Transportation Department

Mission Statement

The Mission of the Hopetopia Transportation Department is to ensure our citizens and goods have the safest way of transportation. We also want to establish that all of our citizens are going to their place of work, school, etc. in a timely and efficient manner. The Transportation Department is committed to expanding our public transportation use to lessen the waste that Hopetopia contributes into the atmosphere. We would also want to make sure that the transportation for all citizens in Hopetopia has roads, bridges, and sidewalks that are up to safety regulations. Overall we would like for their transportation experience to make them feel safe both inside the public vehicle and with the vehicle itself.

Recent Events

Note

10/3/2023 In conjunction with city-wide efforts to improve services, the Transportation Department has identified three performance goals that it will begin tracking and reporting publicly. 1. Ensuring an on-time bus system throughout the city. 2. Piloting a free-bus program and studying growth in ridership (current Friday ridership averages 19,000). 3. Safer streets for all modes through faster pothole repair (currently, the 60 potholes per month reported in each ward are fixed on average 3 weeks after the first report).

Note

9/27/2023 The Transportation Department operates an extensive city-wide bus system as well as maintaining the roads and approving the design and construction of new roads and bridges. In recent years, cuts have made operating the bus system difficult. Two years ago, you had to reduce the number of busses on routes in the NW and SE quadrants. The service reductions have led to complaints of wait times as high as 60 minutes in those quadrants and you have seen a decline 10% decline in ridership city wide. The biggest ridership declines have come from the NE quadrant, though the reason is unclear. You’ve also been receiving a variety of complaints about road quality and streetlight outages in the NW quadrant.

Operations

Who We Are

Table 1 summarizes the demographic characteristics of our employees overall and by position.

Table 1: : Transportation Department Staffing Descriptive Statistics (FTE)

	Central Office	Drivers	Construction and Maintenance	Field Office	Total
White	464	928	696	290	2,377
Non-white	116	812	464	232	1,623
Male	232	754	812	174	1,971
Female	348	986	348	348	1,913
Non-resident	174	696	812	174	1,681
College degree+	464	870	232	406	3,594
Total	580	1,739	1,159	522	4,000

How We’re Doing

Table 2 provides an overview of our performance indicators for each of our goals for the year by ward. We operate 1,200 bus routes throughout the city and each ward sees between 6,000 and 10,000 trips along 300-400 routes per day.

Table 2: Transportation Department Performance Indicators by Ward

	NW	SW	NE	SE
Number of buses > 5 mins late on route (per month)	2,250	836	236	1,504
Number of Friday Trips (per month)	600	7,500	11,000	580
Number of potholes patched within 1 week of first report	6	12	8	3

Current Operations Budget

Table 3 summarizes our FY23 operations budget. After our initial informational town hall and meetings with leaders from the Neighborhood Associations, college representatives from local colleges, and the Hopetopia Chamber of Commerce, we have decided to prioritize expanding bus service and increasing the frequency of service on existing routes of HOPBUS services in the coming year and invest more in bridge and road repair.

Table 3: Budget Overview FY23

(a) Transportation Department Operations (in 1,000s)

Transportation Department	625,885
Traffic engineering and design	87,645
Route construction	189,535
Fleet	55,901
Bus operations	150,000
Management	59,622
Maintenance	83,180

(b) Transportation Department Expenditures (in 1,000s)

Transportation Department	625,885
Personnel FT Pay	373,748
Pay - Other	151,242
Fringe benefits	95,123
Overtime	5,772

FY22 Operations Budget

Table 4 provides an overview of the FY22 budget for the Transportation Department broken out by operations and the source of the expenditure.

Table 4: Budget Overview FY22

(a) Transportation Department Operations (in 1,000s)

Transportation Department	564,333
Traffic engineering and design	71,532
Route construction	163,638
Fleet	50,404
Bus operations	150,000
Management	53,759
Maintenance	75,000

(b) Transportation Department Expenditures (in 1,000s) {tbl-tdexp}

Transportation Department	564,333
Personnel FT Pay	347,277
Pay - Other	131,280
Fringe benefits	77,834
Overtime	1,927