In August 2023, Iowa City’s public bus system became a free service for all riders — no fare, no pass — just hop on. In this week’s episode, Amy welcomes Darian Nagle-Gamm, director of transportation services with the City of Iowa City, to discuss the program, its source of funding, long-term plans, and the public health and equity benefits of free public transportation.

Read more about the Iowa City transit service here.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello everybody, and welcome back to From the Front Row. This is Lauren Lavin, the producer, and I’m really excited to introduce this episode about the free-fare bus program in Iowa City. If you haven’t heard of it, all of the buses in Iowa City are free. That’s right. $0, you just hop on and you can go wherever you want. And they’re doing this pilot program for two years, and so we thought it’d be really important to do an episode to showcase that if you haven’t heard about it, and then to also talk about the initiative, how this program came to Iowa City and what they’re expecting to happen with it, what they’ve already seen happen over the last two months. Basically, this episode is chockfull of information about why the buses are free and what impact that has on the Iowa City community.

So Amy and Darian are going to be chatting about this, and if it’s your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student run podcast that talks about the major issues in public health and how they’re relevant to anyone, both in and outside of the field of public health.

Amy Wu:

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us. I’m here with Darian Nagle-Gamm. Darian, could you start off by introducing yourself to the audience?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Absolutely. Hello everyone. Again, Darian Nagle-Gamm. I am the Director of Transportation Services with the City of Iowa City, and we manage the transit system, the parking department, and maintenance of the central business district and Ped Mall areas.

Amy Wu:

Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us on the show today. We’re here to talk about the new initiative in Iowa City, which is that the bus systems are now free for a two-year period, I believe. Could you provide an overview of this program and what its main objectives are?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Sure, yeah. We’re really excited to launch on August 1st, a two-year Fare Free Iowa City Transit pilot. So you no longer need to dig into your pockets for change, find your bus pass or go look for a bus pass at one of our local outlets. You can literally just hop on the bus. Our goal is to improve access to convenient, affordable, reliable, accessible, safe and sustainable transportation for Iowa City. We want to improve that access for everyone, so our goal really is to increase transit ridership.

Amy Wu:

Amazing. Yeah, and I know this is definitely a topic that is salient to university students and students who live off campus like myself, so I’m very excited to learn more. Maybe you could say a little bit more about what motivated the city to initiate the program and what problems or specific needs does it aim to address?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Well, really transit is, transit itself as a transportation source is really designed to provide equitable transportation to the community. So transit is rooted in equity. So really in the city of Iowa City has long had goals towards improving equitable access to opportunities in the community, to improve the sustainability of the community by providing a more sustainable transportation option, or ensuring that the community has an affordable transportation option. That’s definitely high on our list of priorities. As you may know or may or may not know, it costs upwards of $12,000 a year to own and maintain a vehicle. That’s a thousand dollars a month. So if we can provide a transportation option that serves great number of people, that’s money back in Iowa City residents and visitors pocket.

And ultimately we really want to reduce barriers to transit use. We know that not everybody in the community takes transit. Not everybody in the community is familiar with transit, and we have been on a mission for the last five years to reduce those barriers and to prove our transit system and improve access to transit. So that it works better for a greater number of Iowa Citians. And so it meets more of the community’s needs in terms of transportation.

Public health is definitely one of the benefits to transit use, you get more steps in. You’re also able to get to your destinations more efficiently, so it’s more efficient than necessarily just walking or biking. Sometimes a vehicle is the right tool for the job, depending on where you live, depending on where you’re traveling to. But transit is a form of active transportation, just like biking and walking. There’s always some elements of walking that is required to use the transit system. So it is, I would say, I would argue one of the healthiest forms of vehicle transportation for that very reason. So we’re very cognizant of the fact that this is also a healthier option for the community, especially when biking or walking isn’t feasible for a household.

