Facing climate crisis, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City prioritize vulnerable residents in transportation network

CEDAR RAPIDS — On an overcast summer day, as downtown workers began to leave their offices, Wifag Mohammed sat on one of the flat rocks outside the Ground Transportation Center. She looked wearily onto Fourth Avenue SE, waiting for her Route 7 bus to take her to her southwest Cedar Rapids apartment. A couple of plastic Walgreens bags sat beside her.

That Wednesday, Mohammed had spent hours — from 8 a.m. until after 4 p.m. — using Cedar Rapids city buses to get around town. Mohammed ventured from her home near Kirkwood Community College to the 16th Avenue SW Walgreens and eventually the downtown transportation hub, 450 First St. SE, after a doctor’s appointment.

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Mohammed, 45, said she is a materials handler at the new FedEx warehouse on Commerce Park Drive SW, but the city buses don’t travel there. She takes taxis and requests rides on the Uber and Lyft mobile apps to get to work — but compared to the $1 fee for a Cedar Rapids Transit bus ride, the cost for these services can add up.

An immigrant from Sudan who’s still struggling to navigate the process of becoming a U.S. citizen, Mohammed said she is without a driver’s license and needs the bus to shop, go to the library and get elsewhere to meet her daily basic needs. Without a license, she said she’s faced barriers to securing full-time employment though she earned a bachelor’s in public health in her home country.

“The bus is taking all my time,” Mohammed said. “Every stop I spend an hour to wait for the bus to come … I pay all my money on taxis, on Uber and Lyft. I just work all the time and I am uncomfortable with my life.”

Mohammed is far from the only resident who relies on public transit to access work, health care, grocery stores and key services. For those like her who can’t drive, or residents who can’t afford a car, the public transportation network is an essential part of life in the Corridor.

And as the effects of climate change worsen, transit-dependent residents are among the most vulnerable to the elements — extreme heat, bone-chilling cold and everything in between.

Acknowledging this threat, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City officials are working to meet ambitious climate action goals to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 with plans that promote equity and prioritize vulnerable residents.

To successfully reduce emissions while addressing the barriers residents face to accessing services, an important piece of the puzzle is continuing to build a multimodal transportation network and walkable neighborhoods where amenities are located within walking distance.

With that in mind, city officials are working to strengthen their transportation networks, not only to curb carbon emissions but also to best serve residents in under-resourced parts of the community.

How much does transportation contribute to greenhouse gas emissions?

In Cedar Rapids’ 2019 greenhouse gas inventory, transportation emissions made up 8 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions — the next largest share of emissions after industrial processes. In Iowa City’s 2022 report, transportation emissions made up 20 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions — the largest source after electricity and natural gas.

“We can’t get to our emissions goals without transportation because that’s such a huge contributor to emissions not just here, but across the United States,” said Darian Nagle-Gamm, Iowa City’s transportation director.

Climate, transit connection

Ahead of the hottest week of the year, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City volunteers teamed up to work as citizen scientists and map urban heat islands — areas with little tree cover and more pavement that capture heat and create heat pockets, posing a threat to public health.

Volunteers drove around July 22 to gather temperature data from the hottest areas of the communities as part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant-funded heat island project.

Citizens traversed nine routes in Cedar Rapids and five routes in Iowa City, using sensors on their car to collect temperature information, Cedar Rapids Sustainability Manager Sara Maples said. These routes were chosen to get a mix of residential, farmland and industrial areas, and to include social vulnerabilities in neighborhoods.

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Iowa City Climate Action Coordinator Sarah Gardner said transit routes also influenced routes in the heat mapping campaign.

“We know that with climate change, there are going to be increased extreme heat events,” Maples said. “We know that they're going to be more severe and we also know that they're going to last longer. This is one way that we can identify the spots within our community.”

In Cedar Rapids’ Community Climate Action Plan, urban heat islands are mapped with the transit route, which shows that “public transit routes have the highest temperatures above average, compounding exposure for transit-dependent residents.” Using pre-2020 derecho data, temperatures were shown to be highest particularly in the urban core, in the Westdale area and in several other pockets around the community.

Part of Cedar Rapids’ and Iowa City’s combined pitch for being one of the 18 communities selected for the heat mapping campaign was the need to gather data after the derecho, to explore how the loss of trees has perhaps contributed to more heat. Temperature data will be available later this year.

Maples said this process will allow the communities to understand how people experience heat on the ground level. It can help dial in on high-traffic pedestrian locations where there’s a need to increase shade, share information in extreme heat events, or otherwise inform future city planning.

Transit Manager Brad DeBrower also said the updated heat map can help identify heat pockets along transit lines and guide strategies for the future.

“From a health perspective, we can help manage that aspect of it to keep our residents safe,” Maples said. “It can inform things like where could we potentially have shade structures or more trees or vegetation.”

Making ‘transportation system greater’

Greg Hanson, 64, a Cedar Rapids resident who said he lives under a highway overpass, qualifies for the city’s free-fare program and uses buses to get around the city. This particular morning, he used the bus to access a shower and do laundry with Willis Dady Homeless Services’ shelter outreach.

Given the city’s population — that it’s not a large metropolitan area like New York City or Chicago — Hanson said Cedar Rapids’ bus system doesn’t have the ridership to support more frequent routes. Buses operate from 5:15 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. on weekdays and 9:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Saturdays, with buses coming hourly or every half-hour during peak times, or for some routes and times every 15 minutes.

