIRECTOR
DATE: OCTOBER 9, 2009
SUBJECT: CANCELLATION OF OCTOBER 21, 2009 MEETING
Due to the lack of agenda items, the regular scheduled meeting of the Transit
Advisory Board on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 has been cancelled. The
next scheduled meeting is Wednesday, November 18, 2009.
City of Oshkosh - Transportation Department
926 Dempsey Trail, Oshkosh, WI 54902 (920) 232-5342 920)232-5343 fax
MEMORANDUM
TO:
Transit Advisory Board Members
FROM:
Christopher Strong, Transportation Director
DATE:
October 9, 2009
RE:
October 2009 Transit System Update
With the cancellation of our monthly board meeting, I wanted to provide board
members with some written communication about some of the transit system’s recent
activities. If you have any questions or concerns on any of these items, please feel free
to contact me.
1. AUGUST 2009 RIDERSHIP STATISTICS
You’ll find enclosed our monthly revenue/ridership statistics for August. As we had
expected, ridership from 2008 to 2009 continued to decline in August. This likely
reflects the combined effects of the economic recession and earlier fare increases.
Ridership also showed declines in most of our paratransit programs. Anecdotally,
some of our similar-sized transit systems elsewhere in the state are seeing similar
reductions in ridership, even though they have not implemented recent fare increases.
One point to note is that our Route 10 (Neenah) ridership continues to show declines
compared to last year. While part of this reflects general ridership trends, we believe
part of this is due to how the Route 10 schedule lines up with the rest of our system.
2. UPDATE ON IMPROVEMENTS TO ROUTE 10
I wanted to give the Board a progress update on improvements to the Route 10
(Neenah) service. Our primary goal in service improvements has been to reduce the
round trip time so that the service can return to 60-minute headways from its current
90-minute frequency. Our current approach is to try to restructure Route 10 as an
express (i.e. limited stops) route. We field-tested a route with only four stops between
the Oshkosh and Neenah Transit Centers, and it seemed to work satisfactorily from a
schedule perspective. Under this concept, there would be no stops between the
Oshkosh Transit Center and Logan Drive. While this would decrease our local service
on Jackson Street, it would certainly improve our inter-city service. It is possible that
we may be able to add limited stops to this route and maintain the 60-minute
headway.
We are seeking some input from Kobussen, our contractor for Route 10, regarding
this concept before moving forward. If the concept appears workable, our next steps
would be to determine how and when to implement it. We would need to evaluate the
additional cost associated with maintaining shorter headways throughout the day, and
whether it might make sense to have more limited service (2-hour headway) during
off-peak times. We also need to explore whether additional stops can be added
without sacrificing the headways. I plan to present this back to the Board after we
have developed recommendations in these areas.
3. SUCCESSFUL DEBUT FOR BIKE ‘N RIDE PROGRAM
We have had good initial success with our Bike ‘N Ride program. Bikes were loaded
into the racks approximately 200 times over the first three weeks of the program, and
we have not received any customer complaints about the racks to date. Anecdotally,
many of the initial users were already regular riders on our bus system. This is not
surprising since travel habits tend to change slowly. Over time, we expect the racks to
bring new passengers to our bus system.