How OCTA can improve service to UC Irvine with some simple re-routing
Submitted by Steven on 17 June, 2010 - 6:37am
OCTA staff listened to a proposal at a recent Transit Advocates of UC Irvine meeting in which they asked for better OCTA transit service. 40 students attended this session along with OCTA planner Gordon Robinson and OCTA CEO Will Kempton.
OCTA has already made some improvements to UC Irvine's transit service. A little over a year ago, OCTA planners re-allocated trips to include more southbound 79 buses to relieve standing-room only conditions during peak commute hours. OCTA also made permanent a detour that serves UC Irvine's core students and Gottschalk Medical Plaza better (see below). Plus, they've recently added UC Irvine as a station for their future rapid bus system in their proposed long-range transportation plan.
Here are OCTA's permanent re-routings. They now serve the core of campus better, serving the School of Medicine, Gottschalk Medical Plaza, Beckman Laser Center, the Trevor School of Arts, the athletics center, and the new humanities building directly.
But TAUCI believes more should be done. Currently, 27,600 students (not including staff) attend UC Irvine. OCTA's line 79 is the only bus line that runs through UC Irvine on weekends — every 80 minutes — and students have no regular daily bus routes that connect to the airport, Amtrak, or Metrolink stations. According to TAUCI president David Weinreich, they also discussed:
- Needing larger buses on route 175 to people due to frequent pass-bys and late buses
- Using advertising on bus stops to pay for desperately-needed schedule info
- Needing to have routes 70 & 90 meet at Culver — instead of Tustin Metrolink Station — to require one less wait & transfer for students coming to/from the route 79 (the most commonly used route by students).
- How OCTA's plans to boost Metrolink service is useless for UC Irvine students because of UC Irvine's distance from a station. TAUCI stressed that bus rapid transit lines would be much more preferable to frequent Metrolink service.
Their presentation included some useful facts like these:
What I think should even be done: OCTA should fold that (and may I editorialize) useless Newport Transportation Center into UC Irvine's hub. These two hubs compete for buses, and there will be a much higher demand for OCTA buses this coming year because UC Irvine will house another 1,500 or so students in new housing units, and Newport Transportation Center has no transit-dependent population nearby.
Route 1 — perhaps with a combination of the anemic route 76 — can serve to pick up the meager boardings in Newport Beach.
Having route 57 run to UC Irvine will give students access to Angel Stadium, an Amtrak/Metrolink station on weekends (okay, a 10-minute walk to Anaheim Station), UC Irvine Medical Center, South Coast Plaza, and Costa Mesa's clubs. WOOT.
Having route 1 run to UC Irvine will give students and Irvine residents a one-seat joyride to all of the beaches Orange County has to offer: Long Beach, Seal Beach, Sunset Beach, Huntington Beach Pier, San Clemente Pier, Laguna Beach, and Dana Point Harbor. Folks coming from Central Orange County have to transfer to the 1 anyways, so why not expand this to a transit-dependent population: UC Irvine students?
What do you think? Crazy idea? It's not going to cost *that* much money to re-route some buses, but will there be a trade-off for non-students?
Comments
neat
Route 57 should definitely terminate at UCI. These are key destinations for students. This is essentially the same routing that the Bristol Bravo! line will have, and rerouting 57 is a great interim solution.
I think your proposed re-routing of route 1 may be too extreme though. That route is meant for spanning the length of the county's beaches and it is already the longest trip, taking somewhere around 2 hours.
Route 1 or Route 76 rerouting
I think I'm trying to find a happy medium to serve the existing routes that would be impacted by such a rerouting of 79 and 57 (like I proposed above), hence the wild new route 1.
But honestly, I've never really seen any boardings/drop-offs in Newport Beach along our current routes 57 and 76 except at Eastbluff/Jamboree/University and around the Fashion Island circle.
There are a lot of people who transfer between 1 and 57, though.
Building Community by Existing Shuttle Services
Wouldn't it be far less expensive and more helpful for UCI students to use a dedicated UCI shuttle service that runs to the 57 (a very short commute for a vehicle, but a long one for a pedestrian)?
A regular shuttle sharing near by stops with the OCTA's routes will serve more people overall by encouraging greater OCTA ridership by UCI commuters who would initially take the shuttle from their cars to get to their classes spread about the large UCI campus.
Think of the possibilities it opens up for students who are stuck on campus between classes. Now they have a means of quickly getting off campus without losing their parking space. Riding the bus for lunch would certainly increase their awareness of the benefits of commuting by bus. Not only that but, how many students have NEVER ridden a bus? If they've NEVER ridden it, what negative stereotypes might have they have about doing that? How much less likely are they to EVER ride the bus if they NEVER did it before?
