My Experiences and General Commentary on the EMTA (Erie Metropolitan Transit Authority)
What can be fixed, what is already working, and other issues
Background Analysis and Important Facts about the Service Area
Erie County is a large county and a lot of the area is untouched by transit or traffic or even people. Erie County has a population of 270,876 according to the 2020 Census, a decrease of nearly 3.7% over 10 years. The one thing that has remained constant regardless of the population size of the county over the last 10 years and more has been the service level of the transit system in the county.
I realize as I’m writing this that a lot of the country’s various transit systems are flawed and there is plenty wrong with the way transit is scheduled throughout this country but in most cases, the coverage is at least adequate to get around. Erie County is 1,558 square miles, but the service doesn’t need to cover the entire area as much of the county is sparsely populated. For comparison, you could fit the entire city of Chicago within the county boundaries more than seven times.
More than half of the population is concentrated within the boundaries of Summit Township, the City of Erie, Millcreek Township, and Harborcreek Township, all cities relatively closer to the lakefront than a lot of the population in the county, so you would assume that the coverage in that area would be adequate for roughly more than half of the people in the county. Sadly, however, this is not the case.
The lack of coverage was exposed even worse when during the shutdowns of the pandemic, the bus coverage was reduced and pared down to a laughable amount. August 29, 2021, is when all of the original routes pre-pandemic shutdown were reopened but lines still aren’t running at the frequency from before.
In a city as small as Erie, roughly 19.4 square miles by itself, one could reasonably drive to most places within 15 minutes. It takes an hour or sometimes two hours to get across the city by transit. That’s just the city of Erie itself and not including the other routes scattered across the various townships contained within the larger area described earlier.
Keeping that in mind, Erie County is huge and you could only imagine how long it would take if there was a transit route that traversed the entire length of the county boundaries. I’ll give the EMTA the benefit of the doubt when it comes to lines that reach some of the more isolated townships in the county, such as Edinboro, Albion, North East, and Corry.
Those buses are still very limited and only run a few times a day and most of the time not even on the weekend or even evenings when most people would want to commute home if they work in the city of Erie.
Coverage Issues and Tourism
The other factor ignored in the coverage of the transit lines is the tourist destinations. Erie has Presque Isle State Park, a picturesque and historical peninsula that stretches beyond most of its bayfront on Lake Erie. It also has many hotels and restaurants, as well as historical houses and buildings, along with many fun family attractions to visit.
Erie is an economy highly dependent on tourism revenue, as it generates more than a billion dollars a year in the industry. Why then, in a city with this much revenue and with this much volume in tourism, would there be poor transit coverage? Wouldn’t the city see this as an investment and a way for the overall city’s economy to make more money?
The EMTA, as a whole, has squandered a lot of opportunities to improve its service. The fares alone on the bus lines are reasonable and not too steep but it can still feel overpriced given the amount of coverage a pass provides for the money. If the EMTA were to increase revenue by raising its prices and offering at least adequate coverage, this would only benefit this transit authority.
The website claims it operates 28 fixed routes within the county but realistically, only about less than half of those run regularly enough to be considered adequate to get those who need to get places without a motor vehicle on time.
When you look at the many routes that are offered, a few of them are seasonal such as the one to the State Park, or the colleges, and others run only in the very middle of the day, or early in the morning, and then again in the early evening.
Interesting Route Proposal
The city of Erie itself and the EMTA, as I said previously, have a large opportunity to listen to its riders and figure out a better system than what is currently in place. One proposal thought up that I’ve heard frequently, especially from regular visitors and tourists is that why there isn’t a line that is an express that runs down the 79–90 corridor in the north part of the county and stops at the major exits to connect people to major routes already in place.
This would be a very efficient and smart route to implement for many riders who are just trying to get from the bayfront to close to a major exit along this corridor. Many other routes would be simple to design and implement and would improve the coverage in the city and within the county which would also make sense.
Need for Reevaluation of Priorities
Despite all of the criticisms gathered through my analysis of this system, this system is still working for many people and people have just had to make it work. The transit authority still seems to make or get enough money to continue operating as is. I suppose that the thought for them there is if the system doesn’t seem that broke, there is no immediate need to fix it. In all honesty, this logic is flawed. When there’s an opportunity to make a particular area less car-dependent and more connected while allowing the city and the transit to prosper, this garners at least a reevaluation of priorities.
My Own Experiences and Unique Perspective
When I first got to Erie over three years ago, I had come from living in two larger cities in Chicago, IL, and Sacramento, CA before that. The transit system in Sacramento was adequate but still had room for opportunities although still better connected than Erie’s system. Chicago, IL, as is well known is known for its excellent transit system and various elevated and subway train lines.
I might be a little spoiled from having two better transit systems here previously but I expected a little more out of a transit system that would seem relatively simple to design given the area where the concentration of the population lives in the county. Through my lens, this makes this county and even this city very car-dependent. To me, that isn’t good long-term for the environment and will further perpetuate the ever-accelerating decline to its demise. Man-made climate change affects all of us and the aversion toward a compromise to make the planet a better place is quite disturbing to me.
