Project Update: Vancouver Introduces First BRT-Light Line to the Area By Maile Bucher Launched in 2017, C-Tran’s BRT, the Vine, was the fi rst to be implemented in the Vancouver, Washington, area. They found the BRT-light route was the best fi t for their community. -TRAN DEBUTED THE fi rst bus rapid transit line (BRT), the Vine, to the Clark County area in Vancouver, Washington, in January of 2017. Th e BRTlight line was a project that was designed to reduce rider’s travel time and improve the reliability of C-Tran’s service in the area. C-Tran made the decision to operate the BRT line as light; the Vine operates in mixed traffi c and has signal priority. “Anytime you dedicate a lane, the construction process is automatically more invasive, longer and more expensive. Th at obviously was one of the guiding principles behind why we chose to operate our BRT in mixed traffi c,” explained Christine Selk, C-Tran communication and public aff airs manager. “Just given project funding, resources and the scheduled standpoint, we felt that for our community and our ridership, mixed traffi c was a more common sense approach.” Selk said that since introducing the Vine, C-Tran is getting closer to what its transportation goals are. “We have a more effi cient journey along the corridor than had happened pre-BRT.” Developing the Vine WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff was the project lead for the Vine. Stefano Viggiano, AICP, planning manager at WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff , explained that the path to the Vine initially started with a high-capacity transit study that looked at a number of corridors in the area in 2008. “Th at wasn’t really specifi c to the Vine project, but that study led to identifying this corridor. Th at fi rst study was an alternative analysis to look at the content designs to the locally preferred alternative,” said Viggiano. “We did quite a bit of public outreach and got approval of the project to get into project development.” Viggiano said that the actual work on the corridor started in 2011. Once the project began, Viggiano said that WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff did community outreach on its own as a consultant, as well as working with another public outreach consultant. “C-Tran did quite a bit themselves and they did quite a bit of door-to-door work along the corridor; they went to businesses and talked to them. I think that was very helpful, that direct one-on-one contact to explain the project. A lot of times people have misconceptions about these types 16 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | APRIL/MAY 2017 of projects and how they might impact them,” added Viggiano. Selk said that C-Tran began doing outreach from the very start, hosting hundreds of meetings with the community, interest and stakeholder groups. “We met consistently with those groups who really are not only part of our core ridership group, but also members of the community who took a real strong interest in the project overall.” Parkeon was responsible for ticket vending and transit priority signals, Pivot Architecture was selected as the station architect and Init was responsible for passenger displays. New Flyer Industries Inc. created the expanded BRT buses. Craig Runyon, marketing coordinator Pivot Architecture, said that C-Tran gave the company six words to describe what they wanted for the 33 diff erent stations and stop designs: sleek, reliable, safe, freedom, user-friendly and community catalyst. THE VANCOUVER mall station features realtime arrival information.
MassTransit_AprilMay_2017
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