It’s official: Lancaster County’s Red Rose public transit system is going to launch the new routes and schedules it unveiled to the public earlier this year.
The board of the South Central Transit Authority approved the changes at its meeting Wednesday evening. They will be implemented beginning Monday, Nov. 4, authority Executive Director Gregory Downing said. (Update: To avoid major changes a day before the Nov. 5 election, the start date was pushed back a week, to Monday, Nov. 11.)
Current drafts of the new routes and schedules are posted here on the Red Rose Transit Authority website. Finalized versions will be posted shortly.
Between now and November, Red Rose will be preparing for the changeover: Printing new schedules, ordering new signage, familiarizing drivers with the routes and so on.
The redesign represents the biggest overhaul to Red Rose service since the 1970s. It will provide bus service to several high-priority destinations for the first time: Penn State Health’s new Lancaster hospital, McCaskey High School, the complex of businesses on Noll Road and Running Pump Road in East Hempfield Township, the parking lots north of the Amtrak station.
It is based on the authority’s 2023 Transit Development Plan, or TDP launched in late 2022 and accepted by the board in March. The TDP calls for routes that that are direct rather than roundabout; that follow the same path out and back; that operate at regular intervals; and that serve “well-defined markets”: Key population centers, commercial hubs and major institutions such as hospitals.
In May, officials unveiled a draft route system and invited public comment. The response was “overwhelming,” Downing said at the time, and led to several important revisions.
Among other things, the authority agreed to start service at 5 a.m. rather than 6 a.m. and to continue running routes out into the county throughout the day, rather than just in the morning and evening.
It also adjusted its planned “Route 1” in response to objections from residents in Lancaster city’s Southeast. Initially, the authority had proposed replacing a loop route in the neighborhood with a longer loop that also covered the northeast, but residents said that would add unnecessary time and distance to their trips downtown.
Instead, Route 1 (PDF) preserves the Southeast’s existing loop. It is one of the route’s three components, along with a northeast city loop and a spur out to the Red Rose Transit Authority operations center off Dillerville Road.
Community members worry that it’s going to be confusing, said David Cruz Jr. a Southeast resident and Lancaster City Housing Authority board member. The arrangement calls for people to board southbound buses at Ewell Plaza and northbound ones at the Queen Street Station: Without clear signage, riders say they could find themselves heading in the wrong direction.
At the prompting of board member Bonnie Glover, who lives in the Southeast, Wednesday’s vote included a caveat addressing that concern, directing the authority to make every effort to clarify Route 1 bus destinations with signage and in ride guides.
Residents also think the authority’s timetables are too optimistic about how quickly buses can get from stop to stop, Cruz said. For example, the schedule gives Route 1 buses just 5 minutes to travel from the Operations Center to McCaskey High School via North Duke and East Clay streets. Asked about that, Downing agreed: It will be changed to 10 minutes, he said.
Southeast neighborhood representative Elihud Diaz attended Wednesday evening’s board meeting virtually. He had hoped to ask the board to delay the vote, but was not able to log on in time. In a public comment at the end of the session, he asked the board to reconsider, saying, “Why not take the time to get it right?” However, he was told the matter had already been decided.
In a statement afterward to One United Lancaster, he said the community’s concerns “were neither respected nor heard.” Cruz, too, said people wanted more discussion before the board acted, and that in his view residents and riders were treated unfairly and should have been allowed “a more pivotal role” in the discussions.
Diaz and Cruz both said attendees at community meetings were assured that the route proposals were just that, proposals, and that they were caught off guard by Wednesday’s vote.
Downing said he was floored by their comments. He met half a dozen times with Southeast neighborhood residents, including a bus tour that was specially arranged so they could experience the new route directly. Glover, too, was part of the discussions. It was clearly stated the routes could be approved this week, Downing said.
Crucially, he said, “we gave them what they wanted” — the retention of the existing Southeast loop. He noted that residents have brought up other issues — bus shelter, lighting, fares. While those are legitimate questions to raise, they’re separate from the route changes and there’s no case for holding up the latter because of them, he said.
He said he’s confident the new system will be a big step forward for riders and Lancaster County as a whole.
The South Central Transit Authority manages both the Red Rose Transit Authority in Lancaster County and its counterpart in Berks County, the Berks Area Regional Transportation Authority, or BARTA. The South Central authority will begin looking at BARTA route changes later this year, probably around October, Downing said.
The Lancaster County route changes are designed to cost no more than 4% more than the existing system. That can be accomplished with the system’s existing revenue streams, Downing said.
