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Public Transit's New Economic Imperative: Creating Partnerships with Business BY LYLE V. HARRIS
BY LYLE V. HARRIS
A resurgent national economy and rising employment are prompting U.S. businesses to build or strengthen alliances with public transportation agencies to help Americans get to work.
From high-tech enterprises created by the still-growing digital economy to traditional manufacturers on the rebound, employers of all sizes and shapes are embracing various public transit modes to support their thriving businesses.
These companies are motivated by an immutable bottom line: managing costs and boosting profits by attracting and retaining well-qualified workers. Increasingly, that means proactively seeking options for employees who choose public transit as part of a lifestyle decision or who want to avoid the expense of commuting by car. According to APTA’s October Transit Savings Report, a two-person household can save, on average, more than $9,855 a year by downsizing to one car.
The number of full-time employees who telecommute regularly has grown to roughly 3 percent of the workforce since 2015. However, the majority of employees in the U.S. remain in conventional workplaces. Public transportation is an important solution to help avoid rush-hour traffic, improve quality of life and connect jobs to job seekers. As these economic and demographic forces converge, public transit is emerging as a top-of-mind issue for businesses determined to keep their workers happy, productive and on time.
Flint: Building Relationships
Ed Benning, general manager of the Mass Transportation Authority (MTA) in Flint, MI, is decidedly upbeat about his agency’s status as a trending commuting choice for local businesses and their employees.
“I’m seeing renewed and new relationships with businesses that realize they must get involved financially,” said Benning, who reported that about 10 percent of MTA passengers are riding to work. “Many of them are struggling to staff their plants and see that there must be a partnership with public transit and recognize the value in working with us. We’re a public transportation provider with a private sector attitude.”
He said MTA is working closely with business leaders unable to find suitable candidates to fill job vacancies in nearby communities. This phenomenon, known as “spatial mismatch,” occurs when demand for labor outstrips the readily available supply.
“In Livingston County, which is southwest of us, there were about 1,000 jobs open but employers were seriously talking about moving their plants if they couldn’t find employees,” Benning recalled. “We decided to expand our services to take workers to that county, which is paramount. As we speak, there are other employers who are asking us to join on and asking us to further expand our services.”
According to Benning, another business in MTA’s service area was so pressed to recruit and retain employees that it began subsidizing a portion of its workers’ bus fares. The company also convinced the agency to provide service to its plant every four hours, seven days a week.
He described how, with ridership up, MTA worked with the state government and other partners to secure $500,000 to buy four used buses to supplement its existing fleet, with another four commuter coaches coming soon. “We’re using every piece of equipment we have right now,” said Benning, whose agency is offering regular, fixed-route and on-demand bus services to area employees. “We envision our service will ramp up to the point that we’ll be providing about 5,000 commuter trips a day. We think that number could double over time.”
New Outlook for Legacy Systems
More and more employers are relocating near public transportation to attract employees, particularly in well-established transit cities.
“We’re seeing an increase in the understanding of the suburban communities that [public transit] is a competitive need,” said Peter Fahrenwald, manager of regional and corridor planning for the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in Chicago. “The millennials are helping with those concerns because that’s what they’re demanding.”
For example, McDonald’s is moving its global headquarters from the Chicago suburbs to a historic neighborhood in the transit-rich West Loop. Google moved one of its regional headquarters to the West Loop in 2013 after the opening of the new Morgan Street “L” rail station a year earlier.
“Employers are attracted to the talent pool and know that they use public transit,” Fahrenwald said. “Putting their facilities right near public transit means they can get to those jobs.”
Also, new express buses that run on highway shoulders are being added to enhance connectivity for commuters in the RTA region. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is rebuilding four of the seven rail lines it operates and is either building or rebuilding 40 rail stations.
Michael Horsting, manager of local planning for the six-county RTA, is working with Chicago area communities and developers to create spaces that are more transit-friendly now and in the future. “We help communities to plan around their existing assets by making strong land use connections that will better orient their transportation towards transit,” he said.
Reshaping Southern Metropolitan Areas
In the Sunbelt, the relationship between jobs and public transit is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of cities such as Dallas and Atlanta that anchor their regional economies.
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| DART’s Akard Station provides light rail connections to the Mosaic apartment high-rise. |
Todd Plesko, vice president for planning and development with Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), enumerated the blue-chip companies flooding into the agency’s sprawling service area in recent years that have made public transit a top priority: Raytheon Corp., Toyota, Liberty Mutual and State Farm, to name a few.
