OCTA releases plans for transit service cuts, including cutting all 24-hour routes, eliminating 27 routes, reducing service to almost 70 routes
OCTA has just released their plans to reduce bus service in March 2010, and it doesn't look pretty.
The Pacific Progressive blog sums it up nicely (with emphases added):
OCTA has released the proposed March 2010 service reductions. The documents are available as a summary and as a detailed report including the number of riders for each route. OCTA staff considered 5 strategies for reductions:
- Make selected trip reductions, including both span reductions and non-span reductions
- Reduce frequency/headway changes
- Shorten entire route by changing terminal point and/or eliminating service on the least used segments
- Make short turns - not all buses would travel the entire route all the time
- Eliminate routes
The types of changes OCTA staff are proposing are:
- Preserving service on core routes (Strategy A)
- Reduce service proportionally system-wide (Strategy B)
- Modify days and/or hours of operation (Strategy C)
- A combined strategy including elements of each of the above options (Strategy D)
If you ride these routes - 20, 21, 24, 62, 76, 82, 85, 86, 87, 131, 145, 147, 164, 167, 177, 187, 193, 693 - start looking for another way to get around because your routes are eliminated in whole or in part in 3 of the 4 proposed strategies.
Night OWL service is targeted for elimination. If you use Night OWL, start finding another way to get around at those early and late hours.
I've attached OCTA's documents to this post.
Here's what OCTA's current transit service looks like (and I removed all the Express and StationLink lines — those routes barely have any trips during the day anyways). North County will go from something like this...
...to this:
Note that this renders Chapman University's new U-pass — introduced this year — useless as there will be no more buses running there.
South County will have a lot of routes cut, going from this...
...to this:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| march2010-reductionbooklet.pdf | 2.7 MB |
| march2010-potentialreductions.pdf | 208.12 KB |
Comments
1. OCTA should keep night owl
1. OCTA should keep night owl service, even if it means more cuts on other lines. If anything, reduce frequency of service to once every two hours instead of the current once an hour service.
2. Increase fares to $3. It's still cheaper than driving.
3. To be totally honest, I just don't see anything changing for the better for many years to come. So, in the mean time....
I want to see a new type of car pool service developed. One that would work for short trips "on the spur of the moment" in addition to regularly scheduled commuting trips.
Say for example that you want to go to a movie. The bus service cut backs make it difficult if not impossible to use the bus to get to/from your movie, so you place a request on a web site with your starting point, destination and times that you want to arrive and depart if it's round trip. A computer would match your trip with drivers making similar trips and would offer a suggested price (share of gas, etc.)
Perhaps this service could create jobs for people who want to act as a cheap alternative to taxi service. Former bus riders get a somewhat cheap ride and drivers make a couple bucks. It's a win-win scenario.
So why can't this work?
Does anyone know if other
Does anyone know if other transit agencies are making similar cuts in service? I only hear about OCTA. What about MTA, Long Beach, RTA, Torrance, and all the other agencies?
Does anyone know if other...
At this time, Torrance Transit isn't making any cuts to the service. They recently had a fare increase to cope with the increasing costs of labor and maintenance. Gardena Bus Lines is actually going to be expanding service. With the recent opening of a new Bus Facility & recruiting for bus operators, they are suppose to takeover MTA Line 124 ( El Segundo Blvd ). Long Beach arent making any cuts, but instead will be restructuring routes, and extending the Long Beach passport
Gardena
GBL has been running the El Segundo Bl. route (it's their new Line #5) since July....service has actually improved
(every 1/2 hour up from every hour)
How is it possible for these
How is it possible for these other agencies to improve service when at the same time OCTA is drastically cutting service?
What are they doing that OCTA isn't?
Metro is improving service
Metro is improving service via the LA County voters-approved Measure R half-cent sales tax, which was on the Ballot in November 2008. Monies from this measure will be used for transportation....with a vast majority of the funds geared towards bus & rail improvements. Smaller portions geared for highways, traffic signals, that sort of thing.
