Do you wish that a Pace bus stopped more frequently along the route you take to work? Or that there was another bus stop closer to your neighborhood?
Now’s the time to offer up your feedback, as Pace asks riders to be a part of reimagining its suburban bus service.
At a meeting earlier this month, Pace’s Board of Directors presented the next step of ReVision, an initiative launched last November to address how the company can evolve with suburban residents’ needs by tweaking where and how often buses run. Now, Pace is circulating an online survey and organizing three open houses – one is on Dec. 2 at Howard Mohr Community Center – to see just what those needs are.
At the first open house, a Zoom meeting on Nov. 20, Pace’s executive director Melinda Metzger discussed how local transportation needs changed following the Covid-19 pandemic.
With pandemic-era federal money, Pace added more-frequent buses on routes with lots of riders, additional weekend service, and more service earlier in the day and later in the evening.
“The goal of the ReVision project is to continue to provide more services and to show what a transformational investment in suburban bus service can achieve, as well as to develop a plan to adjust service that better meets post-pandemic travel patterns based on available funding levels,” Metzger said.
Pace’s ReVision plan will not affect its partnership Dial-A-Ride services or ADA paratransit for people with disabilities.
As Pace considers how to improve suburban bus service after the pandemic, the company has analyzed draft concepts that focus on increasing either ridership or coverage – a tradeoff between providing service where the highest number of people travel or to as many areas as possible.
“Pace’s big existential problem comes down, in large part, to the fact that it serves this huge, huge area,” said Daniel Costantino, a principal associate at Jarrett Walker Associates, a Portland, Oregon-based public transit design and planning firm that helped develop ReVision.
Pace is one of the largest bus services in North America, driving more than 3,677 square miles, or 15 times the size of Chicago.
Costantino said that, because of Pace’s large coverage area, it’s most similar to transit companies that serve entire East Coast states. He added that CTtransit, Connecticut’s bus system, provides 50% more bus service per resident than Pace does to 274 municipalities across six counties.
And while ridership is high in some counties, it drops in lower density suburbs further from Chicago, where buses are often infrequent and there are geographical gaps in service.
“Outside of the older town centers that are mostly on the Metra line, it can be rather difficult to access transit,” Costantino said.
As Pace struggles to balance ridership and coverage, it also battles funding, as federal money given out during the pandemic is projected to run out by the end of next year.
Pace’s funding hasn’t grown with suburban development, officials said, and, as a result, largely remains positioned to serve communities as they existed in 1983, when Pace was founded.
In 2026, regional transit, including Pace, CTA and Metra, are expected to have a deficit over $730 million. Pace officials said service will likely be cut that year, if they don’t get enough money before then.
Because Pace is unsure exactly how much funding it will get next year Costantino proposed three ReVision plans for varying financial situations.
- The Pace Plus 10 Limited Investment concept shows a 10% increase in service, or if the Illinois legislature funded Pace just enough to get service back up to pre-Covid levels. This would include improving service frequency on certain corridors and more weekend service.
- The Pace Plus 50 Ridership concept details what Pace would look like if service increased over 50%, requiring about $150 million a year in funding, and focused on generating high ridership. Pace would implement this through more frequent buses taking long, direct routes.
- The Pace Plus 50 Coverage concept expects the same level of funding, but highlights coverage, extending service every hour far into the suburbs, but only increasing frequency on select corridors.
Pace’s online survey asks suburban residents which concept they prefer. Feedback will contribute to the drafting of the concept, and the final plan will likely be solidified next fall and implemented in 2026.
“ReVision represents an important opportunity for the community to help build a future-focused transit system that works for everyone,” said Pace Chairman Rick Kwasneski in a statement. “This initiative will shape the next generation of transit service across the region, and I encourage all riders and stakeholders to participate in the online survey or attend an open house.”
The second open house is at Howard Mohr Community Center in Forest Park Dec. 2 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The third is at Homewood Village Hall Dec. 11 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Learn more at https://www.pacebus.com/revision.