Lynchburg Urban Network Wiki

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======Greater Lynchburg Transit Company======

[[https://gltconline.com/|Official Website]]

Transit company has a management contract to provide a general manager and an assistant general manager with [[transdev-north-america|Transdev North America]] (formerly First Transit).

When submitting FOIA requests, email [[mailto:feedback@gltconline.com|feedback@gltconline.com]] and CC the general manager. Here's a FOIA response received when ridership statistics were requested for 2020-2023: {{ :2023-12-23-ridership-foia-request.zip}}

Committees: [[gltc-rider-improvement-committee|GLTC Rider Improvement Committee]]

General Manager: [[josh-moore|Josh Moore]]

Assistant General Manager: [[natalie-wilkins|Natalie Wilkins]]

=====Stops=====

According to general manager, GLTC has 791 stops as of 2024-02-29. In the past there were as many as 1200 stops. For comparison, Richmond, a much larger city, has 1600 stops in their bus system.

Had conversation with Josh Moore (General Manager) and learned that any stops installed after ~2000 must be fully ADA compliant and have a logical connection to the rest of the sidewalk network or a nearby business. This is why they are so hesitant to cut down on stops. If they change their mind and want the stop back, it could cost them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in land acquisition, construction, etc. There is also a "notice of proposed rulemaking" at [I believe] the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) which would require all stops [in FTA-funded systems, I presume] to be fully ADA-compliant. That would trigger a mass-removal of GLTC stops. In that case, I suppose they would just sink money into fairly widely spaced, high-quality stops, but the short term effect would certainly be bad for riders.

=====Fleet=====

As of 2024-02-29, GLTC has 32 fixed-route buses. They need 16 buses to operate current service (14 after microtransit replaces routes 6 and 7. Around 2024-08 they will be retiring 12 buses purchased in late 2000's that are beyond their useful life. 9 new buses from Gillig will enter operation. A partial table of GLTC buses can be found here: https://www.nathanwyand.com/2022/10/21/central-virginia-transit-fleets.html

====Bus allocations====

| Route | Bus count | Headway |
| 1A | 1 | 60m |
| 1B | 1 | 60m |
| 2 | 1 | 30m |
| 3A | 1 | 60m |
| 3B | 1 | 60m |
| 4 | 3 | 30m |
| 5 | 0.5 | 120m |
| 8 | 1 | 60m |
| 9 | 1 | 60m |
| 10 | 1 | 60m |
| 11 | 0.5 | 120m |
| 12 | 1 | 60m |

Not sure where 14th bus goes. Extra?
=====Microtransit=====

On-demand microtransit will replace low-ridership routes 6 and 7. Some changes will probably be made to routes 4 and 8 as well, allowing fixed route buses to run more efficiently and have lower-density areas served by microtransit. Fresh Market and River Ridge Mall will be microtransit hubs.

=====Frequency improvements=====

With implementation of on-demand microtransit for some routes, resources may be freed for moderate frequency increases on high-ridership routes like 4.

Currently, average bus dwell time is 44 seconds. With mobile fare collection, average dwell time should decrease to 22 seconds.

=====Vendors=====

Trillium software is used for producing GTFS files (and possibly maintaining stops/routes generally)

UTA is passenger counter system

Remix is planning software for planning routes and stops

=====GTFS Data=====

February GTFS: http://gltconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/GTFS_GLTC.zip

GTFS-RT data is behind some weird abuse prevention URLS so just click the buttons on https://gltconline.com/reports-studies/ to download.

=====Debugging possibly conflicting live bus data=====

**Following is autotranscribed from audio so very messy**

Right now there are three bus fours out there according to cadavl.com however there are only two bus fours being shown on the transit app now the sign at the transfer center shows two bus fours coming in the next 15 minutes one in 10 minutes about 5 minutes before it should come and one in 15 minutes when it should actually be here we'll see when it actually gets here and what the sign does with that now the transit app only shows two on the route however it lists three times for the buses to be here despite it only showing three on the map so one of the ones that would be number bus number 1001 which is shown on cadavl.com is not being shown on the transit app.

