Getting around Howard County on a public bus has been slow since 41-year-old David Bittner was a kid. Back then, he knew that his bicycle was a faster way to get to the town's shopping mall from Owen Brown than the old Rouse Co. Columbus system. Suburbia, after all, wasn't designed for mass transit.
Now Bittner, an advocate for an expanded transit bridge over Route 29, is urging a seven-member commission again trying to craft new approaches to suburban public transit to stretch for "new ideas, creative ideas. I think this is something we as a community can figure out," he told a group called Transportation Advocates at a recent meeting with several commission leaders. The group's report is due Dec. 1.
With major population growth expected to result from developments in central Columbia and along the U.S. 1 corridor, county officials find themselves caught between the spiraling costs of the local Howard Transit system and the dire need for those bright green buses.
Judy Pittman told the advocates group that workers at the stores and other retail businesses already in the county and those planned for Columbia's new urban-style downtown don't make much money. She spoke to a clerk at a supermarket, she said, who depends on the bus to get to her job. When the bus is late, the clerk loses pay.
"We need people who make low wages, and who depend on the bus," she told a group of about 35 people meeting at the Florence Bain Senior Center on Oct. 14.
But the habits of current residents are also a problem. Pittman noted after a show of hands that everyone at the advocates meeting had come via private vehicle.
"We have to take into account that we are a car county," said John Eberhard, a retiree who volunteers to drive other seniors through the county's low-cost Neighbor Ride program. People, especially frail seniors, will not walk more than a half-mile, he said, and the county's senior population is forecast to grow quickly over the next two decades.
Even new development isn't always helpful, said James Robertson, a River Hill resident who serves on the village's traffic and safety committee. At Maple Lawn, one of Howard's newest projects that mixes stores, offices and homes in one community, "all the housing is a mile away" from the offices and retail outlets. Robertson wants the county to create a separate transit agency to plan solutions. "We need to change the way things are built. I don't think anything else matters much."
County Executive Ken Ulman created the commission after he was forced to cut the budget request for Howard Transit by $1.9 million this fiscal year, despite being a big booster of transit services. Ulman said that, given the recession's toll on revenue, the county just couldn't keep paying for annual 10 percent to 20 percent cost increases above the current $7.7 million budget. Those cuts meant higher fares and less service, eliminating runs to River Hill and leaving Sunday buses running once every two hours.
Howard now pays 73 percent of the budget for Central Maryland Regional Transit, the entity that contracts with First Transit to provide bus service in Howard, western Anne Arundel County and around Laurel in Prince George's County. Howard gets most of that service, said CMRT chief executive officer John W. Powell Jr.
But most concede that bus riders are those who have no other alternative.
"It's kind of a system of last resort," Bittner told the advocates group, who have been pushing for better public transit for a decade.
Bus service is important for economic development, the county's chamber of commerce has said. "The success of our business community requires transportation options," including "improved level of transit service," according to the chamber of commerce's legislative action issues statement for 2011.
Republican county executive candidate Trent Kittleman talked about being ready "to accommodate people who don't drive cars" at an Oct. 13 chamber candidates forum when a transportation question was asked.
One problem, Ulman said at the forum, is "we're left out of the mass-transit world," except for MARC train service at the county's eastern edge. Prospects of Columbia getting service from either Washington's Metro system or Baltimore's light rail line are nil, officials have said, because Howard doesn't have the volume of riders to make it worthwhile.
"We're in this doughnut hole between the large public entities," said Paul Farragut, commission co-chairman and a former executive director of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. Allen Cornell, a former board president of Corridor Transportation Corp., now CMRT, is the other co-chairman.
But as county roads become more congested, and with thousands of federal defense workers, contractors and now cybersecurity jobs on the way, better transit and development planning must be part of the mix, officials say.
That's why options such as walking and cycling were important in planning for Columbia's new downtown, and why the county has supported building homes mixed with stores and offices near the three commuter train stations in the county, he said.
The advocates group is pushing for a reorganized, more regional transit structure.
"We all agree we need a regional focus that will improve the frequency and reliability and at the same time contain costs," said Sharonlee Vogel, who serves on the commission, the county's transportation board and heads the Transportation Advocates group.