Amy Wu:

Yeah. On the subject of the logistics of the bus fare program, how is it being funded and what are the measures that are in place to ensure its sustainability in the long term, or how might it develop as time goes on?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Yep, that’s a great question. So we have two years of funding, hence the two-year pilots as part of COVID relief funding that was distributed to all transit systems across the United States. And quite honestly, that COVID relief funding was really necessary to help many of our transit systems work through that really difficult time. We were, I would say down probably 70%, maybe 80 at one point percent versus pre-pandemic levels at one point. So it took a significant amount of ridership away, which of course is revenue, but also we’ve been, like all communities have been struggling, to get that ridership back and part of that’s maybe people being comfortable with riding on transit. And I think nowadays it’s more so there’s just different travel patterns, right? So we have more work from home, more hybrid options, those sorts of things. So the COVID relief funding that we have will cover the next two years of the fare losses from going free fare.

Now, we do not have a long-term financial plan yet. That is really part of our mission for the next two years is to find ways that we could support this should the public and the city council provide that feedback, that this is something that we want to see continue. And there’s a variety of different ways that could potentially happen. It could be anything from property tax revenues being shifted, utility tax, sales tax, community partnerships could develop, increased parking fees. There’s really a variety of different ways that it could potentially be funded, and communities that have transitioned to fare free have used a variety of different methods to support that fare free transportation. So that’s on our to-do list right now. Now that we’ve launched the service, it’s underway, we really need to find some potential funding options for the future.

Amy Wu:

Yeah, that’s great. And I’m sure that bringing visibility to the transit system and the fare free program will definitely help in at least bringing it to people’s minds or the forefront of their minds and kind of the importance of transportation in every citizen’s life.

Yeah. So could you maybe talk a little bit about how the bus fare program works? Can anyone just hop on the bus? Do they need passes? I think you already kind of mentioned this at the beginning.

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

So one of the biggest benefits of this from a municipal perspective is there are usually hoops that you need to jump through for municipal programs we have, but this program is so easy. You just hop on board and you can take transit wherever you need to go in the community. You don’t need pass, you don’t need change, you don’t need to find a dollar. You literally just hop on board. And it’s never been easier, ever been easier in Iowa City to use transit.

Now, if you are familiar with the transit system, sometimes it helps to learn a little bit about the transit system, and there’s a couple ways you can do that. I’d say that the easiest way to do it, and for those that are more tech-savvy, is to download the transit app. It works very similarly to Google Maps, so it knows where you are based on GPS. You type in a location into the transit app and it gives you three different route recommendations. It tells you how far to walk to the nearest transit stops. It tells you when that bus is going to be there, what the schedule is, and… Or you can just click on a map and find out the nearest bus route and where the bus is that’s on that route.

So that’s one way. You could also call our transit office or send an email to ICtransit@iowa-city.gov to get trip planning recommendations. There’s multiple different ways that you can get information about how to use the transit system, and once you have that information and you know the route you need and when to go there, you just hop on board.

Amy Wu:

That’s awesome. Yeah, and I do definitely use the transit app. As I mentioned before, as a student, I do use the public transportation system to get to school, and that one has been very helpful that you can see the live updates of buses on their routes. What are the key benefits that residents in the city as a whole can expect from having this fare free bus program system?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Well, I’d say first and foremost, it’s money back in your pocket. So you can take that dollar for every ride and put it towards something else, and you can truly live without a car. And I think that is something that’s so foreign to many of us as Americans, but what an opportunity to live car free. What an opportunity to put that thousand dollars back into your pocket to spend it on food, clothing, shelter, house. There’s so many other things that we can use our money on. The first benefit is making it more affordable and accessible for everybody in the community.

And as you mentioned earlier, it’s a healthy alternative. So if your New Year’s resolution is to get more steps in, you’re going to find more steps in your day without much effort when you take transit because transit is, it’s on a fixed route system and it goes many places in this community, but you do need to walk a few steps to get from here to there or roll a few steps to get from here to there. So it’s a way to get you moving too, and also provide this really affordable and safe transportation source.

The transit system also, another big benefit, is that it again provides those access to opportunities. So if you are looking for a new job or looking for educational opportunities, as you mentioned before, Amy, you use transit to get to school. Many people use it to get to school or work, the transit system is there for you, and it’s quick, easy, convenient, reliable, and it connects you to either jobs or education or shopping opportunities or social recreational opportunities. It’s there for all of those trips.

