Alternative transportation options in Savannah largely fails those who truly need it

Because of COVID-19 precautions, Chatham Area Transit’s buses operate at 50% capacity. The restrictions mean fewer passengers can ride, exacerbating already complicated mobility issues for the 10% of Chatham County residents without access to a reliable vehicle.

Living without a car makes getting to work, keeping doctor’s appointments and shopping for groceries more difficult, hindering residents from pulling themselves out of poverty by forcing them to stay in low-paying jobs that are more accessible or to move into cheaper housing farther from bus routes, and to buy groceries at convenience stores or fast-food chains.

One-third of low- and median-income (LMI) households in the Savannah-Chatham area lack reliable transportation, according to a survey of LMI households from nonprofit Step Up Savannah. About 15% don’t live near access to a bus route. Only 5% walk or bike.

“We’re almost wedging those people in (poverty) if they don't have transportation,” Step Up’s CEO Alicia Johnson said. “We’re forcing them to stay in jobs that are not paying them livable wages.”

Reliable transportation disproportionately impacts people of color, who are most impacted by poverty and lack of access to resources in Chatham County, according to Step Up Savannah’s survey.

Allen, who is Black, is resigned to the delays and long wait times as a bus rider, which she’s been since 2006. “People don’t understand how hard it is,” Allen said. “Especially around this time of year when it’s hot.”

Passengers pay for CAT's problems

Efforts to expand CAT services to municipalities such as Pooler and Port Wentworth, where vacant warehousing, logistics and manufacturing jobs number in the hundreds, have been hindered by public sentiment around public transportation and elected officials’ opting out of CAT’s services.

Sylvester Bell works on road construction in Pooler. On another August morning, he waited to catch a bus that would take him west from the CAT bus terminal at 610 W. Oglethorpe Ave. to the airport, which is as far west as the bus can go. A colleague picks him up and drives him the rest of the way to his work site. He lugged work boots, a lunch box and duffel bag on the bus.

Bell wants more bus routes to Pooler. “That’s where all the work is at,” he said.

The westernmost CAT route goes to Benton Boulevard off Jimmy DeLoach Boulevard, close to the airport. Most of Pooler's warehouses – where more than 150 manufacturing and warehousing jobs are currently taking applicants on Indeed.com – are more than two miles away. If a worker doesn't want to walk along the busy highway, it's a 90-minute, 4.5-mile walk to the warehouse district.

Pooler, Thunderbolt and Port Wentworth opted out of CAT's services when the authority was chartered in 1986, long before the suburbs saw tremendous population growth.

The option to opt-in flared in 2014 and earlier this year, but the municipalities' feelings remained the same, according to reports from the Savannah Morning News. It means most of West Chatham County is without bus access.

Calls and emails to the mayor and city manager of Port Wentworth were not returned. The City of Pooler has opted to "let the people decide" whether CAT expands into the rapidly growing city, according to Mayor Rebecca Benton. No vote is on the horizon.

"Nothing's been scheduled, but we would like for the City of Pooler residents to vote whether they want it or not," she said.

CAT communications manager Eric Curl said the authority would be happy to expand routes to West Chatham, but municipalities have to be willing to pay.

"They're gonna be paying one way or the other. Whether it's through the transit tax or higher unemployment rate, and the costs of social services that often entails... so I think it's definitely worth the investment by having our services run further out," Curl said.

CAT's leadership turnover and board in-fighting, coupled with COVID-19 restrictions and a lack of government buy-in, has hamstrung the public agency, but workers and advocates have said the fight to expand alternative transportation options are a necessity for the growing region. These same issues affect CAT’s 17,000 annual riders by causing delays, altered routes and longer waits. The authority's interim director, Valerie Ragland, declined an interview with the Savannah Morning News.

“One of the low hanging fruit issues for our community would be transportation justice and equity,” Johnson of Step Up Savannah said. “Ensuring that those people who live in those highest impoverished and asset-poverty communities actually have a way to get out of it or increase their economic mobility, simply by providing a bus route to a better paying job.”

CAT wants to address the issues, but it's not an easy fix, according to Curl.  And, the bus service is already stretched thin.

A bus driver shortage has compounded capacity limitation wrought by COVID, making wait time longer and forcing CAT to reduce evening services.

CAT competes with the school district, Georgia Ports Authority and dozens of local logistics firms for licensed bus drivers. Curl said the authority recently raised starting pay to $17.39 an hour. "We're looking at every way we can resolve it. Just a matter of getting people to take this great job opportunity," he said.

