North Liberty to take fresh look at transit

North Liberty officials are looking to invest $50,000 into studying and implementing an experimental intracity transit program to address unmet transit needs in the community.

North Liberty Mayor Amy Nielsen said the funding, which was set aside in budgeting earlier this year, will allow the city to create what will become a pilot program of sorts.

'We're starting small, and the first thing we want to address is getting North Liberty residents around North Liberty,” she said. 'We just want to see what the need is and what's going to work best for the people, and then after that, sit down and find out what it's going to cost because it's going to cost more than $50,000.”

Program specifics will be ironed out during a committee discussion process. The mayor and at least one council member will serve on the committee.

'It could end up being that we run vans, it could end up being taxi vouchers, we just don't know. ... Any idea is a good idea at this point,” Nielsen said.

The North Liberty City Council will provide feedback on the ad hoc transit committee's mission statement at its July 28 work session.

Nielsen said she hopes to have a pilot program implemented by this time next year.

Dean Wheatley, North Liberty city planner, said city staff have been monitoring the transit system, which offers a route from North Liberty to downtown Iowa City in the morning and a reverse route at night.

The route, which began in 2006, is available through a contract with Coralville and cost the city just under $80,000 last year.

The high price for the service is due to low ridership, coupled with the length of the route, as the city pays by the hour. The route averages 68 riders a day between both trips, but five to twelve of those are picked up in Coralville along the way, Wheatley said. The average annual ridership is 13,600 people.

The cost per ride is $1 for residents, but it costs the city more than $6 per ride to provide the service, Wheatley added.

'It's a relatively limited service, it's really for commuters,” Wheatley said. 'It's a very expensive service because we have very few riders, and it takes a long time to get from here to downtown Iowa City.”

North Liberty's contract with Johnson County's paratransit service SEATS, which provides rides to the elderly and people with disabilities, costs the city about $25,000 a year, or about $30 per ride, Wheatley said. While the service is costly, it is highly efficient and a huge asset to the community, Wheatley added.

Nielsen said the pilot program will look strictly at unmet needs for intracity transit, but other offerings could be on the table in the future.

'At this point our contract with Coralville is continuing, no decision has been made on that, and we still obviously will need SEATS to come out to provide their service,” she said. 'But that doesn't mean that we won't take a look at that.”