MANSFIELD — Christy Campoll said Wednesday public awareness is a key component for a successful public transit system.
“I feel like that’s the half of the job … helping people to understand how to make the (transit) system work for them,” said Campoll, a senior associate with RLS & Associates from Dayton.
The veteran transportation planner was in Mansfield to attend a meeting of the Richland County Transit board as RLS & Associates begins the process of helping the bus service to develop a 10-year strategic plan.
The Ohio Department of Transportation awarded $165,779 through the Ohio Transit Partnership Program to fund RCT’s planning efforts.
Improving public transit was one of the topics identified during Richland Source “Talk the Vote” sessions in the fall of 2021 that was further identified in the Citizens Agenda presented to local leaders and the public in January.
Campoll, the project manager leading the effort, explained the planning process to board members, advising that public outreach during the plan’s development is essential.
That communication effort must continue after the project is complete for it to be successful, she said, as well as establishing clear accountability benchmarks.
“We not only have the task of providing an efficient, strong (transit) service, (but) also how the community interfaces with it.
“We need to put in a strong performance management plan with goals and performance measures into the (development plan) and then monitoring that over the next five to 10 years … (that) will also be critical to success,” Campoll said.
“We don’t want to set up great services with great goals and then lose track of monitoring to make sure we’re getting the best value we can.”
Campoll, who has been with RLS for five years, said the company is focused entirely on transportation.
“We’re going to be doing a comprehensive, in-depth data collection and learn all we can about your system and your service, your facilities and your assets,” she said.
RCT is the only truly local public transportation service, a fleet of buses that serve primarily the City of Mansfield, as well as other smaller communities like Ontario and Shelby and parts of Madison Township.
“We will be looking at things like efficiency, ridership and community demographic information. Things have changed in recent years, maybe since (RCT) started operating the routes that you do today,” Campoll said.
A public engagement effort, including surveys, will ramp up in the next few months, an effort that will include residents, elected officials, business owners, transit staff members, bus riders and more.
“The drivers themselves have an immense wealth of knowledge about transit, transit needs and performance of the system,” said Campoll, who earned bachelor and master degrees at Indiana University and is working on a doctorate in organizational studies at Wright State University.
“We will start to develop some recommendations out of that. What new technologies do you need? What should be the structure of your service? Should your routes change? Should you have routes in certain places? Should you have on-demand service? Can there be partnerships with other providers in the area?” she cited as examples.
Campoll said the final plan would also include consideration of capital and operating budgets and “looking at potential revenue sources that maybe you’re not using today.”
According to the RLS website, Campoll’s projects have included local, regional, and statewide coordination plans, service evaluations, transit development plans, comprehensive operational assessments, literature reviews, policy research and compliance monitoring.
