How much did VRT spend switching bus route systems?

Stephen Hunt, VRT’s chief development officer, told BoiseDev that some of these costs would have been incurred anyway, even if the system hadn’t needed a redesign to cut costs and reach more customers at the same time. He said staff did large portions of the work on the system change, like the redesign of the network and the public outreach campaign that powered that work.

“We tried to be very specific about where we were engaging consultants and what we were doing to complement the work we were already doing in-house,” he said.

What did the agency spend money on?

One of the more costly contracts for the service change began before VRT knew it would be rebooting its entire system.

VRT hired western Washington-area firm Transpo Group from its bench of regular on-call contractors to do a periodic operational analysis to study the system and look for places to improve. But, after the work began, VRT pivoted the project to specifically focus on studying data for the system redesign to study areas performing well or underperforming on Fairview Avenue in order to improve the service on that corridor. Fairview is one of VRTs “best in class” routes with the most frequent and more hours of service.

This contract cost $115,000.

VRT also opened a competitive bidding process to hire a firm to update route brochures and the system map. The transit agency hired Portland-based Jarrett Walker to do the redesigns to present the new route information in a “more clean” fashion that was both consistent with VRT’s other branding and used color and other design choices to communicate transit information efficiently, even to those who may not speak English as a first language. This contract cost just shy of $30,000.

Placing bus stops on new streets that hadn’t been previously served required a National Environmental Policy Act study. Local firm Paragon Consulting, one of VRT’s regular on-call contractors, completed this for $49,000.

Another firm VRT hired was Canadian-firm IBI Group to redesign VRT’s bus stop signs. Hunt said this was planned long before the agency decided to redesign the service map because the last time the signs were updated was 2009, and many signs still used the Valley Ride moniker, which VRT no longer uses.

Part of this redesign from IBI, and the branding for VRT as a whole, included using specific symbols and colors to communicate to users how frequently routes traveled, where to get on the bus and other information.

The section of this contract that was directly linked to the service change cost roughly $27,000.

“We saw all of these things that Valley Regional Transit had started putting into place and we just saw an opportunity to align many of them all at the same time so we could have the greatest impact at one time,” Kate Dahl, a principal planner with VRT said.

To manufacture the blade signs and schedule holders for the bus stops, VRT hired workers through the Idaho Department of Correction available through a contract with the state. This cost roughly $98,000. VRT also hired the firm ProPeople for contract labor to install the new signs for $46,000.

VRT also used print shop Alexander Clark, which it has an on-call contract with, to print new brochures and large posters for the redesign. The initial order for the cost of the new brochures was just shy of $13,000, but these brochures are reordered frequently re-stock and would have been reordered anyway, regardless of the service change.

The transit agency also contracted with four different radio groups to promote the service change during the month of May. Jason Rose, VRT’s spokesperson, said the agency usually spends just shy of $50,000 per year on radio advertising spread across four stations. For the service change promotion, VRT spent $4,000.