Off the top of my head...
Off the top of my head, AC Transit, SamTrans, Santa Clara VTA, and RTA are also making pretty big cuts, but only about ~10% or so. SamTrans axed all but 1 of their express lines.
One way to keep night owl
One way to keep night owl service on the 50/60 would be to create a 50/60 loop. One bus could operate on the two combined routes at half frequency.
Find a way to increase tax
Find a way to increase tax revenues and you'll save bus service. What else did you expect?
RTA cuts
RTA's cuts were actually not that bad- mostly restructuring of duplicate service in Moreno Valley, and riders I've talked to have been pleased with the way they've been handled. Some new cuts to Dial-A-Ride are essentially the same- a lot of minor efficiency improvements that add up to significant budget solutions.
One annoyance- RTA was going to introduce a new late-night service, but took the grant money they got for it to keep a few routes running that otherwise wouldn't. Who knows when we'll actually see late-night service here. (And by late-night, we mean after 9 pm, after 7 in some areas.)
OCTA plans for $2 billion 405 "improvements"
Meanwhile, plans don't include any type of light rail to take cars off of this congested freeway. (For cost comparision, the MTA subway to Santa Monica would cost $5 billion.) Plans will dump more cars on already congested surface steets of Huntington Beach. Participate in public hearings on the 405 improvement. Send letters if you can't. The OCTA must be attacked on multiple fronts. They have not stopped collecting Measure M taxes from us. They are planning a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Is it too late?
What's the opinion of the folks attending the 405 freeway public hearings? I'm just wondering b/c I heard ~100 or so attended the 55 freeway tunneling/double-decker hearings and they were all in favor of it.
I'm just wondering how we can get a critical mass of transit riders to be more politically active, because right now it doesn't seem like there are enough aware of what's happening. And it doesn't help that all the service change brochures are printed in small typeface so that they're easily ignored.
I can't go to any meetings
I can't go to any meetings for the foreseeable future. I work and go to school all week. I don't get home some days until 9:30, because I use public transit, lol.
Its hard for a lot of people
Its hard for a lot of people to attend these public hearings. The times are a real inconvenience for many. Im pretty sure more than 30 wouldve been there, had it been on a weekend. I dont understand as to why OCTA doesnt hold public hearings on a saturday.... like what the MTA used to do ( Im not sure if MTA still holds them on weekends ).
The reason Torrance Transit,
The reason Torrance Transit, Long Beach Transit, Culver City Bus, etc... (all the Municipal services in LA county) are not cutting service is because of the Measure R 15% local return. Everybody only thinks that Measure R benefitted Metro, but, in essence, it benefited all transit services in the county. OC needs a Measure R as well. You have Measure M, but it's strongly favored to automobile-based policies. Luckily, our Measure R is only 20% for auto-based projects (and most of them are carpool projects!).
Measure M is a little duplicitous
Part of Measure M funnels money to "transitways," which are sold to the public as bus expressways. In reality, they're just carpool lanes and OCTA obligingly runs a handful of underperforming buses on the freeway to fulfill their obligation for receiving transit money to build these freeways.
I think that's a big big reason why OCTA refuses to cancel their freeway express lines like the 211, which only sees 3-4 riders on any given bus trip, and instead they cancelled parts of line 60, which ran standing-room only through Long Beach.
Steven, is that legit? They
Steven, is that legit? They only run express buses to fund carpool projects? Haha. Get rid of every express bus and run Bravo! to the Transit Mall in Long Beach. That would be a much greater bang for our buck.
The impression with the express buses...
Director Winterbottom (and Ellen Burton, I think) said last week during the community meeting that my "cut the express buses" idea won't work because those buses and Metrolink StationLink buses are funded by a different pot of money.
And, if you'll notice, none of the StationLink and Express buses are being cut in any of these options.
