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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is Colin Fiske, Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. It's a long name, Colin. CRTP.

COLIN FISKE:

It's a long name. Hi Tom.

WHEELER:

We are joined by Greg Pratt, the General Manager of the Humboldt Transit Authority. Hey Greg!

GREG PRATT:

Hello, how you doing?

WHEELER:

All right, so on today's show, we're going to be talking about how to run a rural transit agency. So, you have particular challenges that are unique because of our rural nature in trying to serve our population up here. So, we're going to get into those and then we're going to get into some of the exciting new things that are going on at HTA. I also know that we have some kind of big announcements to make and some new grants and so on. So, we'll get to that a little bit later in the show. But just to start off, Greg, can you kind of try to give us a picture of the size of the Humboldt Transit Authority? Like, where do you serve? What is the kind of like geographical bounds of the HTA?

PRATT:

So we service the city of Eureka. We have four routes that do that, 11 hours a day. We have a route to Southern Humboldt, which goes through a lot of the small communities. So that's probably like a 70-mile one-way stretch. And then we also service Willow Creek. Our main service is between Scotia and Trinidad.

WHEELER:

All right. So it is a broad geographic area. And it's often kind of a lightly populated geographic area too. So this contrasts us with maybe a San Francisco, right? In a bus line in San Francisco is going to be different than running a bus line here in Humboldt County. But I'm really proud of HTA and the service that it is able to provide. So how do you like functionally go about paying for it for this? Because I imagine that we probably recover less on fare boxes and we have bigger expenses because we have to drive longer distances to grab passengers. So what does it look like for HTA compared to some of your kind of larger, not competitors, friends, other transit agencies? Compatriots.

PRATT:

compatriots. Yeah, it's all about funding. The rural agencies just receive a small percentage of what San Francisco and those kind of agencies receive. So the challenge for HTA is the areas that we serve are sprawled out. We have sometimes 15 miles before a stop. We're in the city, they're picking someone up every couple blocks and they're running every 10 minutes. But we have to stretch our resources so much to cover so much territory. It makes it difficult and challenging. And the funding for that comes from the local transportation fund that comes into the county. And we apply for grants all the time for operating assistance because what we get just from the county funds is not enough to put on the service that we're doing. So every year we rely on those grants.

FISKE:

And Greg, maybe you could talk a little bit about the population as well as the destinations that people want to go to are not evenly dispersed throughout the county or or along those routes, right? So you have kind of different frequencies or types of service that you provide in the core denser areas than you might to Willow Creek or Southern Humboldt, for example.

PRATT:

Correct, so if you want to go South from Trinidad, it's every three hours. When you get closer to the density in McKinleyville, it's every hour, and then when you get in between Arcata and College of the Redwoods, we have half-hour service.

FISKE:

That's basically because with those less tense areas, you just can't fill up buses, right?

PRATT:

No, unfortunately not.

WHEELER:

And so I imagine that there's some degree of trade-off that you as a transit planner have to make between Am I going to run more buses between? The higher density areas and have more frequent service which might draw on more ridership versus there's a need for folks In trinidad, there's a need for folks in mckinleyville. There's a need for folks in willow creek southern humboldt To to be able to use the bus and so you can't reduce their service too much Can you talk about kind of the competing values that you are always trying to reconcile?

PRATT:

Sure. Well, for instance, it would cost for a year to increase service between, say, Trinidad and McKinleyville, $300,000. But we could provide more service in between the core area for the same amount. And you have to kind of balance how many people can you serve because we need all the fares we can get. And it's difficult to get a minimum fares when you only have a few routes going back and forth to Trinidad. But on the other side of that, if we could run more buses, people would find it more convenient rather than have to wait three hours. And so it's a hard thing to balance. I mean, we would love to put more service on everywhere to make it more convenient. But like I said before, we're just too sprawled out. And we're just too sprawled out.

FISKE:

Greg, one of the more exciting developments I think lately in transit is this model of micro-transit or on-demand systems. I know we've looked at this quite a bit locally for the less dense areas, the more rural or suburban areas where maybe we can't support that frequent bus service that you're talking about or the frequent fixed route bus service. Maybe there's a way to have a more flexible system that can better serve those folks and feed them into a more frequent fixed system. I know we're looking at that for McKinleyville and there's even been funding applied for, but could you talk a little bit more about that?