Regular connecting shuttle service also increases the community's participation of campus events by non- students who find it easier to use the bus to get on campus. Increasing ridership on the Newport side of the 57's route makes it more feasible to run it more often as does increase ridership between Cal State Fullerton and UCI on the Brea side of the route. Increased ridership on both sides makes the 57 route a better, cost-effective and more reliable connection between North and South Orange County, as well as increasing the ease of connecting between Los Angeles and San Diego Counties.
Now Cal State Fullerton does have a dedicated (enclosed) shuttle service during the regular school year, but it doesn't incorporate stopping near the OCTA bus stops, nor the very near by shopping centers. Such a service at both Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine would eventually increase revenue to their surrounding communities by breaking the necessity of a commuter mentality by those who have automobiles. If the community can easily get on campus to go to open events, they are far more likely to see the campus as a valuable resource for entertainment and cultural events.
Students who have easier access to local businesses are far more likely to spend their off campus expenditures in their local community rather than just getting in their car and going home. That is why mixed use development is so important to how we solve our freeway congestion. Getting professionals into a community mind set versus a commuter mind set starts as soon as they are able to exercise their freedom. Why not entice them towards being part of a community BEFORE they become indifferent and commute their way to greener pastures? That is why colleges and universities are excellent places to foster the development of a community mind set. Lose this opportunity and you may never get it back. That would be a shame because where do all our Urban Planners, Sustainability and Transportation Engineers, Land Developers, Finance Directors and Senior Management all get their degrees from?
Transfer penalty
The problem with having a shuttle connect to the 57 is that ASUCI's shuttle services are already pretty anemic — the one that goes around main campus runs like every 30-40 minutes. Couple that with line 57's frequency in Newport Beach (every 30-60 minutes) and students will end up waiting anyways for up to 90 minutes just to get to South Coast Plaza or any central Orange County destinations.
That's essentially why the current OCTA configuration is so unpopular: to get to central OC or a Metrolink/Amtrak station on weekends, Irvine students and residents take the not-so-frequent line 79 (80-minute wait), take a 4-minute walk across a very large intersection, and wait for a 57 at Jamboree/Eastbluff/University (up to 60 minute wait).
And that's also why so many people are complaining about OCTA's "new" routes that force people to transfer: OCTA now kicks line 60 riders off early and force them to transfer to Long Beach Transit. OCTA kicks line 29, 43, 53, and 70 riders off early and forces them to transfer to a "new" bus route to continue traveling down that street. It's all about the transfer penalty.
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UCI Shuttle
The shuttle proposal is an interesting and creative solution which would solve a lot of problems without causing problems for present riders. The logistics for setting up such service should be fully worked out and if possible the service instituted with a strong promotional campaign on both UCI and CSUF campuses plus any other where such service can be incorporated. Another aspect would be whether such service could be aligned with the city involved to provide service to the general public along the route!
Good luck!
Sincerely, Tony
Is there a Facebook Fan Page that Points to this Blog?
Steve you have made an incredible investment of your time and talent towards solving problems that effect so many us. Do you have a Facebook Fan Page for this site?
The transit penalty is a very common and growing problem with OCTA's service. Exploring the other creative possibilities AND seeing what level of current interest we can get for generating enough hard commitments from our fellow stakeholders is critical to our getting the best possible outcome for all of us regardless of what that final solution looks like. You have already done so much and I am quickly learning that these issues are far more complex than they appear because previous substantial sacrafices have already been made by us stakeholders because funding for our services have been used for non-bus related expendatures (i.e. Making Bristol wider for a now defunct transit plan) and blamed on the current economic crisis. Just knowing the specifics of those past expenditures and our creative solutions to have kept the Night Owl service has been a revelation to me.
Keep up the amazing work Steve and thank you Tony for responding to me previous post on using Campus Shuttle Services as an adjunct to those larger issues.
Less Transfers, Not More
The writers here seem to imply that a shuttle at UCI would be a new idea, but UCI already has a successful shuttle service on campus, and going to Balboa as well. The Transportation Advocates, UCI (of which I am President) have worked this year to add a new pilot service, starting in September, going to the Irvine Train Station and The Spectrum shopping mall. The Spectrum mall came up first on two separate random surveys of over 300 students, likely because it is a very popular destination which is almost impossible to get to on weekends. The pilot service will run about once an hour on Saturdays this fall. Hopefully we can continue to expand it if it is successful.
Why did students want to fund this service with their own tuition money? Because it goes directly to a destination they want to go to, where they currently can't get without a car. The problem with a shuttle connecting to the 57 bus line is it would not go directly to anyplace. It would require a cumbersome transfer from one infrequent bus to another--no better than students already can get from transferring from bus 79 to bus 57. That's why our club is also working with OCTA to request that the 57 be rerouted to serve the campus directly. Just a 1.5 mile detour from a hub with few transit oriented destinations around it (in Fashion Island) to one by UCI, with over 27,000 students, and the largest single employer in all of Irvine.
As UCI continues to grow, and its on campus student population grows with it, it only makes sense to serve the transit riders, rather than have the riders serve our outdated routes.