Jackson, Miss. Service Changes

MV is very sympathetic towards the city’s serious financial needs, and, as a committed partner to the people of Jackson, has been working to help. That is why we spent months, at the Mayor’s request to all departments to identify savings and at no charge to Jackson, developing a thoughtful transit redesign that would meet the City’s financial needs and provide the best possible service within those constraints. As one elected official noted in a recent ADA Advisory Committee meeting, MV was the only City partner that stepped forward with a plan to help, which we were proud to do.

Despite differences in overall passenger counts, most routes display lower ridership at the beginning and end hours of the day. The plot of 12-month ridership data by hour for the fixed bus routes is below:

A detailed review of weekday ridership reveals substantial variation in route ridership. Route 70 (Ellis) and Route 20 (Woodrow Wilson) consistently emerge as the routes with, by far, the fewest passengers. Route 70 averages approximately 5.1 riders per hour, while Route 20 averages 6.5 riders per hour. The higher performing routes transport more than double the number of passengers per hour.

Route overlap analysis reveals that both Route 20 and Route 70 share a significant number of stops with other fixed routes. This means passengers will have other options at the existing bus stop

Using publicly available data, we obtained through our own research, MV conducted a needs index looking at key demographic data including: the density of senior population, housing units with no automobile availability, population with disability, and various other Jackson-specific data. This data showed changes on Route 20 and Route 70 would have the least impact.

The relatively modest changes we proposed included:

• Curtailing the first and last hour of service, when buses see their lowest occupancy
• Replacing the most lightly utilized bus routes with a microtransit service
• Eliminating service on Saturdays, when ridership is much lower

Our proposal has the potential to create a rare win-win-win outcome:

• A win for the city that would yield over $1 million a year of much-needed savings
• A win for unionized employees who would see huge wage increases of between $3 and $5 per hour
• A win for the residents of Jackson as the redesigned service would minimize service changes while still delivering the higher service

We have always welcomed input and are prepared to work with all stakeholders in developing the best possible plan to address the City’s budget constraints, passenger needs and the market-level wages for our team members who provide excellent service to our valued passengers.

However, maintaining the status quo is not an option. The City’s budget challenges cannot be tackled without significant efforts from multiple directions, especially in light of the need to identify additional resources to provide market-level wages – a substantial additional cost – as part of our ongoing labor negotiations. To date, not a single other party has proposed ANY viable plan to attack these many challenges; regardless, we continue to stand ready to work with all stakeholders to develop the best possible outcome for Jackson.