Asheville City Council has postponed a vote on whether to approve controversial changes to its bus system.
City staff and Portland-based consultant Jarret Walker & Associates have been developing new routes for the Asheville Rides Transit service since last April. At Council’s direction, the $300,000 study aimed to boost ridership by increasing bus frequency in denser parts of the city.
The resulting plan, released in May and set for a Council vote Tuesday, Aug. 25, achieved that goal by cutting service on routes with less ridership. But many residents who live in areas that would lose bus service, or who depend on transit to reach destinations that would be cut, pushed back on the city’s proposal.
Among those critics is Kenilworth resident Niki
Foster, who told the Citizen Times she learned of the planned cuts to her neighborhood just two weeks ago. She said she distributed 500 flyers about the plan and coordinated an email campaign asking Council to pause the changes. “We were just really upside-down with all this — I was losing sleep over it,” she said.
Foster added that her housemate, Jonathan Cook, relies entirely on the bus for his transportation needs. Emphasizing ridership numbers may look good in theory, she argued, but ignores the human impacts of eliminating access. “If someone’s a necessity rider like John, that means their very freedom, their very ability to get anywhere,” she said.
Many local businesses and nonprofits weighed in against the new routes as well. Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley told the Citizen Times that Council had received letters from the Omni Grove Park Inn, which currently pays the city to provide bus rides for employees but would lose service under the plan. Others sharing concerns, she said, included the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry and Housing Authority of the City of Asheville.
Supporters of the transit plan included Asheville-based environmental nonprofit MountainTrue. The organization argued that the new bus routes would increase job access, improve reliability and help the city combat urban sprawl.
“I fully respect Council's desire to respond to community concerns about routes being cut. Delaying the vote to devote time and resources to pursuing win-win solutions through existing community partnerships is a good idea,” wrote Susan Bean, MountainTrue’s housing and transportation director, in response to a Citizen Times request for comment. “But if action is put off indefinitely, then our entire city will suffer from a system that could have been improved in measurable ways with a tweaked version of this draft network plan.”
Mayor Esther Manheimer said she had requested the vote be pulled from the agenda to give the city more time to consider its options. Staff will consider funding strategies for the bus system and alternative shifts to the network.
“The decision around moving towards a ridership model is definitely controversial,” the mayor acknowledged. “Anytime you’re making a decision that will impact, negatively, current users of the system, those decisions need to be taken very seriously, even if the intention is to grow ridership tenfold compared with the number of folks that would be losing service.”
Council member Kim Roney, who is running against Manheimer in this year’s mayoral election, suggested that the delay was meant to avoid another “long, chaotic, drawn-out meeting” of community anger, like what occurred when the city approved new surveillance technology for the Asheville Police Department. Roney said she expected the bus plans, if they return to Council at all, to be reconsidered only after the election.
“It’s incredibly unfortunate we don’t have the Transit Committee and public engagement opportunities guiding this conversation, led by people impacted by the bus,” Roney said. “Instead, it’s become political during an election year.”
The Citizen Times reached out to Jessica Morriss, Asheville’s assistant transportation director, for comment on how city staff would proceed. In response, city spokesperson Jim Wilson wrote that “we’re not able to provide a staff interview on this.” He said further updates may be provided at Council’s 11 a.m. agenda briefing on Thursday, Aug. 20.
Daniel Walton is the City Government Watchdog Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Email him at dwalton@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville Council delays controversial bus system tweaks