And, I've heard from conversations between Winterbottom and a member of the public that Measure M/M2 funds "transitways" on the freeway. Winterbottom asserts that these transitways are for buses to run on, but the person he was talking to said that these were primarily HOV lanes that happen to run a few buses.
I can't say with 100% certainty and I don't have, like, reams of papers to back me up, but I kinda put the aforementioned together to mean that OCTA half-assed their express bus system so that whomever voted for this / whatever government funded this were tricked into funding HOV lanes. Very creative, isn't it? I kinda wish they were this creative with trying to minimize the bus service reduction.
I was surprised they were
I was surprised they were even considered transitways. Interstate 10 between Union Station and El Monte has a transitway. I see no such thing in Orange County.
More dirt about Orange County's fake "transitways"
Try telling that to some of OCTA's Board of Directors. Winterbottom got into that argument and we were like, uh-uh, OCTA has no transitways.
But in OCTA's materials, I see they've allocated funds to transitways without really defining what "transitways" are:
Measure M - http://www.octa.net/pdf/measurem_fact.pdf - "Transitways completed"
or the City of Costa Mesa at http://www.ci.costa-mesa.ca.us/council/study-session/2005-07-12/City%20Transportation%20Report.pdf : "I-405/SR-55 Transitway: This major regional project includes several elements such as, High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane connectors between the I-405 and SR-55 Freeways, a new onramp at Anton Boulevard, a new offramp at Avenue of the Arts, and grade separation of the northbound I-405/Bristol Street offramp from the southbound SR-55 to the northbound I-405 Freeway connector. The HOV connectors, Avenue of the Arts offramp, and Bristol Street braid elements of the project are completed and are all open to drivers. Anton Boulevard onramp to the northbound I-405 Freeway was opened to the public on July 5, 2005. The total cost of the City’s portion of the Transitway project is over $15 million and is funded by a combination of OCTA Measure M, federal, and City funds. The total cost of the Transitway project, including the carpool connectors, is approximately $120 million."
...or LA Times at http://articles.latimes.com/2000/nov/26/local/me-57437 whose article in 2000 talks about Measure M: "Another $260 million was utilized to purchase existing railway tracks to help create Metrolink, the commuter rail service. Transitways for buses and carpools received $50 million and transit fares for seniors and persons with disabilities were kept affordable. A CenterLine light-rail project is nearing decision on a final alignment, environmental clearance and the selection of a starter segment for further design."
(Oh, wow, it looks like high-frequency Metrolink should start in just a few months, for "early 2010.")
>(Oh, wow, it looks like
>(Oh, wow, it looks like high-frequency Metrolink should start in just a few months, for "early 2010.")
Is this still going to happen? Do you have any details? (like hours, frequency, and most important, fares - will there be any new passes for this newly expanded service?)
Any chance we'll see this effort duplicated in other counties as well? It would be great if you could take Metrolink back from L.A. or Riverside at Midnight...
About Metrolink 30-minute service
I should've prefaced that by saying that the documents I came across pinned the launch of high-frequency Metrolink service for early 2010. Given the recent news articles about how Metrolink may slash service due to plunging ridership, I'm not sure OCTA's still pushing forward with this. But, they may legally be forced to, just like they're legally forced to launch the Bravo! HAR (half-assed rapid) transit service. They hatched this Irvine-to-Fullerton rail service plan as a substitute for their CenterLine light rail project.
I don't think it will include Los Angeles or Riverside at all, because Metrolink owns just the tracks between Fullerton and Irvine (or Laguna Niguel, I forget). The tracks to L.A. are owned by a freight conglomerate. Besides, L.A. is in a whole different county.
The expanded Metrolink
The expanded Metrolink service in Orange County will be a failure unless fares for short hops between 1-3 stations are restructured. I would use the new service to travel from Fullerton and Orange Station. I could easily do this today, but the fare is over $5. If it were $2, I would use it.
However, 30 minute service to LA would be a hit.