Hearings Today on the DART Plan to Move the Rodney Square Bus Hub
Those hearings are at 11:30AM and at 5PM at the Carvel Building in downtown Wilmington. The current DART plan remove all of the bus stops at Rodney Square and then scatter them around on King, French, Shipley, Ninth and 12th streets. Which makes it very difficult for people to transfer between lines and provides a real disincentive for people to use the buses.
Wilmington badly needs a functioning public transportation system. There are few (and none that I’m acquainted with) transit systems that don’t work pretty hard at providing central spots where multiple lines come together (sometimes with subway or rail connections) so that riders can easily transfer to multiple other lines, which maximizes the reach of the entire system. If you want to help deal with the parking issues downtown, you have to make it easier for people to leave their cars at home. Scattering these stops and making it harder to access other lines is pretty counterintuitive. The NJ provides some additional info, including some of the fairly useless posturing by local pols.
I wish someone would make DART show their homework on this:
Safety concerns have driven the proposed realignment, according to the Delaware Transit Corporation. Buses often stack three to four deep at Rodney Square, making it difficult for riders to safely find and board their buses, state officials have said.
While the bus congestion around Rodney Square can be remarkable, from where I sit (in my car or walking), the safety issue is the competition of buses and cars in a small space at peak times of the day. You don’t resolve that by scattering those buses to other congested areas downtown. And there doesn’t seem to be anything about this realignment that makes the experience easier for the *riders* of the system. If DART and the city want to free up Rodney Square, they should prepare a plan for a genuine transit hub — one that is easily reachable by both bus riders AND the buses. it just isn’t worth half doing his thing, because you’ll be back fixing it pretty routinely.
So if you care about this issue, go to these hearings and speak your mind. One of the questions I would ask would be if the transit buses are an issue now, what do you plan to do when all of the school buses that will convening on the adjacent MBNA building twice a day or so once the powers that be put all of their charter schools in there.
Tags: DART
I wish I could have gone to this. I ride the bus regularly and I avoid Rodney Square when I can. I’m not a fan and I think it’s a misuse of that public space. But riders do deserve a decent hub. I wish I understood better why they can’t set something up adjacent to the train/Greyhound stations?!
The DART bus hub should be on Walnut St. adjacent to the train station where the rental car lot is. This site also happens to be across from the (legal) long haul bus station. A dedicated loop service (the faux trolleys) could be used to take riders to points along Walnut St. up to the Brandywine River and back down King St. Simplicity, consolidation, logic. Too much to ask when you’re dealing with DART and the myriad of elected dopes in Wilmington/NCCo with a hamfist in this relocation to a glorified service alley.
Additionally, this site is easily reachable by both US 13 and I-95 (via MLK and the Maryland Ave. off-ramp).
Now I guess I’m supposed to jump off a cliff or something…
What I gathered from the News Journal reporting via national experts is that this reconfiguration plan is idiotic. And also that it is probably temporary until DART can place a hub into the abandonned parking garage lot nearby.
The fact that the plan has removed ALL buses except the trolley from Rodney Square confims suspicions that this is an orchestrated effort to ‘remove the riff raff’ from the privately controlled park.
ugh.
It makes sense to put a hub where Que Pasa suggests above.
I plan on going to the meeting in Newark Thursday (4:30-6:30PM at the Wilmpaco office) but all written comment must be submitted by Friday – email here: www dot DartFirstState dot com/publichearing
Newark Post lists most of the route changes here
http://www.newarkpostonline.com/news/article_624771b6-8327-11e1-afb3-001a4bcf887a.html
What seems odd to me is that it seems like the only people who did a traffic study were the people who own a garage on Orange St. That is part of the reporting done today in the NJ about one of yesterday’s hearings. Those hearing sounded pretty lively, with no one except the Downtown Visions Executive Director speaking up for the changes for Rodney Square.
The scattered solution is about as unrider-friendly as it gets. Which undermines the whole purpose of a Public Transit System. You can shift the hub to some reasonable place (down by the train station is a great idea), but the system as currently devised depends on a hub to make it work for the greatest number of riders.
I know it’s unpopular but I would prefer they move the busses out of Rodney Square.
I DO think it’s not safe (car accidents because others are anxious jerks trying to get around the buses and can’t see the other cars) and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to clean up the “riff raff” (it’s a public place and all wilmintonians should be able to hang out there, but i think it’s reasonable to kick out those drinking and fighting like any other park)
BUT
I also don’t think most of those people don’t have anything to do with the buses. Maybe using it as an exuse “im waiting for my bus” that they aren’t actually taking. Plenty of my co-workers take the bus, and they aren’t riding with them. So i dont think moving the stops is a solution.
On the other hand i also think the new bus system sounds totally stupid, dangerious and difficult for riders. so i’m torn as to how to feel about this. I agree that maybe moving the hub as described upthread would probably be the way to go.