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GREENSBORO — The Greensboro Transit Authority is experiencing growing pains that have sunk its on-time performance into the problem zone, a new study shows.

San Diego-based transit consultant Dan Boyle found some GTA buses running more than six minutes off-schedule as much as 57 percent of the time.

Boyle linked the problem to a 63 percent jump in GTA ridership during the past five years, an increase from 2.2 million in 2003 to 3.6 million this year.

Boyle, who did the report for GTA, attributed explosive passenger growth to such service improvements as the J. Douglas Galyon Depot coming online five years ago and significant investment by the city in newer buses.

“People see that money is being invested in the system. That makes it more attractive to ride,” Boyle said. “And I think certainly the gas prices going up this spring and summer have made people take a closer look.”

That’s the nice part of GTA’s increased popularity.

The downside is that when buses run more full, they have a tougher time keeping to a schedule because drivers must stop more often to pick up and drop off passengers, Boyle said.

And GTA drivers must battle increasing congestion on local roads, he said.

GTA should be able to make some modest changes in its routes that would not cost much but should get its buses running more timely, he said.

The most striking thing about GTA is that its buses have continued filling up even though it has doubled the number of vehicles on its major routes, Boyle said.

“That just doesn’t happen in most places,” Boyle said, noting that many routes now operate twice-per-hour rather than hourly.

That suggests city residents are hungry for increased transit options and respond enthusiastically when GTA offers new services, Boyle said.

Boyle presented his report at a recent meeting of the city Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Greensboro area’s transportation planning agency.

At that meeting, other transportation planners reported that a new bus route through northeast Greensboro, No. 15 Yanceyville/Brightwood School, already had filled the bus on some of its runs after less than a month of operation.

In focusing on GTA, Boyle is looking at “one piece of the puzzle in the Triad,” said City Councilman Robbie Perkins, chairman of the Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The larger challenge: to build a regional network that goes beyond Greensboro’s city limits to provide a reliable level of multicounty service, Perkins said.

“We have to evolve from a city bus system to one where our residents can make the connections they need regionally, because jobs are not going to be available only in the city,” Perkins said.

Efforts to reach GTA manager Libby James for comment about the study were unsuccessful.

GTA’s biggest schedule busters in Boyle’s study were two routes, each of which operated on schedule only 43 percent of the time:

• The No. 7 Friendly Avenue bus that travels out its namesake street to the Guilford College area, serving Wesley Long Hospital and Friendly Shopping Center along the way.
• The No. 9 West Market Street route that goes all the way out Swing Road to Interstate 40, making stops near UNCG on both ends of its route.

By contrast, GTA’s most punctual route runs through eastern Greensboro: the No. 4 Benbow Road bus that stops near Kindred Hospital, Guilford Health Care Center on Willow Road and the Vance Chavis Library branch on East Lee Street.

That bus runs on schedule nearly 80 percent of the time, Boyle found.

The study defined a bus route’s “schedule adherence” in terms that many riders probably would consider generous, no more than a minute earlier than scheduled nor five minutes later at specific checkpoints along the routes.

Within those parameters, Boyle found GTA’s overall fleet ran on schedule 60 percent of the time on weekdays, the lower end of what most transit agencies regularly achieve.

In 2003, GTA’s weekday buses ran on time 74 percent of the time, Boyle said.

He suggested the system could return to that level by dropping some bus stops that are too close together on heavily used routes. Another possibility is using new monitoring technology to rewrite schedules so they match reality more closely, he said.

Potential fixes that would cost more money include splitting such longer routes as No. 7 Friendly Avenue in two, by adding a “connector” bus that serves only the farther reaches of the current route, he said.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com