With years of declining ridership, Jackson city officials say it’s time to rethink public transit.
“Transit needs to be a service to the community and all of the community,” Chief Administrative Officer Robert Blaine said. “For a long time, we looked at the service as only for those who have no means of transportation.
“We need to rethink what transit is for a city and use various transportation modes to increase mobility for all Jacksonians.”
Ridership with JATRAN has dropped precipitously since 2014 when more than 615,000 rides were reported. As of August 2018, the service averages around 400,000 rides a year, according to city documents.
Part of the problem is the system’s outdated routes, a sign that the transit service isn’t reaching the customer base it needs to.
Hazarding a guess, Planning and Development Director Mukesh Kumar said JATRAN’s routes haven’t been updated in the last 20 years.
“Our system is based on the hub and spoke system – to bring people downtown to work and send them home,” Kumar said. “The employment has dispersed, and we still have the hub and spoke.”
Kumar said Jackson needs to look at other models, such as the bus system in Lafayette, La., which has moved from hub and spokes to creating networks focused on high-density areas.
A grant recently received by the city will help Jackson do just that.
In January, the city announced that it had received a $1 million Federal Transit Administration grant to study the creation of ONELINE, a rapid transit system that would run from Fondren to Jackson State University (JSU).
The route would serve Fondren, Belhaven and downtown Jackson, three colleges and several hospitals.
The project is in the study phase now, but once implemented, the route would be able to take passengers from the Fondren Business District to JSU in 15 minutes.
“That’s what we are aiming at,” Kumar said. “We can’t achieve 10 minutes at the moment, because of the resources we have. We would like to think that in five to 10 years, we can be on the path to having a true bus rapid transit system.”
Expanding the transit system further would take significant investment and work by the city of Jackson and the suburbs.
Kumar said additional studies, as well as conversations between city leaders across the metro area, are needed.
“We need to start by having these conversations in a more serious manner. People often say why not just offer a bus to Nissan? Just doing that is a haphazard way of looking at it. We need to engage all the communities to develop a service for the metro area.”