In catering to workforce commuters, DART has adopted a comprehensive approach to public transit service delivery with light rail, on-demand FLEX service, express buses, commuter rail, streetcars, trolleys, vanpools and carpools.
Plesko said one fast-growing transit product is the site-specific shuttles, eight in all, that operate with branded vehicles purchased by companies that bring employees right to their doorsteps from satellite locations.
All told, he said, there are roughly 400,000 jobs within one-half mile of DART’s light rail stations and about one million jobs within the same distance of the system’s bus network.
Business appears to be staying bullish on transit, a trend that professionals and industry observers say is showing no signs of slowing down.
Grand Rapids: Providing Access
Peter Varga, chief executive officer of The Rapid in Grand Rapids, MI, said his agency is pulling out all the stops to ensure that the workforce has convenient access to job opportunities by providing a robust network of fixed-route and BRT services. Varga participates in a special task force of business leaders and community stakeholders to help the agency identify the most promising and productive routes responsive to the area’s labor needs.
“Our first focus is our ability to serve people who are going to work,” he said of the system, 80 percent of whose riders use the system to commute. “That was the foundation of our first BRT corridor, which is the Silver Line in the Division Avenue corridor.”
The nearly 10-mile Silver Line BRT cost about $40 million and opened in 2014. It connects some of the most economically distressed areas of the city with the concentrated employment centers in the central business district, including the St. Mary’s Health campus, Grand Rapids Community College and the Medical Mile.
Varga said the agency has another BRT in the pipeline, dubbed the “Laker Line,” between the city center and the booming township of Allendale, which is seeing an increase in new jobs. The new line is scheduled to begin service in 2020 as part of a partnership with Grand Valley State University, a major employer with its main campus in Allendale.
Cleveland: Workforce Development Corridors
“We’re in the workforce development business instead of the transit business because they go hand in hand,” said Joseph Calabrese, chief executive officer and general manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA). “One of the biggest problems facing employers trying to find a talented workforce is the lack of public transportation to their establishments. Some employers didn’t build their facilities in places where transit is easily accessible because they assumed if they could get there, then anyone can. They’re finding out that’s just not true.”
Calabrese, like many of his counterparts, said his agency has become deeply involved in the economic development and job accessibility in his community.
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GCRTA’s HealthLine BRT has been a success for almost a decade.
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One of GCRTA’s most successful, job-spawning collaborations to date is the award-winning HealthLine hybrid-electric BRT service, which connects the region’s two largest employment areas, Downtown and University Circle, and extends to the Louis Stokes Station in East Cleveland.
Currently, GCRTA is working with Amazon on public transit access to two fulfillment centers that are now under construction. Each facility, which will hire 1,000 employees each, are being located along major public transit corridors, because forward-thinking employers, such as Amazon, understand the correlation between jobs and job access.
The line, which opened in 2008, operates with five-minute headways during weekday peak service and has generated an estimated 13,000 jobs along the Euclid Avenue corridor, according to GCRTA. About 60 percent of the agency’s passengers are workaday commuters, a percentage Calabrese said he expects to grow as more services are added.
GCRTA also is rebranding a series of bus routes through a partnership with the MetroHealth System. The branding includes 20 new, specially designed vehicles, more than 400 bus stop signs and 37 shelters. The three routes operate more than 200 bus trips per day and serve the MetroHealth campus, which includes five health care facilities.
Los Angeles Moves Away from Cars to Public Transit
In the last decade, Los Angeles Metro has opened 31 new rail stations within a half-mile of 300,000 jobs. More new stations and services are underway for the system mostly as a result of Measure M, the voter-approved county sales tax that will generate $860 million-a-year for major transit improvements until 2039.
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Los Angeles Metro’s El Monte (I-10) Busway features both dedicated bus lanes and a railroad track in the median of the highway.
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About 55 percent of LA Metro’s riders use the system to commute to work. Chief Executive Officer Phillip A. Washington said he is witnessing a seismic shift in attitudes among Angelenos who are more receptive to commuting by public transit.
"The one thing I hear over and over again from Los Angeles County residents is that an increasing number of them want to live and work near transit … people increasingly view it as a community asset—like good schools and parks,” Washington said. “It’s refreshing to hear. And I don’t think it’s something you would have heard here 20 or 30 years ago.”
The new symbiotic relationship among employers, employees and public transportation agencies has never been stronger nor more important. In communities large and small across the country, we are seeing how mobility and access are helping to attract a stronger and more competitive workforce. That’s good for current and future workers and the nation.
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