It also reduces congestion on our roadways. So some people think of transit system as I’ve got a car. It’s not that important to me personally. The transit system helps everybody, everybody. So if you think about a full bus, there’s 40 some seats on a bus. We could certainly pack more people on a bus, standing up to 70, but if you see a full bus in front of you that’s 70 some cars that could also be right in front of you on the roadway. So we all should cheer when we see a full bus, because if you look around, if you stand on any major arterial road in Iowa City and just happen to look around, the majority of the cars you see or the vehicles you see will have one person in them. So that’s a lot of physical space for one person to take up. And transit really helps to reduce that congestion and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

So again, transportation, one of the greatest contributors to climate change and global warming. And one of the biggest things that each one of us can do, every one of us in Iowa City can do, is to choose a more sustainable transportation option. So of course walking and biking are the undisputed champions of healthy and sustainable transportation, but transit is right up there, and if the vehicle is the right tool for the job, taking transit will be the most sustainable way that you can get there and still get your steps in and get your movement in that day.

Amy Wu:

Yeah, I really like what you said about seeing public transportation and this more sustainable method of transport as an opportunity other than just simply an alternative. It’s actually a blessing in many ways. And I spent five years living in Boston, which is a very walkable city, and that’s very rare for America. Elsewhere in the western world, maybe not so much, but over here it’s definitely rarer to find walkable cities. And yeah, I think transit really contributes to the non-car accessibility of the city. And so I think that also affects how our city is… How people interface with the city and how you brought up aspects of socialization and recreation.

In places like Boston where you can just walk anywhere or take the tea anywhere, you have more opportunities to just meet up without having to jump in a car if you don’t have one, if your family doesn’t have one, or just to be able to avoid traffic and avoid the greenhouse emissions, which you also mentioned. So I think that’s a great perspective on transit.

I’m also wondering if you have potentially any statistics on the program’s impact since its launch. I know it started fairly recently in August of this year, but have you seen an increase in riderships, for example? What does the day-to-day look like for that?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Well, I will say that we’ve seen a dramatic increase in ridership. So I am very excited to see that we’ve in just in the first month, we increased ridership 53%, which is an amazing number. So we heard immediately within the first few weeks before we really had any data to go off, of all the drivers were reporting, “I’m seeing a lot of new faces. I’m seeing a lot of new faces.” If you live in the, well, if you live near a transit stop or you travel past a transit stop, you would’ve noticed, clearly noticed there’s a lot more people at the bus stop. So we anecdotally had a feeling that Iowa City was really embracing the Fare Free Iowa City Transit program.

And then when we got the numbers and we found out that 131 plus thousand people road transit in August, which was a 53% increase from the previous year in August, we were blown away. So that meant nearly 46,000 more trips were taken by transit. So that could have been 46,000 more vehicle trips. But again, 46,000 more trips were taken on transit this August than the previous year. And we are so excited to see Iowa City embracing it so wholeheartedly.

The ridership we’ve evaluated also by route, so the net increase in ridership and the percent increase in ridership by route, and like I said, 53% was the average ridership increase, but we had routes with high fifties, sixties, 70, and we had one route that increased its ridership by 81% in just one year, from one simple change, as they say on the internet. One simple change really made a big impact on the community. And whether that dollar was a financial barrier or whether the dollar was just another thing somebody had to do, they had to find a dollar, find a change, or go find a bus pass, whatever the case was, this simple change enabled such a huge transformation in a very short amount of time. So we’re really looking forward to see how ridership changes and evolves as we continue to go through this Free Fare pilot.

Amy Wu:

Yeah. Those are incredible numbers, especially for just it being two months after the implementation. So I’m very excited to see what’s going to happen next, especially with the winter months coming up. So yeah, those are astounding statistics I would say.

So we do live in a very diverse city here in Iowa City. I’m wondering if there are any specific target populations or communities that the program is designed to assist, whether we’re talking about older generations or younger generations or just different parts of the city. So how do we think about their ridership and ensure their participation?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Yeah, so great question. So ultimately we wanted to improve access for those that rely on transit most and then make it an easier choice for others. So that’s been our mission through all the transit system improvements that we’ve made over the last four or five years, improve the system for those that rely on it most, make it easier choice for other people.

