Strategic Plan (PDF)

Madison Area Bus Advocates envisions a sustainable, fiscally-sound, inclusive, improved, and expanded public transit system throughout the Greater Madison Area. It envisions a system that has frequent service on key routes, is equipped with improved amenities, provides access to essential services, has affordable or no fares, accommodates 2nd and 3rd shift workers, makes it possible to live a good life without a car, and is regional in nature. It aims to empower transit riders and friends, and insists on social justice.

Transportation and land use go hand in hand. Transit-friendly land use often requires dense settlement and a mixture of enterprises. A grid system fosters connectivity, active transportation, and route choice for all ages and pedestrian abilities. Identification of streets that should be redesigned for road diets, surface parking lots that can be converted into structured parking, and curbs where parking should be prohibited, helps reclaim wasteful land use of past car-centric development while enhancing the safety and comfort of current denizens.

While at first glance, having a modern regional transit system would seem to involve massive new expenditures at a time when austerity measures are in vogue, enhancing the use and appeal of public transportation actually saves both the community and the individual money while providing for good, local, long-term jobs, including dependable access to job training, job interviews and offered employment. In the short term, we focus on:

1. Establishing a Regional Transportation Authority that brings together the county, central city, and suburbs. This cooperative approach should promote active transportation and transit, in coordination with land use planning for housing and economic development;
2. Locating a convenient, people-oriented multi-modal terminal in downtown Madison that provides for seamless connection between local, regional and interstate carriers;
3. Establishing a local and streamlined rapid system that provides decentralized coverage reflecting the changing housing and commute patterns throughout our region;
4. Making active transportation - bus, bicycle and pedestrian travel - the obvious, easiest, and most desirable way to travel;
5. Developing an economically-sound parking policy that eliminates a minimum parking requirement and separates the rental of residential units from that of a parking stall.
6. Promoting the development of Transport Demand Management strategies for coordinated and cost-effective multi-modal transportation and parking policies.