PRATT:

Yeah, it's a great point. Right now we switched over our dispatching software to our paratransit program to where it will allow on-demand pickups for the public, which is going to be a soft introduction to microtransit in Eureka. And so from there, the plans would be to branch out. We could branch out to Manila and Samoa and pick up when needed in an on-demand basis. Same thing when you're talking about McKinleyville and all those areas and even Trinidad. I feel that microtransit would definitely provide them more service, better service.

FISKE:

Right, and then maybe can help avoid some of those trade-offs where we could provide more frequent service on the fixed routes where there's more population, but at the same time be supplying that need in the more rural areas. Is that right?

PRATT:

Yeah, that's right. It would also streamline our Redwood transit. Because we go through Arcata, kind of go in and out of streets, same thing in Fortuna. Just places like that to be able to streamline and utilize microtransit to bring folks to the bus would definitely improve efficiencies and time of travel.

WHEELER:

So I imagine that COVID-19 probably has set back mass transit in some way. I'm a frequent bus rider myself. I remember going from Eureka to Arcada during the school year. You know, generally you would find a place to sit, but there were times that the bus would be so full that I would stand and hold a pillar. Now the bus seems a little bit lighter. What has been the effect of COVID-19 and kind of the impact of long-term transit rider numbers on HTA?

PRATT:

So when COVID first hit, we lost 75% of our ridership. Now we're up to another 40% to get to where we need to be. And a lot of that has to do with people are working remotely now. The colleges are offering remote classes and do your work at home. So there's been a shift. I'm not sure where it's going from here, but there has been a shift that's definitely affected our ridership.

FISKE:

And Greg, I know that across the country that has caused serious budget problems for a lot of transit agencies. And there's this worry about what some people call the death spiral, where you get fewer riders, and so you have to cut service, and then you get fewer riders, and it kind of goes downhill. Is that a concern here?

PRATT:

It's always a concern. I mean, every year when we're budgeting, it's a concern. It's tough to put on this much service and rely on grants, but we'll continue to do that. We're pretty aggressive here with our grants. We want to keep what we have and even expand what we have. Is it a concern? Yes. Are we planning for it? Yes.

WHEELER:

Well, so let's talk about some of the kind of new and exciting things that HTA is doing to make riding the bus easier. I think that one barrier, even if it's kind of a small one, is folks who don't know how to ride the bus, who haven't done it before, who get nervous about payment options and not really understanding what to do. But a lot of work has been done in the last couple of years to make it easier for folks to ride the bus. So let's talk about some of the new tech that we have, starting off with like the variety of apps that we can get for our phones. So I rode the bus this morning. I use the Token Transit app. Can you tell us about Token Transit and kind of other ways that HTA is exploring to pay for the bus?

PRATT:

Sure, so token transit's a phone app where you can buy period passes, so day pass, month pass, you can get the regional pass. And I should mention the first time you do use token transit, you get half off of your pass. So just trying to promote it and trying to get it out there, we, so they basically just, there's a little unit on the fare box, they just tap their phone and they, and their fare is paid. What we just installed over the last three weeks are credit card validators on all of our systems. So we're going to get that out more in the public, but right now it's just still in testing mode. But the fact that you can tap your credit card and ride for two hours, no matter what system you're on, it's hopefully going to simplify things. For instance, you could get on in Willow Creek, tap on and that starts your two hours. When you get into Arcata, you can get on another bus and it'll tap, but it won't charge your card. So trying to do things simple like that, I think is going to be helpful for us.

WHEELER:

I think so, absolutely. So much of this world is the touchless payments now. Exactly. Where you hit your phone or you hit your card against something and it will be an easy way for folks like myself, millennials or Gen Z to get used to riding the bus.

FISKE:

Yeah, the less planning or preparation folks have to do to get on, the better.

WHEELER:

Yeah, it was always, it's always kind of stressful when you're like, Oh, do I have the three 50 or whatever it is in cash? If you're trying to pay in cash for the bus, or do I have enough money still left on my card, the way that we used to do it with the paper cards still do it. You still can get a paper card. Still do it. Yeah. So it seems kind of silly, but removing small barriers does impact people's decisions to ride the bus. And something that I try to do as a frequent bus riders to tell people how much I like riding the bus to, to, to try to normalize it in a sense, and to try to get people to think, well, I could just sit in my car for, for this time and drive and be distracted and whatever, or I could ride the bus and read the newspaper and listen to a podcast and have someone else drive for me. So it's looking.

