Council member examines options to turbocharge transit improvements

Matt Crawford: Intentional investment has yielded significant improvements in transit.

Matt Crawford is proud of the recent changes made to the city’s transit system.

In tallying improvements, Crawford, director of transit for City Utilities of Springfield, operator of the city’s bus lines, cites shorter waits between buses on a given route – something transit professionals refer to as headway – along with expansion of weekday routes into Saturday and reduced fares.

“I’m really proud of the effort that we were able to pull off, with even at the time a little bit of a short staff on our bus operators and our supervisors,” he said. “It was a heavy lift for our planner and our staff.”

The changes followed the January 2024 release of ConnectSGF, a transit optimization study conducted by consultant Olsson Inc. The plan included short-term, medium-term and long-term recommendations, and CU got to work right away on implementation.

“We were able to accomplish a lot of the short-term things, and we were able to pick off a few of the mid-term things,” Crawford said.

For the most part, the long-term goals, which the plan envisions as being 10-20 years out, are not on the table. These goals include the expansion of multiple routes with 15-minute frequency throughout the city and the addition of others with 30- or 60-degree frequency, plus the addition of microtransit services in areas not currently served by bus routes. Regional service to outlying cities, including Republic, Nixa, Ozark, Willard and Strafford, is also envisioned.

“They are very aspirational goals for us,” Crawford said.

However, Springfield City Councilmember Brandon Jenson would like for the city, private partners and City Utilities to work together to meet those long-term goals. In fact, he is advocating for a task force to be put together to study the possibility.

Jenson said he is pushing merely for the implementation of the long-term goals – ideas the plan pegs as being 15 years out – and he knows those are not on CU’s schedule.

“That’s what we really need to be working towards,” he said.

The long-term plan is indeed aspirational, as Crawford describes it; for example, a map within the plan shows a vision for a 15-minute-frequency route running from CoxHealth Medical Center South all the way to the intersection of Kearney Street and Kansas Expressway.

The long-term plan also includes microtransit flex zones – an on-demand service, similar to a rideshare, providing rider connections to the edges of the city, the plan states – to cover the entire city. Additionally, some crosstown routes would enable riders to travel between portions of the city while bypassing the system’s central transit center.

Additionally, the long-term plan would provide four transfer stations in high-density areas and regional connection to all municipalities within the Springfield metropolitan statistical area.

“Even when it was being adopted, I had asked about plans for implementation,” Jenson said of the long-term plan. “City Utilities’ response was that they were doing the short-term plan, which is cost neutral, adding about $200,000, but they said there is no plan for implementation beyond that.”

At a joint meeting of CU and City Council to talk about CU’s next budget, Jenson said he inquired about whether the spending plan included any new costs for implementation of the transit plan. The response, he said, was no.

Basically, Jenson said, nobody else appears to be pushing for the long-term plan – but he is.

“I’m advocating for the long-term plan as it’s written,” he said. “Our citizens and our community cannot afford to let the transit system stay the way it is.”

Jenson reported on the need for transit improvements at a Sept. 4 City Council priority-setting retreat. At the Sept. 8 City Council meeting, Jenson also questioned Board of Public Utilities Chair Louise Knauer and CU Senior Vice President and Chief Financial and Supply Chain Officer Amy Derdall about the utility’s ability to pay for improvements to the transit system.

Knauer said CU runs as strong a system as possible within the financial constraints that exist.

Jenson presented Knauer and Derdall with estimated costs for implementation of the medium-term plan at $4 million and the long-term plan at $14 million, and he asked if the CU budget could absorb those expenses.

“We absolutely could not,” Derdall said.

She added that tariffs are bringing in additional costs, and dollars have to be focused on those unexpected expenses before they are dedicated to something else. It can be hard, Derdall said, to decide where to make cuts, and most subsidization would come from gas, electric and water customers.

Jenson told Derdall his point was to demonstrate that CU cannot finance improvements to transit on its own.

As a result of his lobbying efforts for transit, Jenson has earned some buy-in from fellow council members, including Derek Lee.

Lee told Springfield Business Journal after the strategy session, “I followed up with Brandon. My intent is to try to work with him and see if we can move something forward.”

Paying for the plan
Jenson acknowledged that implementing the plan would require a commitment of dollars. He said the local cost alone of implementing the long-term plan would be about $15 million annually above the current costs, plus about $10 million in capital for local portions.

The ConnectSGF plan outlines a fuller view of the total costs of implementation. Operational costs at the time the plan was released – and before any suggested improvements are made – were listed as $10.5 million, including $4.6 million in local revenue. The report estimates $44.7 million in annual operating costs if its proposed long-term improvements are implemented, and this includes $19.7 million in local funding.

The report noted the transit system is funded by federal revenues, which provide 50% of its cost; state revenues, 1%; fare revenues, 5%; and local funding, 44%. However, Jamie Presley, manager of communications for CU, said this breakdown requires some context, as they come from a period when the utility was receiving extra pandemic-related federal funding.

