City employees and others highlighted a variety of initiatives at the Corridor MPO's Transportation Open House held Thursday afternoon at New Bo City Market south of downtown. Attendees had opportunities to ask questions and express reactions.
For the record, I said (1) I was most excited about the completion of the CeMar Trail, which is expected some time this summer. It will dramatically shorten the distance between the two downtowns, and make cycle commuting to and from Marion a reasonable proposition. (2) What is missing is a mix of housing near the city center. With the core surrounded by a ring of emptiness, businesses must rely on customers who may choose to drive there. Accommodating them requires acres of parking that wastes space and kills vibe.
I've made these points any number of times, but hey, I'm always ready with the answers whenever anyone asks!
Just before the start, the scene at the Market
There was news of upcoming trail initiatives, including the start of a long-anticipated interurban trail to Mount Vernon.
Map showing the planned first stage of Interurban Trail
Veo was there, represented by the affable but camera-shy Tom.
Veo display, with swag but without Tom
I said I was noticing the Veo trucks around more often of late, and there were fewer scooters seen lying about. He verified that they have improved their operations. While all in on scooters, though, they are working with the city to donate their e-bikes that were rolled out (ha ha!) with great fanfare during Bike to Work Week in 2019. Guess they didn't work out.
There were some pictures of possible green installations at our new elementary schools, related to a grant the city is pursuing.
Options for green schoolyards
I couldn't choose... I like them all! I did notice at Trailside Elementary last fall that while the CeMar Trail runs adjacent to the school, it is difficult to access the school from the trail without crossing auto traffic. I'd like to see some kind of spur that goes directly to this bike rack...
bike rack, Trailside Elementary School
...but I don't care much which kind of spur.
There were displays about anaerobic digesters, the Lightline bridge and other Greenway projects, and even the Police Department. (I got to gripe that on the northwest side, the Greenway will abut the casino complex rather than a neighborhood with homes and shops.)
There were also informational flyers, including...
...the Bike to Work Week schedule! I am ensured fun will be had by all. Unlike last year, I'll be here for the whole thing, and it's a cause near and dear to my heart.
The upshot of the Open House is that there's a lot going on in the city, and thankfully the energy and flow of ideas have not been constrained by the chaos at the national level. I hope they got lots of good feedback.
Bus, one of a number of games from Perplext that come in two-inch tall boxes, is a fast-playing affair with an approach to public transit that is unlike any city I've ever visited. The prophet Jarrett Walker calls these systems flexible transit, as opposed to fixed lines. Buses on fixed lines, in places like Cedar Rapids or New York or St. Petersburg or Washington, follow the same routes all the time, and it's up to the riders to figure out the best paths to their destinations.
Example of a fixed line in St. Petersburg, Florida: The Sun Runner runs the same loop, over and over again
With flex routes, on the other hand:
You can summon a flexible service just as you would summon a taxi, and a van or small bus will come to you, or at least very close to you. Unlike a taxi, though, it may still pick up other people during your trip, and there are usually restrictions on where you can use a flexible service to go. (Jarrett Walker, Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives [Washington: Island Press, revised edition, 2024], p. 49)
The buses in Bus are not like Uber or paratransit, in that there are specific stops where they pick up and drop off passengers. What differentiates them from fixed route systems is that where they go from each stop depends on the optimal arrangement of passengers' chosen destinations.
This approach can help the transit vehicle avoid time-wasting maneuvers such as driving into alleys and cul-de-sacs. The path of the vehicle may still be meandering, but it is less so than if it was going to people's doors. (2024: 53)
Flexible systems work at low densities, like outer-ring suburbs and rural areas, where demand for transit is very low.
The productivity of flexible services is usually under five boardings per hour, and most estimates of the theoretical maximum put it below ten.... The low maximum capacity means that if too many people want to use the service, the transit authority has to deploy more vehicles and drivers, which raises the cost of operations. The only alternative is to make the service less flexible, by turning it back into something like a fixed line. (2024: 52)
Ready for a game of Bus?
In the game of Bus, the secret is the town is very small, with service covering four square blocks, and only 15 potential passengers. There are three places for passengers to board (the white circles marked "BUS" in the picture above), and six possible destinations (the colored circles). So, there's no wandering around county backroads, but routes need to be improvised by players, and re-imagined every time they pick up another passenger. I think that could potentially frustrate a real live passenger, but the competition between buses--the green contraptions shown in the picture below--encourages efficient routes and timely dropoffs.
Bus game in progress
Playing the Game
Passengers come in pairs, are picked up at the bus stop and then taken to their color-coded destinations. Each passenger card has, in addition to its pair of passengers, a number indicating the "speed limit," the maximum number of spaces the player can move with each turn. For example, the top card shown in the picture above--the one that's shown right-side-up--has a blue passenger who wants to be taken to the blue dot on the grid, and an orange passenger who wants to be taken to the orange dot. The larger number "3" means the player driving those passengers can move three spaces (or less) with each turn. The smaller number "3" above it is the number of points the card is worth at the end of the game.
Drivers can pick up passenger cards any time they stop at a bus stop, as both buses are in the picture above. The most I've had at one time is two cards' worth (four passengers). Since routes are flexible, picking up a second pair of passengers can affect the optimal order in which they're dropped off. The key, says the website, is "absolute efficiency," not feeling sorry for a passenger you've been toting around for a while. By the way, it doesn't specifically state this in the rules, but when I play the buses must drop off passengers on the side of the street with the colored dot indicating the destination. No reckless running across these streets, as I've seen people do in real life, even on stroads like 1st Avenue East by Lindale Mall.