FISKE:

The scenery, you get a great view of the scenery.

WHEELER:

So riding the bus is honestly, this is going to sound hokey. It's like one of the things I enjoy about my day. Like I look forward to my bus commute, but then again, I'm, I'm a weird urbanist nerd. So yeah, great. There's...

PRATT:

I did want to just make a comment about something you said. There is a real fear of people boarding the bus for the first time, not knowing what kind of pass, how much, where do they pay, how they put their card in. That's why when we hope and we make a push for ridership, it's simple. Credit card tapped, you're good for two hours. Trying to take the fear out of getting new passengers is definitely a goal.

WHEELER:

Absolutely. And another thing that I think can worry people, and this is something that if I'm going to get to work, I don't want the bus to be late, and I'm going to be worried about the bus and that kind of anxiety. But we have apps now to tell us when our buses are going to arrive. Tell us about how we can have real-time information about bus arrivals and what sort of apps to direct people to.

PRATT:

Well, from an operational standpoint, we use that information to improve on our on-time performance. So if we see that a bus is constantly running late, we can pick that up and adjust schedules. So in that sense, it's helpful to us to try to keep the buses as on-time as possible. And it's convenient for the passengers, especially with all the rain we have. They don't want to come out of their building. They can see, well, they still got another five minutes before the bus is going to be here. So it's definitely a benefit to both the passengers and the operation.

WHEELER:

I use Transit app for my bus information. I would recommend it for other folks. Really easy, shows when buses are going to arrive and yeah, you don't have to worry about it being late. Although, again, a compliment to HTA. As somebody who came from Seattle and the Seattle metro system, I rarely, rarely, rarely ever have a bus that's late and if it is, it's all under five minutes. We have a remarkably on-time transit system up here.

FISKE:

Greg, also I know that HTA is looking at installing at some stops so you don't even need an app, some digital screens that will tell you when the next bus is going to be there. Can you talk about those plans a little bit? You bet, yeah.

PRATT:

We applied for a grant with the City of Eureka through the Affordable Housing. And if we are awarded that grant, there are real-time marquees that we wanted to put in the strategic locations and it'll show you the arrival time of the bus. Places like, we have one right now we're testing out in Willow Creek because we have a Trinity Transit going there. We have Humboldt Transit going there. And Yurok just started yesterday or the day before going there. So having three lines and having passengers know where the bus is for connections and it's going to be helpful. Places like Bayshore Mall, Cal Poly Humboldt, all those all those kind of places make a lot easier.

WHEELER:

The Econews Report, we're talking about mass transit with Humboldt Transit Authority General Manager Greg Pratt. So we are all looking forward to the development of Eureka's new Earth Center, our transit hub for Eureka. For those who haven't heard about it, tell us about the Earth Center and HTA's role in this kind of exciting new development.

PRATT:

So through the transit inner city rail capital program, we received a grant for 38.7 million and part of that was 10 million dollars for a transit center with housing and other transit oriented amenities. And so you know we're partnering with the city of Eureka and Cal Poly Humboldt. The work is just beginning. I know it's taken a while to get off the ground but it takes time to line everything up. But that'll be a place to where you can catch your Amtrak, Greyhound, your paratransit, bike share. All the transit buses will come through there just to make it a lot easier for people to go to one spot to get to where they need to go from there.

WHEELER:

And it will be right in the heart of Eureka too, which I think is going to be wonderful for downtown and old town Eureka to have this transit hub centrally located. Makes it really easy for folks to move about our city.

FISKE:

Yeah, and I think sort of calling back something we were talking about earlier, one of the most intimidating things for new riders is often transfers. And so, you know, making them easier, both physically by, by connecting, you know, all the systems in one location, but also combining that with the simplified payment that you were talking about and just being able to kind of hop on the next ride by tapping your card across the systems, I think is going to be a real game changer.

PRATT:

I agree.

