Foothill Transit proposes to cut transit links between San Gabriel Valley and Orange County
Submitted by Steven on 30 March, 2010 - 5:16am
Connections between Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley will get more difficult if Foothill Transit proceeds with its proposed service cuts. Simon Oh's blog pointed out that two remaining bus lines — 285 and 286 — are slated to get the axe. Foothill Transit does not provide a date when this will happen, but they are soliciting feedback in March and April about these cuts.
This news came out a week or two ago, but it's no less important for those requiring mobility in Southern California. Just to put things in perspective, here's a generic map of what we're talking about, with "service areas" by the fragmented transit agencies in Southern California:
Black arrows show regularly-scheduled bus lines that connect from one transit agency's service area to another. The red arrow is Foothill Transit's proposed cuts, and you'll notice that those are the only two bus lines that help riders go between Orange County and San Gabriel Valley. (I did not include peak-period express buses (such as OCTA's 757 and 794) because so few of those buses run that they're virtually useless for many of us who don't have 9-to-5 weekday jobs.)
Darrell Johnson, OCTA's new deputy CEO, recently crowed, “We have an incredibly diverse portfolio of transit services – buses, trains and vanpools. We have a world class freeway system and the most successful toll facility in the United States.” Notice how he says nothing about Orange County's increasingly unreliable transit system.
For more info (again, links provided from Simon Oh's blog):
Comments
Lines missed are the Norwalk
Lines missed are the Norwalk 4 and MTA 130, which still connect the OCTA land, and the RTA 149, which is better than commute service, although not much better. If you read the Foothill Transit board agenda - http://file.lacounty.gov/compub/agenda/2004/cms1_137659.pdf - the 285 actually gets higher than average ridership. It just goes outside the Foothill Transit service area. The 286 ridership is about half the Foothill Transit average, but if they dropped the service through Diamond Bar and made a point to point from the Cal Poly or Pomona Transit Center area to Brea, it could do a lot better.
Missed lines
You also missed RTA 49 and Omni 83, which connect in south Fontana, though I second Spokker's recommendation to include 149. Also, the Omnitrans 65, 66, 67, 68, 80 and Foothill 187, 197, 480, 492 bridge the Omni/Foothill gap at Montclair, while the Omni 61 bridges it at Pomona.
It's too bad Foothill is imploding...