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GTA reports new CNG buses, upgrades to maintenance facility and plans for transit signal priority and tap-to-pay readers
Summary
Greenville Transit Authority director James Veil briefed the council on new compressed natural gas buses, an upgraded maintenance facility, ridership figures, a planned transit signal priority rollout across roughly 200 signals, a $6 million federal grant tied to RAISE/BUILD funding, and tap-to-pay fare readers and retail reload options.
James Veil, director of GTA, updated the Greenville City Council at a work session on a year of service and infrastructure upgrades, including delivery of six compressed natural gas buses, commissioning of a fueling station, near-complete work on a new operations and maintenance facility, and planned technology upgrades to improve on-time performance.
Veil said the six CNG buses and a recently commissioned fueling station should allow buses to operate up to 18 hours a day. He described the new maintenance facility as substantially complete and in a final punch-list phase. "Our punch list is down to 2 and a half pages," he said.
Veil provided system-level data: for the period reported in the presentation, fixed-route ridership was a little over 710,000 rides, trolley ridership about 28,000 and paratransit just over 15,000. He said fixed-route ridership has generally trended upward and that a recent dip in August and September affected year-over-year totals. On-time performance improved four percentage points in the most recent reporting period.
Transit operational investments and projects discussed included a CDL training program with a 90% completion rate that Veil said supplied many new hires (63% of hires came without a license and were trained), stop and shelter upgrades (17 stops updated since 2021, 63 upgraded in total, roughly 300 remain), and a grant-funded package for shelters, solar benches and benches. Veil said the RAISE grant award underlying a multimillion-dollar package was approximately $6,000,000 and remains in federal review; he noted the NOFO was relabeled "BUILD" under a new administration but said there is no reason to expect the funds to be rescinded.
Veil described a planned transit signal priority rollout that will tie buses to the Traffic Management Center (TMC) and roughly 200 traffic signals across the system. He said priority will not operate like emergency vehicle preemption but will extend greens or shorten reds when a bus is late to help restore schedule adherence.
On fare technology, Veil said new fare readers will allow riders to tap a credit or debit card to board and will let passengers add value to a UMO fare card at retail locations such as Walgreens, Dollar General, CVS and Walmart instead of visiting the transit center.
Veil closed by saying it is time to update the transit development plan and that further service improvements will likely require increased local funding. No formal votes or contract awards were taken during the presentation; council members asked clarifying questions about grant timing, signal counts and the timeline for Proterra buses in dry dock.
