Acton gets fixed-route public transit through regional partnership

Mass Innovations, From The Beacon, March 2016

An award-winning regional transportation service that offers door-to-door rides in seven northwest Middlesex County towns has launched its first fixed-route service.

Cross-Acton Transit runs an 18-seat bus for a $1 fare each weekday along the two busiest streets in town, Route 2A and Route 27. The bus runs hourly from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from the Senior Center on the south side of town to the Nagog Mall on the north side, making stops at the South Acton commuter rail station, Town Hall, the library, grocery stores and pharmacies, and other key locations.

Cross-Acton Transit is the latest service offered by CrossTown Connect, a public-private transportation management association that offers a variety of ride services in Acton, Boxborough, Concord, Littleton, Maynard, Stow and Westford. Launched in 2012, CrossTown Connect won the Local Government Excellence Award for Community Partnership last year from the International City/County Management Association.

Until this point, CrossTown Connect only offered door-to-door services, such as senior vans, a dial-a-ride program for Acton residents and Acton-Boxborough students, an emergency ride home program, and ride-matching to help residents form carpools. The program also offers a shuttle for the commuter rail.

“People have been saying, ‘Where’s the bus stop,’ because they know we have services but expect that fixed route,” said Acton Selectman Franny Osman, who started working on the idea in 2005 as a member of the town’s Transportation Advisory Committee. “Finally we can say, ‘Every hour the bus will stop here.’”

Officials cut the ribbon on Cross-Acton Transit on Jan. 29, but the service’s “soft launch” was last November, with tweaks being made to the schedule and stops in the interim.

In the first three weeks, the service had about 100 riders, according to CrossTown Connect Coordinator Doug Halley, who previously managed the service while serving as Acton’s health director, a position he retired from last year. The bus is now averaging between 40 and 50 riders a week. Halley said the goal is to get between 500 and 600 riders a month by the end of the year.

Riders are a mix of youths, commuters and seniors, with seniors making up most of the ridership, using the service to shop for groceries, get to the pharmacy, or visit other stores without having to drive. Halley said one regular commuter is a disabled person who takes the bus to his job every day.

“That’s really worked out well for him,” he said.

The projected annual cost for the service is about $130,000, Halley said. The town of Acton funds about half, with the rest coming from the Lowell Regional Transit Authority.

Acton sits in a “no man’s land” of regional transit authorities, Osman said, as the southernmost municipality in the Lowell RTA area, and bordered by coverage areas of the MBTA, MetroWest RTA, and Montachusetts RTA. In addition, the South Acton commuter rail stop suffers from a lack of parking, Osman said, posing a “first mile” barrier for those who commute into the Boston area, while employees of local businesses faced a “last mile” barrier in getting to work using public transit, which posed a threat to the economic viability of the region.

“You can’t hold a full-time job in a lot of the suburban and rural towns where you’re really stuck if you don’t drive,” she said.

Towns began planning together and then, in 2012, partnered with local Clock Tower Place office park in Maynard to apply for a Community Innovation Challenge grant from the state.

Transportation management associations are usually businesses that work together to solve transportation issues for their employees, Osman explained, but the towns and Clock Tower Place pitched the idea of a public-private partnership that addressed the needs of residents, along with businesses and their employees. They were awarded $184,000 through the grant program.

Three additional businesses have joined the association: IBM of Littleton, Juniper Networks of Westford and Red Hat of Westford. Osman said she recently heard of a new company coming to the region that was able to hire an employee because of CrossTown Connect’s services.

The next step, she said, is overcoming the “siloing” of transportation to increase mobility between areas that may not share the same public transportation services.

“There’s this barrier in crossing borders between RTAs and the MBTA, especially when you come to fixed-route transportation,” Osman said. “We’re trying to cross those barriers and get into more trip sharing.”

For more information, contact CrossTown Connect Coordinator Doug Halley at (978) 929-6457 or visit www.crosstownconnect.org.