Some passengers don't mind the wait. Jasmine Faber has used public transit since she was 15. Now 22, the Savannah native said it works for her lifestyle. She lives on Savannah's east side, takes the 10 to the downtown bus terminal, and hops on any line to get where she needs to go. Reduced evening hours and a lack of transport to Pooler and beyond should be expected, she said.

"Because right now with COVID, the buses are not gonna run like they used to," she said as she boarded her bus back to the east side. "So people have to understand."

Bike lanes, sidewalks fail in connecting neighborhoods to services

CAT explored a program that subsidized Uber and Lyft rides to bus stops for residents without access to a route or sidewalks that safely get them from the bus to their home.

“Well, if somebody is taking an Uber, why wouldn't they just go to their job?” Caila Brown, director of nonprofit BikeWalk Savannah, wondered. Her simple solution: Build sidewalks.

In 2018, Brown helped lead a study of the city's sidewalk network. The study revealed it would take 300 years, based on current schedules, to build sidewalks on the more than 73% of streets without them. Even in one of Savannah's wealthiest neighborhoods, Ardsley Park, existing sidewalks are a patchwork of broken concrete, disconnected paths and faded crosswalks.

"If it's like this in Ardsley Park, what is it like in other neighborhoods?" Brown posed.

Sidewalks are crucial for people who use the bus, who are often forced to walk alongside busy roads to reach their stop.

“Not being able to walk to the stop is a huge barrier to using the bus. And it's the same with bike lanes,” Brown said.

Biking and sidewalk infrastructure is weakest in Black communities, according to Armand Turner, director of REACH, a YMCA and Healthy Savannah program aimed at promoting racial equity through healthy living.

But expanding and maintaining non-vehicular infrastructure — bike lanes, sidewalks and trails — is expensive. And for projects like Tide to Town, a multiuse path that will eventually connect Savannah's neighborhoods and suburbs, it's often seen as a recreational asset, not a transportation necessity.

In a survey of 1,500 Chatham County residents conducted by the Metropolitan Planning Commission earlier this year, more than 50% of respondents said biking infrastructure doesn't meet their current needs. Unprotected lanes and a lack of bike racks leaves cyclists feeling unsafe. The Complete Streets ordinance, passed by the city in 2015, will be updated to ensure new developments add bike lanes and sidewalks, but changes to the code to make sure that happens are months away.

The state's Safe Routes to School program aims to create connected sidewalks and bike lanes for all of Chatham County's neighborhoods to get to public schools, according to Sean Brandon, the city's director of Parking and Mobility Services. While the survey is still underway, he ventured that it will reveal there is much work to be done to make downtown truly walkable or bikeable.

"We will probably need much better infrastructure than what we've done," Brandon said.

Cost isn't as big of an issue as one would think, Brandon said. The city added two miles of bike lanes on Price Street for about $250,000. Off-road bike paths like the Truman Trail are much more expensive, since concrete has to be poured and property needs to be purchased. It cost the city about $600,0000 to build out one mile of the Truman Trail.

While cheaper, working with existing roadways presents challenges. In many cases the roads are not wide enough.

The city took away Lincoln Street's center lane to create a bike lane with a three-foot buffer between vehicles, but not every roadway has that infrastructure in place.

"There are definitely streets where we're going to struggle to find, ideally, (a minimum of) six feet for a bike lane," he said.

Even with the infrastructure in place, sometimes it's not enough to keep people downtown.

Downtown neighborhoods have seen up to 8% population decline, mostly from Black and low-income residents getting priced out of their neighborhoods, a Savannah Morning News analysis of census data revealed. Home prices surged 11% between July 2020 and 2021, according to Zillow. Average rent is more than $1,000 a month in the downtown neighborhoods, according to Rent Café. And, hundreds of short-term vacation rentals take up housing inventory from River Street to Victory Drive, according to the city's map of STVRs.

But the move to the west parts of the county incur hidden costs.

Brown, the director of BikeWalk, offered an example to illustrate what this means for residents:

A worker can move to Georgetown and get an affordable apartment, but the price (both financial and otherwise) to travel to and from the city center skyrockets. A monthly bus pass is $50, according to CAT. Step Up’s survey found 15% of LMI households could not afford that.

And even if a resident can foot that cost, “it's going to negate anything you would gain in terms of quality of life, if you have to wait on the bus for an hour in the morning and an hour at night," Brown said.

Zoe covers growth and how it impacts communities in the Savannah area. Find her at znicholson@gannett.com, @zoenicholson_ on Twitter, and @zoenicholsonreporter on Instagram. 

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Alternative transportation options in Savannah largely fails those who truly need it