“They’re doing the best they can,” Hanson said. “It’s about money.”

For those experiencing homelessness like himself, Hanson said the city has done a good job of making it as easy as possible to get Free Fare IDs. The program covers many regular Transit riders, including those age 65 and up, people with disabilities, Medicare passengers and those who meet income-based restrictions.

“The bus system does a pretty good job adjusting to what the needs are,” Hanson said. “ … You have to be strategic and plan.”

Cedar Rapids residents age 12 and under can ride for free as well, and students attending the Cedar Rapids Community School District, Kirkwood and Coe College may ride for free with their school IDs. The city also last fall lowered its full fare from $1.50 per ride to $1 when reinstating fares for the first time since COVID-19 prompted staff to stop collecting fares.

“Between our free fares, our student program and our reduced rates, riding the bus is a low- to no-cost option,” DeBrower said. “We are excited to see our ridership numbers grow close to pre-COVID levels. People are returning to Transit and boarding the bus for their destinations, and we continue to expand our bike infrastructure and micromobility options for the ‘last mile’ to our riders’ doors.”

Ridership still is rebounding from COVID-19. In fiscal 2019 there were 1.25 million Cedar Rapids Transit riders. In fiscal 2023, which ended June 30, the city recorded 982,266 riders.

Each year, DeBrower said the city looks at minor adjustments and does route studies, taking into account ridership and development.

Other services also help fill in the gaps with the transportation system. The city contracts with Linn County LIFTS to provide paratransit service to passengers with qualifying disabilities who are unable to ride the bus. There’s also a partnership with Neighborhood Transportation Service at Horizons, which offers weekend and after-hours curb-to-curb service for a $6 fee for critical needs — including rides to hospitals, grocery stores, care facilities and gas stations.

Arrange a ride

Riders can call Linn County LIFTS at (319) 892-5170 and NTS at Horizons at (319) 363-1321 to arrange for transportation or find out more information. Details are available at CityofCR.com/Transit.

Neighborhood Transportation Service manager Brandon Schulte said the service is busiest in the winter, typically surpassing about 2,400 rides a month when people don’t want to be on the roads or stand outside in the cold for long. He said the new FedEx facility and Nordstrom warehouse in Cedar Rapids and CCB Packaging in Hiawatha are some of the higher-demand stops.

In Iowa City, since the Iowa City Area Transit study was approved in 2021, Nagle-Gamm said the transportation system has been re-imagined with route redesign, different fares and electric buses.

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She said residents wanted more frequent, reliable services, so the city stretched hours on some routes or reallocated services in less-used routes. Iowa City buses run at varying times depending on the route, from 5:30 a.m. to 11:20 p.m. on weekdays and 5:30 a.m. to 7:40 p.m. on Saturdays.

In fiscal 2023, the city hit 1.1 million riders for the first time since 2020, but Nagle-Gamm said ridership remains 26 percent below pre-pandemic levels.

City officials on Tuesday are launching a two-year free fare pilot program to boost ridership and make it more convenient and affordable for people to ride the bus.

“The city's role is to create an infrastructure that better enables bicycling, to create an infrastructure and an environment … that people want to walk and are able to walk and create a transit system that better meets the needs of more Iowa Citians,” Nagle-Gamm said.

Multiple ways to get around

City officials are striving to make walkable neighborhoods filled with housing, sidewalks for pedestrians, bike lanes for cyclists and accessible amenities — whether that’s a pharmacy down the street, a coffee shop on the corner or a grocery store on your block.

The vision outlined in both Cedar Rapids and Iowa City’s climate action plans calls for a city in which residents can easily find everything they need without a vehicle.

According to Cedar Rapids’ plan, sprawling development costs residents two to three times more in transportation and housing and uses two to three times more energy, water and carbon per development.

In the coming years, the city plans to add eight community gardens where residents can grow their own healthy produce. And to increase tree canopy, the city’s ReLeaf reforestation plan uses a system to determine which neighborhoods will see trees planted first based on equity.

When it comes to navigating the city, Maples said the city emphasizes a multipronged approach. Through its vendor VeoRide, residents have micromobility options with electric scooters and bikes. Improvements continue to be made to on-street bikeways and to the trail network.

In Iowa City’s plan, officials note that some neighborhoods are not as well-connected as others.

But with a walkable Pedestrian Mall in a vibrant downtown and the presence of the University of Iowa, Nagle-Gamm said Iowa City has a high share of bike riders and public transit users.

Like Cedar Rapids, Gardner said Iowa City has taken a strategy to achieve net zero emissions that works to make all modes of transportation available and promote the usage of electric vehicles.

Joe O’Brien, 54, who recently moved from Cedar Rapids to Center Point, said he relies on a mix of biking and busing to get around the metro after his cars were repossessed.

He said it can take a long time to reach his destination because of road construction and having to carefully share the street with cars, but it can also take hours to navigate the area by bus because of the schedule for some routes. And in the summer, after spending hours outside in the sun to get around, O’Brien said it gets “hot out there.”

In larger cities such as Denver or Tampa, Florida, where O’Brien said he previously lived, the buses run more often and it’s easier to access the services he needed. But he said he understands Iowa lacks the population base to support a more robust transit network.

“They don’t run long enough,” O’Brien said of Cedar Rapids’ buses. “... The city’s doing the best they can.”

Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com