WHEELER:

Well, so there are centers only just kind of one exciting thing that HTA gets to brag about when it comes to grant funding. I saw last week some other new news about a big grant that's come in. So something else that I'm really excited about with HTA is its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And there was a big announcement last week that is going to help HTA further electrify its fleet, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stop gross diesel emissions. Greg, can you tell us what you were awarded and what it's going to go for?

PRATT:

So we put in an application again to the same grant that we were awarded last year, and we collaborated with the Yurok tribe and Redwood Coast Transit in Crescent City, and they were able to get, Crescent City and Yurok were able to get 10 electric shuttles and charging infrastructures along their route. So that was a huge plus in those areas. And for Humboldt Transit, there is, in the United States, there is no over-the-road hydrogen fuel cell motor coach. So you think about the double axle, you know, with the storage underneath, you know, schools have them for their football teams. And we received a grant to actually, to develop one of those with a manufacturer. So we're pretty excited about that for HTA to be able to take the lead on developing an over-the-road motor coach. Thank you.

WHEELER:

And hydrogen as a fuel source, this is necessary I imagine because the long distances that our buses have to travel. Can you talk about why hydrogen as opposed to just a standard electric bus like that we already have in the HTA fleet?

PRATT:

Sure. You know, we were hoping that the electric bus technology was going to improve, but really the bus we bought in 2018 is the same as they're selling right now as far as range. If we can get 120 mile range out of it, we're happy. The problem is it's cold a lot here, and when you run the heaters, that knocks it down to 90 miles. There's not a lot of routes that are 90 miles, even the ones that go around the city are anywhere from 120 to Arcata runs 170. And also, we want to keep our operation the same. The buses come in, they're fueled, they're clean, they're parked. With electric, they've got to come in, you've got to put them on a charger for five hours. We can't charge them when we're not here, just for safety concerns. So it gets hard to be able to rotate and do that same fuel part clean. It doesn't work out. With hydrogen, it's the same basic operation as diesel. The same range, same fuel time, and it just keeps our operation running a lot smoother, rather than having to trade out an electric bus because it's out of charge.

WHEELER:

Yeah, the fuel density of hydrogen is much higher than the fuel density of a battery. You can get a lot further. Something that is exciting to me in thinking about the future is our ability to pair hydrogen buses with potential offshore wind. We're going to have a lot of clean renewable power coming in. Through electrolysis, we can develop a green hydrogen source here locally and use that to power our buses. That seems like this wonderful sort of... Synergy? Synergy. There we go. I'm excited to have buses that will eventually run on hydrogen that came from wind power. That's kind of a future that like 10 years ago didn't seem imaginable.

FISKE:

Super exciting. Starting. I want to make one point here too on the greenhouse gas emissions, which I think is really important, which is that it's super exciting that we're going to zero emission buses and we need to do that. But I think it's important that people know that you're saving a lot of greenhouse gas emissions by getting on any bus versus driving your car. And so even though currently there's still a lot of diesel buses in the fleet, it's still a huge climate solution to ride the bus. And I think that gets to another question I had for you, Greg, which is I think people may see these big grants coming in, which are for these big capital expenses to transition to zero emission, to build the transit hubs and facilities, and then wonder why is that not going for more frequent bus routes or something like that. And so if you could address this kind of challenge that exists with the restrictions on the funds, funding and capital versus operational expenditures, that I know it's a big challenge for us. Yeah.

PRATT:

90% of the grants coming our way are all for capital projects, none for operations, none for expansion. It seems like switching over to zero emissions is what is high on everyone's list. And I'm not sure if they realize that the cost to operate that is more yet. So it's going to be interesting over the next few years how they match up the infrastructure with the actual operation. But right now, like I said, operational funds are tough to get. They haven't started coming out of FTA yet.

FISKE:

And I'll just say this is one of the reasons that CRTP has been pushing so hard for to identify more local sources of funding for transit that can be used more flexibly and doesn't rely on state and federal money which has so many restrictions attached to it.

WHEELER:

Well, so Colin, this is, this is a moment to talk about some of CRTP's work. So we're recording on Wednesday. Yesterday, there was a board of supervisors meeting. The board was considering a new sales tax measure, a local sales tax measure. Originally the sales tax measure was conceived to only go to county roads. Every, all of the money just to, you know, fill potholes and whatnot on county maintained roads. CRTP has made a push to expand the kinds of projects that this money could go towards and include mass transit as one of the areas to fund. Can you talk about the role that local taxes for transit could, could provide?

