Valley Transit, the public transit provider for Appleton, Wisconsin and the greater Fox Cities region, hired SRF to serve as a technical expert in completing a Transit Strategic Plan. Valley Transit found itself at a crossroads in many capacities. While the Fox Cites region has grown in terms of both population and urbanization, the transit system had struggled to meet those needs. Additionally, many of the key funding sources for transit operations, vehicles, and facilities had declined or become volatile. Valley Transit sought input from all regional stakeholders, leaders, and transit users to determine the mission, vision, and values of the organization. They also needed an action plan to outline the future system development and investment priorities for the near and long term.
The Transit Strategic Plan project incorporated broader input to the planning process by initiating a public outreach and engagement process. This included open houses, and the development of multiple in-person and web based surveys. As part of the project, SRF collaborated with Valley Transit staff to sketch out future transit system attributes. SRF developed potential physical service design changes to the transit system – determining what level of infrastructure is needed to support that service in terms of capital investment, operating and maintenance costs, and the potential benefits in terms of ridership.
SRF addressed how the shape of the system and services will influence local travel behavior and mode choice and the impact those things will have on local development patterns and the overall economic picture of the area in the next 3, 5 and 10-year time horizons. Final project deliverables included a series of technical memos documenting each project task, survey data-sets, and an executive summary of the strategic plan.