So really we’re trying to improve the system for everyone. So we want the seniors in our community to make it easy for them to just hop on board. We want the youth in our community to have an easier time getting to school and getting to activities. We want those, our post-college working families. We want everybody to be able to more easily use this really important community resource that we have. So it’s really, we are casting a wide net in terms of who we’re targeting with this because we can see it benefiting everyone in this community for different reasons. Every age and stage has a different transportation need. So we’ve really been trying to find a way to reach out to everybody.

And I’d say one of the most exciting things about this whole launch for us was that it’s really, this is as far as big transformational community projects, especially on the transit side, this was very simple for us to execute because we can simply stop taking fares. I mean, it’s a lot more simple than say, changing routes, changing bus schedules, things like that. But in order to launch this properly so that we did cast that wide net and so we could reach out to everybody in the community, we spent two plus months of really intensive work with the team from our communications office, the transit system and the climate action team, team of 10 to 15 people working really hard and to try to find every creative way possible to get the word out to the community.

So we held community events. We’ve had a really robust digital marketing campaign we’ve had, we’ve brought in legacy media sources. It’s been covered in the papers on newscast, and that was one thing we really were sure of that if it was marketed and if there was no stone left unturned in terms of who we reached out to, social service organizations. We had stands, we had signage on the bus, we had stands at the transit interchange that we would hopefully get that word out. And I will tell you, there was not a person that we talked to the day that we launched that had not heard that Iowa City was going fare free.

So that was really exciting to us and that was feedback for us that all that work over those weeks and weeks prior to the launch that we hit the nail on the head in terms of making sure that everybody in the community knew about this program. So we’re very proud of that, and I think that’s reflective in the amount of people that showed up in that first month and said, “Hey, I’m here. I wasn’t riding transit before, but I’m going to ride transit now.” And so we’re really proud of that wide net that we cast and getting the word out to everyone in the community.

Amy Wu:

Yeah, for sure. I will definitely add that I think the digital marketing campaign went well because here we are at the College of Public Health and we get to interview you about the program. I’m sure our listeners are looking forward to learning more about that too. So I would say it was a great success.

So it has been only about two months since the fare free program got started, but are there any challenges or obstacles that you have faced during the implementation of the program or any just other obstacles that you and your team had to address, and how were they overcome?

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

A great question. So really, we’ve been working on this project for five or six years, so it’s been a little bit longer than it probably shows to the public. We went through a comprehensive operations analysis, which is a fancy term for a transit study. Several years ago we kicked it off in 2019. We worked on it through the pandemic, and we implemented the first round of major transit system changes in August of 2021. And then in May of this year, we did another round of changes and improvements to the transit system to create faster, more frequent, more reliable service.

And in that study, I bring that up because in that study, we asked our consultants team to help us understand what the associated costs would be and what potential ridership impacts would be if we moved to a fare free system because we knew that there would be an increase in ridership, let’s put it that way. And before the pandemic, as I mentioned, we had, our ridership was higher than after the pandemic, and this is for all transit agencies across the United States.

So part of in terms of things that we needed, to challenges or obstacle space. So at that point, when we received that information from our consultant team, pre-pandemic, fare free was out of reach. And I say that because at that point they predicted that we would need to add two or four new buses to our fleet, which are, they’re fairly expensive. The electric buses are upwards of a million to 1.5 million. They’re very expensive. And that’s ultimately the direction that we’re heading is to electrify our system, we would need to add five to nine trips per day. We would need one to three additional employees. And this was before the pandemic. So if we would’ve pulled the trigger on fare free before the pandemic, we would’ve needed to have funded those buses. Funded those extra staff members, funded those extra trips, and we did not have the funding to do so before the pandemic.

