Becoming Car Optional: Transforming Transportation Choices

In this interview Hanna Cockburn discusses Greensboro’s GoBoro 2045 Transit Plan, a collaborative initiative aimed at achieving a car-optional city by enhancing public transit accessibility, equity and usefulness.

When Greensboro, North Carolina adopted the GSO 2040 Comprehensive Plan two years ago, it set a bold goal for our city’s transportation system: to become car optional. Becoming car optional has many community benefits: a cleaner environment, healthier residents, less traffic and lower costs.

Becoming car optional supports walk able neighborhoods and a vibrant economy.

This goal raised a question for me and our transportation department: What can we do to achieve these community benefits for Greensboro by taking a car-optional approach?

One way we have responded to that question is through collaborative planning. Working with the Greensboro Transit Agency (GTA), other transit providers in the region, transit stakeholders and members of the community, we have developed the GoBoro 2045 Transit Plan. This plan lays out a transformational vision for the future of transportation choices in our community and sets concrete goals for investments in accessible public transit.

We knew we would need an experienced consultant to work alongside the City team on this project. We formed an interdisciplinary team of City employees from across the organization to guide the planning process and work directly with the consulting team. In 2022, we issued a Request for Letters of Interest, emphasizing selection criteria that focused on the consultant’s proposed approach, the team’s technical competencies, their prior experience and their inclusion of disadvantaged business entities. Jarrett Walker + Associates was selected as our lead consultant, with support from Renaissance Planning for transit oriented development planning support and public engagement services from Simon Resources, Inc.

Over the last two years, we’ve worked closely with the consulting team to envision the long-term future of the transit network in Greensboro and help us gauge the needs of riders and the interests of our residents.

The potential for the GoBoro Plan to spark this kind of transformational change is exciting, but there’s more work to be done. With the level of engagement and support the plan has garnered, I’m optimistic about our ability to secure the resources to implement the plan

JW+A has played an essential role in helping us educate residents on what “car-optional” could mean for Greensboro and present choices for the community to consider as we envision a more equitable, useful and accessible transportation system. Our robust, multi-channel engagement approach yielded more than 27,000 social media impressions, 3,000 total survey responses and face-to-face interactions with thousands of Greensboro residents at events all across the City.

Based on the feedback from these public engagement efforts, we have proposed a future transit network that reflects the needs and desires of stakeholders and community members that balance investments in frequency of service and expansion of coverage. Importantly, these proposed transit improvements will be supported with more sidewalks, better bus stops and an expansion of bicycle facilities.

To show proof of the transit concepts embodied in the GoBoro Plan, we leveraged Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funds allocated to the Greensboro Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization to launch one of the recommended cross-town routes identified in our plan in March 2024. This new route offers 15 minute frequencies and is generating on average 10,000 riders per week - nearly 3,500 more than the traditional routes that the cross-town option replaced.

When we compare our existing transit network to the recommended network in GoBoro, overall access to jobs more than doubles. It performs well across a wide range of other key measures:

Equity

• For residents of color, job access increases by 147 percent.

• For residents in poverty, job access increases by 118 percent.

Accessibility

•For households without cars, job access increases by 87 percent.

Usefulness

• For young residents, job access increases by 97 percent.

• For seniors, job access increases by 90 percent.

For Greensboro to become car optional, it is imperative that we transform our transportation system into one that is more equitable, useful and accessible for Greensboro residents, workers and visitors. The potential for the GoBoro Plan to spark this kind of transformational change is exciting, but there’s more work to be done. With the level of engagement and support the plan has garnered, I’m optimistic about our ability to secure the resources to implement the plan.