Presley noted that in 2026, the total operating expenses for CU transit are projected to be $16 million, and of this, approximately $10 million, or 62%, will be funded through electric, natural gas and water rates. By 2030, she said, the share of operating costs covered by utility customers is anticipated to rise to 74%.

Presley added that it’s important to note any increase in transit operating expenses or any change to the structure of the transit system would not be offset by grant funding.

“In other words, additional costs cannot be assumed to come from external grants and would need to be addressed through the existing funding structure,” she said.

Raising money through taxation – which would require a public vote – or through other methods may be necessary, Jenson said.

Jenson said in the city of Springfield, a quarter-cent of sales tax currently generates about $15 million, which means a new tax in that amount would be sufficient to cover projected operating costs. Another funding idea is the creation of a transportation development district, Jenson said.

“Those are the options that come to mind immediately,” he said. “That’s why I want a task force – to bring the best minds together. Maybe it’s a combination of these things.”

Crawford noted the improvements that have already been implemented were paid for by CU investments, subsidized by its ratepayers, which provided another 29 transit hours per week into the fixed-route system.

“I thought that was a nice increase in intentional investment in transit during the plan implementation,” he said.

The transit system is funded by City Utilities customers, with a subsidy built into the rate structure for electric, gas and water. An April 2025 report from Fitch Ratings found CU transit experienced a $13 million operating loss in fiscal 2024, with the agency pointing out the system is not designed to be self-supporting. Fitch has assigned City Utilities of Springfield a rating of AA for its overall system because of its healthy operating income and liquidity.

Transit opportunities
Jenson said in advocating an expansion of the transit system, he has users in mind – like workers, who might need a safety net if their vehicle fails, or like people without driver’s licenses, including those under 16, who seek connection within the community.

Using the transit system promotes a healthier lifestyle and reduces environmental impact, Jenson said, and that’s something the city should advocate.

Jenson also noted that vehicles are expensive. Citing the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, Jenson said most owner-occupied households have two or more cars, but most renter households have one or no cars.

Jenson’s own 2008 Ford Ranger costs him $450-$500 per month after considering car payment, insurance and gas, he said.

“If we could even get households to be a one-car household, how much more disposable income would that have that stays in our community?” he said.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the average car commute to work is 20-25 minutes, but for those using a transit system, the most common travel time is over an hour. Jenson pointed to the transit plan, which notes that if there is a difference of 30 minutes or greater between use of a personal vehicle and use of a bus, people will very rarely choose the bus.

Jenson also pointed to development concerns linked to traffic as a rationale for transit expansion.

“Can you name a single major development that has come forward where traffic generation was not a concern?” he said. “It’s going to continue to be a problem. As more people move here, we’re not able to increase the capacity of our streets within our cities. If we’re increasing demand on a system where we can’t increase capacity for personal vehicles, there’s only one other viable option, which is to get them to talk alternative modes of transportation.”

Progress noted
Jenson said the system is designed to serve the individuals who need it the most by providing a very basic level of service – to the degree, he said, that no one else is reasonably going to use it.

“I’m the biggest transit advocate, and I cannot use transit in our city,” he said. “If you have multiple stops in a day, it’s not an effective way to get around town.”

Jenson said the buses are on a hub-and-spoke system around the downtown transit center, and that’s a viable layout when a city has a concentration of services and jobs near the hub and travelers are trying to get to it.

“Our downtown is not that,” he said. “Jobs are located throughout the city, oftentimes near the periphery.”

He pointed to a few key areas that are not served by buses. A notable gap in the system is the employment center Partnership Industrial Center West, home of Vital Farms’ Egg Central Station, Gold Mechanical and Kuat Racks. Another place not served is the Greene County Jail, where people often have to walk a long distance without the benefit of sidewalks upon release.

Crawford, CU’s transit director, noted that improvements to the system have achieved 30-minute headways on main routes, plus an unexpected achievement of 30-minute headways on one route where that hadn’t been in the plans.

The changes that have been made provide more coverage for the city, Crawford said, and these last deeper into the evening, with the last bus in by 10 p.m. Before the short-term changes were implemented, service lasted until 11 p.m., with very few riders using it in the last two hours.

“According to the study, we found that that was going to meet the needs of most of the workforce and most of the people that are relying on the bus,” he said.

One fewer hour of service means the transit system is better able to cover the heavier needs of the ridership, according to Crawford.

“You have to balance the resources you have, the funding that you have, and then what you’re trying to accomplish with it,” he said.

Crawford said the goal is to serve as many people as possible as efficiently as possible.

“We’re trying to provide a service that covers the footprint of Springfield, and we’re trying to do it as frequently as we can with as much service schedule as we can get out there and do it as safely as we possibly can, with safety actually being the primary driver on the service that we provide,” he said.