Bus 3B on the sign is showing one bus and 39 minutes and another one in 44 minutes so doing the same thing where it's showing two buses coming right next to each other most likely the one on the 39 minutes is not going to happen bus 3A is showing one bus and 614 minutes and another and 669 minutes those aren't even useful times at  all I mean who needs to know that a bus will be here in 10 hours and 13 minutes which would be at 8:15pm.

Relevant article: https://busride.com/greater-lynchburg-transit-company-selects-equans-masabi-and-transit-app-to-deliver-transit-technology-upgrade/

All right here's a conundrum we've got bus eight arriving right this minute the sign says that one will arrive in 3 minutes and another in 8 minutes it is currently 10:07 a.m. which means that we should have one at leaving at 10:15 but it does one will be here in 3 minutes when one is arriving right this second. The transit app says bus 8 will be here in 6 minutes it is sitting here right this minute maybe that's the departure time but either way it's not particularly useful.

Okay now bus 2 shows as arriving right this minute. It has the bus icon on it which could very well be live data cuz the bus is pulling into the station right now. However it also shows "bus +1" in 6 minutes. Maybe it's getting confused cuz it sees the live one and the scheduled one and assumes that they're two separate buses.

Okay I'm at the Burlington coat factory stop the screens as a bus will be arriving at 11:30 it is currently 11:18 the app says the bus will arrive in 12 minutes so the two times do agree the next bus according to the sun will be at 11:54 followed by 12:27 since those times are not 30 minutes apart and the buses are I'm going to assume that this is live data rather than mere scheduling data however we'll see. Okay so the cidavl.com says the bus is going to be 5 minutes late which would coincide with the arriving at 11:30 instead of 11:25 which would indicate the sign right now is showing live data. All three buses are showing on the transit app and I figured out why I could only see two buses earlier. So the transit app only shows the buses that are going in the direction that you have selected if you have outbound selected it only show the outbound buses and if you have inbound selected it only show the inbound buses this fact is neither obvious nor intuitive.
All right now it's showing the bus arriving now as the bus is arriving not at the schedule time which is proof that this is live data.
So here's my hypothesis the both signs at the transfer center show both the live data and the schedule data and the two together make nearly useless signs if they're not showing both of those things and they are only showing the schedule data and not alive data.

Bus 3B was 3 minutes late to the boonsboro shopping center when I arrived and the bus stop sign did not show a bus arriving when I showed up rather it showed a bus that was going to get there in 57 minutes so just scheduled time right now the app the transit app is showing the bus 3B being 1 minute early two boonsboro shopping center but the digital sign at boonsboro shopping center is showing the bus being right on time which would indicate that perhaps it's only using scheduled data and not live data
Right now the transit app says the bus is arriving in 2 minutes the bus is actually arriving right this minute the sign says the bus is arriving in 3 minutes the bus is not showing at all on the transit app.

Notably bus 3B is showing up at gltc.cad avl.com so I don't know what's up with that.

There is a new gltc flex fare app in which you can buy Transit tickets it also appears you can buy Transit tickets in the transit app I will need to do more investigation to figure out what the link between those is the gltc flexfare app links you to the transit app to plan a trip the ticket purchasing in the transit app is powered by the just ride SDK.
There's an old saying that a broken clock is right twice a day well earlier I thought that the 5-minute early buses for the live times but now I see that bus 3B and bus 4 were both showing 2 minutes from now on their 5-minute early buses when they were both already in the station so if those were the live buses then they would have shown bus instead of 2 minutes at this point I don't know what the 5-minute early buses are about maybe it shows a 5-minute early bus for every bus that's on schedule and now the five minute early bus is all are showing no time but they're not showing the bus icon either. Okay now the 5-minute early buses are all showing bus arriving even bus to when no buses arriving so I think they just have loaded in a schedule for the buses that shows two buses on each route One 5 minutes before the other one which does not make any sense at all what so ever.

=====Scratchpad=====

This doc has an org chart in it: https://gltconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/EEO-Policy-202223.pdf

Central Virginia Transit Management Company, Inc. may be real name of GLTC. Need more research.

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