FISKE:

Yeah, and I'm excited to say that the supervisors did vote to form an ad hoc committee and move forward with exploring a tax and other potential funding sources and explicitly added transit to that list. So it's not just a road issue anymore. So we're really happy about that. And maybe Greg can talk about this more, but part of it is local funding that's dedicated to transit could be more flexible so we could decide what to use it for instead of having to follow the state and federal rules. And I think that might allow us to expand certain services more readily. One of the things that I think we alluded to earlier is that there's a state restriction that says each transit route or system has to earn a certain amount of its expenses through fares. But you can also kind of backfill that with other local sources of revenue, like, for example, a sales tax or whatever the county might move forward with. And so I think this would allow us more flexibility to expand service in certain instances. Does that fit with – is that right, Greg?

PRATT:

I couldn't have said it any better, Colin. Great.

WHEELER:

I so I think that we also have a number of priorities as climate activists in trying to think about how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And part of that is going to have to be improving transit, improving the the time between buses to make it more attractive, expanding the hours. God, as as a transportation advocate, what are your goals for HTA in the future for its kind of level of service and how does that relate to greenhouse gas savings here in Humboldt County.

FISKE:

Sure, well I think the reason funding is so important is, as we have alluded to, it's a challenging environment for HTA to operate in with this, just the way the landscape has been developed, and they're doing a great job with the funding that they have, but we need to both improve transit funding, but also work on changing the land uses a bit. That's why we like to talk a lot about infill development and denser housing and mixture of uses that can allow transit to be more feasible. In terms of what we'd like to see, the adopted regional transportation plan for the region includes pretty aggressive targets for increasing the number of people riding the bus. I think it calls for doubling ridership a couple times over the next 20 years. When you look at the research, it seems to suggest that somewhere around 15 minute or so headways, which means the bus comes every 15 minutes or less on the same route, is about where you start seeing lots more people decide that riding the bus is a good option. One of the things that we'd really like to see is enough resources for HTA to provide that 15 minute service in the core denser area between McKinleyville and Eureka.

WHEELER:

Oh, that would be exciting. This is so we talked earlier about the death spiral that can happen to transit agencies where you have reduced revenue, which reduces service, which reduces kind of user demand, which then reduces revenue. And so, you know, you go down the toilet bowl that way. This is kind of the opposite solution, which is let's invest money into HTA. Let's invest money into transit that can increase the amount of service that we can provide. Then that generates new revenue by getting more users to utilize the service.

FISKE:

Yeah, right. I think they call it a virtuous cycle.

WHEELER:

A virtuous cycle. All right. So

PRATT:

I have one more thing I'd like to add. Yeah, please do. Well, just a couple of quick things. One of them is, with the 15-minute headways, the other issue with our system is all the times and reading the schedule. And if it's every 15 minutes, you don't have to worry about that. You know a bus is coming every 15 minutes. And the final thing I'd like to add is January 1, we're shooting for that date to start our run between Eureka and Ukiah. So you'll be able to get from Eureka to Ukiah, transfer in Ukiah. You can go to Santa Rosa and beyond. And Lake County can get down to Calistoga and Napa. So we're looking to start that on January 1.

WHEELER:

So I once had way too much free time on my hands and I was playing on Google Maps. You can, once this route to you, Kaya gets established, you'll be able to get from Smith River right at the Oregon border all the way down to the Mexican border, all using mass transit agencies. So right now that is the missing segment right there. So Southern Humboldt into Mendocino County.

PRATT:

WHEELER:

If you feel like Colin should take a sabbatical, ride the length of California, then write a book about it.

FISKE:

Ride it across America

WHEELER:

Exactly. All right. Well, I'm excited for that. And Greg, thank you so much for joining the show. Also, let's give a shout out to Greg because he is CRTP's transportation, what is it, transportation champion.

FISKE:

Yeah, that's right for, was it 2021? I think the responsible transportation champion. And so thank you, Greg, for all that you do for the community.

WHEELER:

Yes. I thank you, Greg.

PRATT:

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on today, too. All right.

WHEELER:

Join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the north coast of California.