The game ends when one player completes five passenger cards. Then points are totaled. I tend to try to get cards with high speed limits, and ignore the points, to my later disadvantage, I'm sure. In my experience, games can be completed in less than 15 minutes.
Evaluation
I'm not sure this is the best training module for an actual bus driver, but it does get a person thinking about public transportation, albeit a rather esoteric (in my experience) kind of system. For some smaller towns, this might even inspire a better way to do transit!
The variable "speed limits" will amuse anyone who's ever driven or ridden a bus. Except for Bus Rapid Transit routes, buses move at the speed of traffic, and stop when the other vehicles do as well as to pick up additional passengers. Maybe the variable speeds during the game illustrate how a huge issue for efficient transit is our society's over-reliance on private vehicles?
Passengers boarding at Ground Transportation Center
Early in 2015, Cedar Rapids produced a master planning document, Envision CR, that included two ideas for public transit:
"Continue to evaluate transit ridership and serviceability to identify opportunities for improvement" (#37)
"Explore the possibility of creating a BRT-like crossroads that connects users from Lindale Mall to Westdale, and from Hiawatha to Kirkwood Community College" (#38)
These are part of a longer section on mobility, which aims for a multi-modal (i.e. not just cars) network that connects places, eliminates barriers, and is safe and pleasant to use.
Ten years later, nothing as radical as BRT has been implemented, but a number of positive changes have been made:
The #5 bus, which runs along 1st Avenue from downtown to the boundary with Marion, runs every 15 minutes throughout the day
Two suburban circulators, the #20 and the #30, serve Marion and the far northside/Hiawatha, respectively
Service has been extended one hour later in the evening, with the last bus on each route departing at 7:15 and running its route until around 8:00
While not strictly part of the Cedar Rapids bus system, the 380 Express bus, an inter-city service begun in 2018, departs for Coralville and Iowa City every 20 minutes throughout the day
Also, I'm not at all confident about this, but there seems to be more capacity for bicycles on buses, albeit only two per ride. I've never personally witnessed someone unable to load their bike because the rack on the bus was full.
Bike rack demonstration during Move More Week, Oct. 2022
Riding the bus is easier than ever these days, because apps like Ride Systems, Transit, and any mapping app I've used take most of the guesswork out of when the bus will arrive. (I say "most of the guesswork" because every once in a while Ride Systems will show me a phantom bus.) I've been riding more because I get free rides with my senior pass, and while buses are typically not stuffed full, at least during peak times they are well-used. Consider that a bus with five passengers is serving more people than 99 percent of private motor vehicles.
There are definitely some pinch points, however, that limit how connected and pleasant riding the bus can be. One issue is Cedar Rapids' sprawled design--our 137,000 residents are spread over 71 square miles, or less than 2000 per--which scatters people and destinations. That puts quite the strain on the system, given that we seem committed to a coverage model, and so most people who ride the bus have no other choice.
What's the next step?
Sean Duffy, U.S. Secretary of Transportation (Source: transportation.gov)
In the public chaos that is America in 2025, the answer to that question on any subject at all is anyone's guess. That is certainly true for public transportation, towards which the Trump administration has characteristic hostility. (See Weiner and Duncan 2025, Parshley 2025.) The Chicago Transit Authority has already announced substantial imminent service cuts (Farver 2025), while the State of Colorado is scrambling to replace federal funding for Bus Rapid Transit projects (Minor 2025). Suffice to say funding levels in Cedar Rapids are unlikely to go up in the next four years, and may be drastically reduced.
With that said, I've noticed a few pinch points in our local transit system that we could address with incremental measures. Even small steps have tradeoffs, though, and I don't have any data on which to assess those, so I'll just throw these out there and walk away.
Improve traffic flow. Any place where the bus has to stop for cross traffic should not be on the route. A couple examples are the inbound #2 bus on 5th Avenue which has to wait for all traffic to clear on 8th Street (and currently 7th Street, too, due to a construction detour) before turning left, and the inbound #6 bus on 2nd Avenue which has to cross both 8th and 7th. Shifting the route one block over means they're on streets (well, avenues) with all-way stops at 8th and 7th. This will improve both travel times and drivers' nerves.
Express or crosstown buses. As of now, anyone traveling from one side of the city to the other has to change buses at the Ground Transportation Center, which entails a wait of up to 15 minutes. We can't eliminate everyone's transfer issues, given the scattered nature of Cedar Rapids destinations, but there could be one or two buses that go north-south, and one or two that go east-west without stopping at the GTC.
Swing shift routes. Anyone who works past 7 p.m. can't take the bus home. Could we exchange some day service for a small number of routes that run late into the evening? That could be useful for a substantial number of workers.
Shuttle buses for evening events in the core. Once Downtown recovered from the 2008 flood, it saw an increase in events and restaurants, which led to many complaints about the scarcity of parking. The answer is not more parking lots, which are the implacable enemy of city activity, but more ways to get there.
Buses poised to depart the GTC
A workable bus system is an important part of any city's transportation network, for reasons of equity, traffic congestion, environmental impact, and financial resilience. The potential of the bus system to achieve those goals is constrained by the layout of the city. But even a city as sprawled and scattered as Cedar Rapids can do things to improve that functionality.
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