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Q&A: SEPTA planner in charge of Bus Revolution talks rider feedback, accessibility, microtransit zones, and more

SEPTA’s senior planner in charge of the bus network redesign project, Dan Nemiroff, sat down with Inquirer transportation reporter Thomas Fitzgerald to answer some questions about Bus Revolution.

The Route 44 bus travels down Market Street in Philadelphia. SEPTA has rolled out proposed new bus routes designed to provide faster service, with less time between buses.
The Route 44 bus travels down Market Street in Philadelphia. SEPTA has rolled out proposed new bus routes designed to provide faster service, with less time between buses.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

SEPTA is embarking on the transit agency’s first redesign of its bus network in 40 years — and Philadelphians have feelings about it.

Since the project’s announcement in October, riders have been invited to participate in community meetings, as well as to send their questions or concerns to SEPTA directly. The first round of feedback led to some changes being made to the draft plan, which was made public in March.

SEPTA’s senior planner in charge of the transit agency’s redesign project, Dan Nemiroff, sat down with Inquirer transportation reporter Thomas Fitzgerald on Thursday to answer questions about Bus Revolution.

Here are a few excerpts from that conversation. Questions and responses have been edited slightly for length and clarity.

Thomas Fitzgerald: Why did so many customers abandon taking the bus in the 2010s?

Dan Nemiroff: We started looking at redesigning the bus network in 2015, 2016 because we were losing ridership on the buses on an annual basis. Between 2010 and 2019, we lost about 20% to 25% of our bus riders. And I think there were a few things that were happening. I think, one: service was becoming less reliable and slower. Philadelphia, in particular is a challenging operating environment. Streets are narrow. There’s a lot of traffic. There’s a lot of competing interests in the street.

For some people, rideshare emerged. Uber and Lyft became a very convenient way of getting around. I think ultimately, people were going to different places that the bus network wasn’t taking them to. Fixed route transit buses are not everywhere, but we wanted to really use this project as an opportunity to take a step back and really see how we were doing at a systemwide level and think about how we can holistically develop a new network that wasn’t a complete divergence of the existing one, but built on its strength and attracted new riders to the system.

What sorts of comments, concerns, and questions are you are you getting about the redesign, take two?

We’re still getting feedback on some of the proposed changes. People people are still expressing their unease and their unhappiness with those proposed changes. So, it’s different. The din is not as loud because I think this is a much more scaled-back proposal, and it’s a proposal that I think is quite a bit stronger than the first one.

We still have work to do. This is an iterative process. It was always intended to be an iterative process. Part of the issues we ran into from the last round of engagement were definitely self-inflicted, and a failure of communication and making sure people understood that. We were really interested in what they thought.

Does SEPTA plan to improve bus stop accessibility for people with mobility challenges?

One of the things that we are doing through this project is we do work really closely with the city. The city manages the shelter program. We do provide input on where we think shelters belong, but we’d like to see more shelters both as part of this project, but also just generally speaking, for convenience. It’s not just shelters and benches; it’s also better lighting and things like that. So we are hoping to through this project prioritize certain corridors.

SEPTA’s proposal for microtransit zones hasn’t gotten as much attention. How that would work and does SEPTA plan to incorporate the rideshare companies in to that?

I’ll answer your second question first about working with rideshare companies to provide on-demand service: The answer to that is no. The on-demand service that we have, and I’ll get into kind of the model in a minute, but the on-demand service that we would operate would be run by SEPTA operators and SEPTA vehicles branded with SEPTA livery. Our operators are the most important part of the agency. They’re frontline workers. We want to make sure they are part of whatever service modes we are investing in.

On-demand service is something that a lot of other transit agencies are starting to pursue, and they are typically used in more sort of outer, exurban areas. It’s more of a fit in areas where there is low ridership, but there is still a need.

You would go open up the app on your phone or call a call center — but the app is going to be a little better — and you would tell where you wanted to go and when you wanted to go there. It would come get you, it would take you, maybe not door-to-door, but kind of point-to-point.

This will be like short turnaround, right? You’re not thinking about, like someone having to book a day in advance?

Thank you for the clarifying question. We have planned out the on-demand with like a 30-minute response time. We really want to hit that 30-minute response time, because after that, the convenience factor really starts to weigh in, and it becomes harder to justify that type of shift.

Want to hear more? You can watch the full conversation here.