Transportation / Lincoln, Nebraska

Credit:AreaRapidTransit

The Lincoln metropolitan region can thank the unique characteristics of its central City of Lincoln for its place among NRDC’s top 15 Smarter Cities for transportation. Nebraska’s capital city is home to 90 percent of the region’s population, the University of Nebraska, and the region’s primary transit authority, StarTran. What makes the city and its transit system so distinctive, however, is that it has aggressively reined in sprawl.

Urban Zoning and Complete Streets

“Lincoln has very strong citywide zoning and development laws that have ensured more compact housing and street development,” explains Larry Worth, former Lincoln city planner and director of StarTran. “Even though we’re out in the middle of the Midwest with plenty of space we’ve worked hard to avoid sprawl and all of the environmental and transit problems that come with it.

Urban sprawl compromises public health and demolishes natural ecosystems, causing environmental problems (such as harming wildlife by fragmenting habitat), among many others. Sprawl requires public transit to expand to reach dispersed, detached suburban communities, while also making it harder for residents to walk or bike.

Alongside strong development laws and citywide smart-growth policies, last year the Lincoln Metropolitan Planning Organization also adopted a more extensive complete streets program (PDF) with significant community input during open public meetings (PDF). This program will further “encourage denser developments with a mix of both commercial and residential properties, along with sidewalk- and biking-friendly streets, as well as green space,” says Brian Praeuner, transit planner for StarTran.

This blend of policies, Worth notes, has jurisdiction 3 miles outside the city limit and has “kept developers from buying up cheap farmland near the city to build subdivisions, as is common in many other cities, which has helped preserve Lincoln’s countryside.” Worth adds, “It’s a big deal to have this strong authority over urban development to prevent sprawl, and it really benefits our transit system.”

Transit Access

Transit Access in Lincoln Metropolitan Region (light green lines indicate location of metro region with brown regions showing higher transit access), Credit:CNT H+T Affordability Index

The city’s high urban density is one of the key reasons that the Lincoln metro region stands out both for high transit access and low vehicle miles traveled (referring to the amount people drive in the region each year). According to the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Lincoln households drive the least—on average 16,800 miles per year—of any metropolitan region in the country with populations less than 250,000. Praeuner notes that Lincoln’s compact layout means residents have a shorter commute time of about 17 minutes, compared to the nation’s average commute of over 24 minutes. CNT also found that 85 percent of households in Lincoln are within a quarter-mile of a bus route. This ranks Lincoln second in the nation in its population bracket for transit access.

“We’ve pretty much always taken this for granted,” says Worth. “Though it’s true that other places don’t necessarily prioritize transit access, this is has always been the standard for our bus systems.”

As a city department, StarTran “competes for funding with other essential city services, like the guns and hoses (i.e., police and firemen), which makes it challenging to implement new services,” says Worth. So StarTran works hard to get the most out of their limited 60 fixed-route buses by having flexible bus stops. “We have a flag stop policy rather than a designated stop policy,” explains Praeuner, “so just about any stop on a route is a place to pick up the bus, which improves transit access and makes it very convenient for the public.”

In 2007 StarTran conducted a comprehensive study, the Transit Development Plan, to further improve transit efficiency. “While we didn’t have the capacity to increase the number of bus routes, we realigned the routes to avoid redundancies and cover more area,” Worth says.

“It’s important to do this realignment on a regular basis to account for urban growth like new industrial development,” Worth adds. “It’s kind of like going out and cleaning your garage every so often. You’ve got to get rid of some of the stuff that you don’t need anymore and move it to where you do need it.”

Alternative Fuels

StarTran began an Alternative Fuels Program in 1994, one of the first nationwide, by piloting four buses on 97 percent ethanol and 3 percent diesel, as well as two buses on a soy-diesel blend of 25 percent soybean oil and 75 percent diesel. StarTran found ethanol to be too corrosive for the bus engines even after varying the biodiesel ratio over several years of trials, and in 2008 switched its entire fleet to the soy-diesel blend. StarTran’s 60 fixed-route buses now use more than 341,000 gallons of alternate fuels, reducing tail-pipe emissions by 556 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

“In 2008 we were recognized by the EPA for our use of alternative fuels with a Blue Skyways award,” Worth notes. “While all our buses run on a soy-diesel mix, we also have 13 hybrid electric paratransit vehicles, which do specialized trips.” With this award StarTran became a member of the Blue Skyways Collaborative, which encourages voluntary air emissions reduction in North America’s Midwest.

Incentivizing Transit

“While the car is the dominant mode of transportation in Lincoln, we have seen an increase in public transit ridership of about 16 percent over the past six years,” notes Praeuner. “This increase in ridership is due in large part to our noteworthy low-income bus program.” Lincoln’s Low-Income Bus Pass Program cuts the cost of the monthly bus pass by 87 percent for low-income riders, reducing it from $45 to a mere $7.50 for a month of unlimited rides.

During the summer months StarTran also offers a $15 StarPass that allows youth of ages five to 18 to ride as often as they like for three months (kids under five ride free). Add to that StarTran’s efficient Employee Bus Pass Program that delivers monthly bus passes directly to employers. Employers can provide the passes to employees as a fringe benefit and simultaneously avoid the problem having to construct additional parking facilities as staff numbers increase. All this and riders can easily track their bus, too, using a real-time online mapping tool.