So that was, I’d say, the first challenge and obstacle to be faced. And at that point, the council had been looking at a few different options for enhancements to our system, and this was on the short list of enhancements, but unfortunately at that point, it was outside of what we had funding allocated for. Now fast-forward a few years, we get through the pandemic and our ridership, I would say before we launched the fare free this summer, was approximately 30% down. So we have 30% capacity on our bus. We had some room is what I’m basically trying to say. We have some capacity on the buses to take on those increased rider levels that we would expect from Fare Free. So all of a sudden we’re in a position where we could transition to fare free without having to outlay millions of dollars for more buses, for more employees, and to add more trips to our route to help with some of those capacity issues.

So it was interesting how the pandemic, I don’t know if that is a bright spot in the pandemic, but it certainly, that’s one positive that came out of it for us is that we were now in a position, an unfortunate position. Nobody wanted to go through the pandemic, but now we were in a position where we could launch Fare Free. And our ultimate hope is that going forward, we will increase ridership to the point that we’ll need to add buses, to add routes, to add staff, because that’s success to me and in our eyes and in the city’s eyes. So those are some of the challenges that were kind of happen behind the scenes is that the public may not be aware of.

But the other challenge I would just say again, is making sure that that marketing campaign, we could have just launched Fare Free with not much fanfare, and I don’t think we would’ve seen nearly the amount of ridership increase that we did. It was really that brilliant marketing campaign by our communications and our climate action team that really laid bare the benefits and made sure that everybody in Iowa City was aware of this great transportation option in the community that was going to be free and so easy to use.

Amy Wu:

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it seems like you guys have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. So yeah, we thank you for all your efforts. On that subject, maybe we can conclude by talking about any of the lessons that you guys learned in this process and how the program’s implementation might apply to maybe other cities and what lessons might they find valuable in what we’ve done here.

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

So I think one of the first things that might be beneficial for other communities is to really study the impacts for your community. So our consultants said pre-pandemic, we could expect between 40 to 60% ridership increase, which is, in the transit world, that’s remarkable. There are few things that you could do to, besides going fare free. I’m not sure when it would be to get that kind of ridership increase, but then again, there’s associated costs with those ridership increase. So I would say the first bit of advice was to understand what those potential costs are, because the last thing you want to do is launch this great free fare benefit for your community and then not have the capacity, the staffing, or the buses to be able to meet that demand. So being really aware of what those impacts could be I think is important.

We also really evaluated what other communities had done. So we are not the first, we may be the first in Iowa City, or excuse me, in Iowa to go fare free for a pilot project. Actually Cedar Rapids did during the pandemic as well, but evaluate how other communities have launched Fare Free, what have been their best practices, what have been their pain points. So our consultants included that, some of that information for us in the transit study, and they had actually worked with other communities that had gone fare free. So we did our homework to understand what the benefits and challenges would be.

Identifying funding sources is another, I think, important best practice, and we aren’t there yet, but we’ve identified a suite of options. So I guess we have an understanding of how it might be funded, and we wanted to make sure that was solid before we move forward with the pilot project. And really now it’s our time to really kind of form up those thoughts and kind of develop some potential concrete plans if ultimately the city council wants to move forward with this.

And then the last thing I would recommend for other communities is do a temperature check. How does a community feel about transit? We are very fortunate to live in a community that has really embraced transit for a very long time. So Iowa City, always the metro area always ranks very high in ridership per capita. And I mean, we’re talking across the country. So if you look at the list of the top 50 communities, metro areas across the country, no matter what size, and you look at transit use per capita, you see Iowa City usually is in the top 20. So that’s pretty remarkable for a community of our size. We have a long and proud transit history, but understanding what kind of public support you have for this type of initiative I think is also really important for developing a plan to go fare free in your community.

Amy Wu:

That’s great. Thank you so much for sharing all your insight and all your input, explaining and relaying out the information regarding the Fare Free program. I think it’s just really cool to see an initiative that affects citizens at such a immediate rate and in such a direct manner. So I’m really excited to see what’ll happen next. But thank you once again, Darian, for your time.

Darian Nagle-Gamm:

Thank you very much, and we hope to see all of you on the bus.

Lauren Lavin:

And that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you to Amy and Darian for sharing everything that we need to know about the Fare Free Bus Program in Iowa City. This episode was hosted and written by Amy Wu and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health.

Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.