Business & Tech

Buckhead CID Board Approves Plan to Boost Buc Shuttle Ridership

Plan would simplify routes, cut Saturday service and increase service frequency

The Buckhead Community Improvement District Board Tuesday approved a plan to increase ridership and speed up service on the Buc shuttle.

In agreeing to implement a plan offered by Chris Henry of AECOM Technical Services based on a six-month study, the board decided to eliminate the shuttle's Saturday service and test the new plan for a year to determine if the commuter service will continue.

Henry told the board that the Buc shuttle, begun in 2003, has suffered a decline in ridership in recent years after the loss of federal grants brought a reduction in the frequency of service.

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The new plan would consolidate lines and have buses arriving every 10 minutes rather than the present 20 to 25. The plan also called for improved marketing of the free service, with the buses more clearly branded as Buc vehicles and the elimination of confusing ads, which the board determined doesn't produce sufficient revenue to continue.

The board went along with Chairman David Allman's proposal to end the Saturday service to shift funds to boost the shuttle service during the week. Allman and other board members saw the Saturday service, mainly for shoppers at Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza, as generating too little ridership for the money expended.

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Under the AECOM plan, the Buc's present blue, green, purple and red lines would be consolidated into a Piedmont-Lenox shuttle and a Lenox Park shuttle. The plan would connect Piedmont Road corridor employment with both MARTA rail stations, and improve efficiency by having the buses beat traffic by traveling through interior routes at Tower Place rather than using Peachtree.

Now, the board will decide on whether to renew its Buc contract with American Coach Lines or let the contract out for bids with other operators. The American contract ends Dec. 31, said Denise Starling, executive director of BATMA, which run the shuttle service along Buckhead's central business district.

Starling said American Coach would like a three-year deal in a new contract, but board Vice Chairman John Lundeen and board member Robin Loudermilk wanted to make sure that the board could cancel the contract if the Buc service is shown to be economically unfeasible. Starling said that the present contract includes a 60-day cancelation option, which Loudermilk and Lunden wanted that included in a new deal.

One of Henry's key points was that the Buc shouldn't try to "do all things for all people," and Loudermilk expressed satisfaction that the new plan defines the Buc as a shuttle service transporting people to and from Buckhead office buildings and hotels by connecting with the Lenox and Buckhead MARTA stations. "If it's a commuter service, let's design the best commuter service we can," he said.

Earlier, Loudermilk, responding to Henry's findings that ridership on lines other than the purple line had fallen far below the optimal 15 riders per bus per hour, had called for the board to consider eliminating the service altogether.

"It kind of blows my mind that it's so low," Loudermilk said of the ridership figures. "I have a hard time swallowing that pill." He wondered if the expense — $810,000 annually, according to Henry's analysis — was "the most effective" funds use or whether the Buc's shuttle service is just "supplementing a commuter system already in place," referring to MARTA.

But the board went along with Buckhead CID Executive Director Jim Durrett's defense of the Buc.

"If you get rid of the Buc shuttle, you're doing a disservice to the region," Durrett said, emphasizing that the Buc system provides an alterntiave to auto transportation. "We need more options not less," Durrett said. "To remove a tool from the toolbox ... I think it would be a mistake."

 


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