Work Commute
I was working at a Verizon Wireless retail store when I first got here in July 2018. I had many obstacles to transportation when I first got here without proper access to a vehicle and also had to learn the transit system practically on my own without any telling me how to get around. In my first couple of weeks to work, I was late many times because the transit coverage is an issue, the route I had to take would take nearly an hour and a half, sometimes a little longer to go less than 8 miles.
Then at night to get back, sometimes there wouldn’t be a bus back and I’d have to walk to a certain intersection mile down just to get to a proper place to get back or take an Uber back if I could afford to. I hated asking my coworkers and supervisors for a ride when neither option was viable. Even worse is when my physical health and various ailments started to exacerbate after only one winter in Erie.
It was harder for me to get around the city and the bus trips would be much more laborious. Simply getting to appointments or going to the store became quite a chore. This was before the city started coming into the present and using delivery apps for food and groceries. Many chores became nearly impossible at times because the bus coverage was just not enough.
Getting Around Erie
When I did get on a bus and was able to get around, most of the experiences I’ve had with drivers had been pretty minimal. Most of the drivers seemed to be decent people. I’d never encountered any hostility or rudeness from most of them. The pandemic changed the landscape of even the customer service end of the transit authority. With an even greater lack of coverage due to fewer drivers, there was also a sense of hostility and attitude from many of the new drivers who didn’t seem to want to work for the transit authority but felt obligated to for either economic reasons or staff shortage.
This has led to a few encounters that were less than desirable when I’ve been on the bus. Buses were coming late, I know it’s a normal thing for buses to be late, but they were either skipping scheduled times on an already shorter schedule or coming up to 30 minutes late. This would lead to people missing their connections and potentially being stranded still far from home. Luckily, during this time frame, I haven’t had to ride the bus that often. It’s been a bad experience nearly every time.
Transportation During the Pandemic
The other thing about pandemic transportation is that federal law mandates that riders wear protective masks and drivers when necessary. Erie has the plastic guards over the driver station now so I don’t see as many masked drivers. Wearing a mask and keeping your distance is certainly important, but I’ve found that in a transit situation, it becomes extremely difficult to social distance when the seats are too close to stay a safe distance from people.
Relationship of Technology to EMTA
There’s a joke about Erie, PA when it comes to technology too. It says that if something is implemented in one town now, it comes to Erie 10 to 20 years after. I’ve seen this in action. It’s not so much a joke as it is an observation. The buses in Erie just implemented ways to pay for transit passes electronically. This was just implemented back at the beginning of the Summer of this year.
When something is first implemented, it is going to run into some bugs. The new transit passes work through an app called Token Transit, a pretty generic app that allows you to purchase tickets and have them scanned on a specially made scanner on the farebox. You just open the app and put your phone right up to the scanner to have it beep and show you a green light. In the app, it says that if it doesn’t work, you can just show the driver your pass as it shows the active time left for your pass and the type of pass it is just as if you were showing your regular paper pass.
Customer Service Concerns
Of course, Erie has to be different though, and they started telling their employees wrongfully that if the scanner doesn’t beep that they can’t allow admission onto the bus, apparently they claimed that people were taking videos of fake passes. The way the app works doesn’t allow that and that doesn’t make logical sense based on how the passes are designed.
The reason I know this is that just the other day, the scanner on the bus was faulty. I know this because my pass beeped on the one before and after this one, and I tried to explain it to him and I showed him that my pass was real step by step by going in and explaining how it worked.
He was rude and started raising his voice to me which caused me to yell and freak out in front of other bus drivers. I was just trying to get back home and didn’t want to cause such a scene. I just said I was going to sit down and that he would have to accept my pass as is. The ride was pretty cold the whole time and when I got off, I said very little and barely acknowledged the driver.
One more major time I had an issue with a driver was when I was at a bus stop with another person. This person also happened to be brown. We both got on the bus at the same time and he just sat down without showing his pass and I had successfully scanned mine from the previously mentioned app. I didn’t hear her question and apparently, she had asked if he was with me.
I brushed it off and went to my seat. She had yelled that I needed to pay for my friend too. I was like, just because I’m brown and he is too, doesn’t mean that we were together or friends. That interaction rubbed me the wrong way and felt like a greater indictment of society and Erie County in general.
Hope for a Better Future
Anyway, I’m not trying to discourage anyone who needs to ride the EMTA from riding. I know I have a lot of negative criticisms and encounters for and about the EMTA, but it still manages to move what seems to be thousands of people a week to their destinations so they must be doing something right. I just wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend the transit if at all possible until they figure out a way to improve their system as a whole. I see a lot of opportunities for improvement in many aspects and am still hopeful that they get their act together and figure out a better way.
