uc irvine

Tonight's the night! Doors open 5:30pm; we'll start the meeting at 6pm. Light refreshments will be served. Attached is the agenda, and here are some more details:

Santa Ana Depot (train station), 5th floor.
To arrive by transit: OCTA 59, 62, 83, 206, 462, 463, 464, Metrolink, Amtrak

Please attend; We'd love to meet you! You'll hear the latest on the bus funding situation, the bus cuts situation, and what can be done to help save our bus service. You can let us know your concerns and questions. Refreshments will be provided at no charge. Please let us know ASAP if you can volunteer as a greeter or translator.

Students of UC Irvine's about to get more active, thanks to David Weinreich, a masters candidate for Urban & Regional Planning. He writes:

I received a very enthusiastic response to my first email [to other Urban & Regional Planning students], looking to set up a group to advocate for students' interests in preserving our transit through OCTA's next wave of service cuts.

It is too late to do anything about the 150,000 service hours being cut on March 14, but we'll be organized to for the next round.  Many students (myself included) have no other way to get around.  As transit planners, I think it is crucial that we advocate for transit dependents--perhaps even find some solutions-- in the face of a very ugly situation.

We'll hold our first meeting this coming Monday to organize:
SE 306 Monday at 4:00pm

Here's a map of the campus. SE, I think, stands for the Social Ecology building, which is marked as "210" on this map. You can take OCTA lines 59, 79, 175, and 178 to get there. read more→

I know it's been awhile since I've posted a bicycling piece, so imagine my glee when I learned that UC Irvine is taking more steps towards transportation sustainability by launching a computerized bicycle sharing program, allowing students to "check out" bicycles for 3-hour periods, with a $40.00 annual pass. From the CityRyde blog:

The New York Times reports that the San Diego-based Collegiate Bicycle Company will launch ZotWheels, a fully automated self-service bike share program, this fall at the University of California Irvine.

UC Irvine approached Central Specialties Limited, a manufacturer of stroller venders, in May of 2008 about the possibility of modifying its vending components to meet the University’s desired bike share system specifications. The result: an intelligent third generation design that has already won an award for Innovation and Collaboration from the McHenry County (of Illinois) Economic Development Corporation’s Business Accelerator Program.

Four centrally located stations equipped with solar powered kiosks will be placed in heavily trafficked areas of the Irvine campus. Students, faculty, and staff will be able to apply online for membership, after which time they will receive a bike lock and membership card that grants them electronic access to the program’s bicycles. The bikes themselves will be cruiser style and painted to reflect the school’s colors.

UC Irvine students can sign up at Parking and Transportation's ZotWheels website and even view a real-time map of bicycle availability throughout the campus. The four stations are located at the Student Center, Langson Library, Physical Sciences, and the Science Library. Map shown after the break:  read more→

Bravo! looks to be still on track for launch next year. The biggest changes to OCTA's new limited stop bus service, thus far, is (1) the addition of UC Irvine to the network, and (2) the removal of Downtown Long Beach as a destination. Although thus far they've hired an outside consultant for traffic signal priority, all signs from OCTA so far still indicate that the project is neutered.

OCTA CEO Will Kempton's memo claims that there's no space for dedicated transit lanes; I beg to differ, as I routinely walk across 11-lane intersections on Bristol St and The City Drive. 11 lanes on a local road?! Surely, there's space. Here's Chapman Ave/The City Dr, for example:

The memo also claims that mixed-flow lanes are the way to go — even though OCTA buses along line 57 get stuck in traffic during rush hour. I've witnessed many bus bunchings. And a recent report on OCTA fareboxes indicates that it's too expensive for them to provide ticket machines at Bravo "stations" — even though they can considerably speed up buses by cutting down on boarding times.

The memo, addressed to Curt Pringle, Anaheim mayor and an OCTA Director, tries to get him to understand why the Bravo project is so important. I guess Pringle still hasn't quite figured out this project. Pringle earlier this year insisted on slashing Bravo! stops — to create an "express" bus between his beloved Anaheim and the beach — but the memo says that isn't a wise idea and actually decreases ridership.

The memo's an interesting read. Here it is, for your reading pleasure (and salivation!): read more→

I wrote this editorial for UC Irvine's New University newspaper. You can also read the edited version, which was published today. Although I will say the edited version contains an erroneous name for the OCTA, I'm thankful that their editors allowed my piece to be published.

Watch out, UC Irvine students. Traffic's about to get a lot worse.

OCTA will cut transit service by up to 25% this year. Students now pay $95 more for a UC Irvine U-pass. In fact, earlier this year, OCTA staff proposed to slash all routes to and from UC Irvine, which would have left students with no choice but to purchase a $10,000 car and a $500 parking pass, and add congestion on 2-lane-wide Peltason Drive. OCTA has also proposed to:

• Cut all 24-hour service, stranding blue-collar workers.
• Severe reductions in frequencies, resulting in longer waits for passengers.
• Cut back express and Metrolink-connecting StationLink shuttle routes.

Part of this is attributable to the economic downturn and our state government's illegal $1 billion raid on transit funds. I understand that OCTA staff say they're doing the best they can with the scant resources they've got for transit operations. read more→

UC Irvine's free U-pass program has ended as I feared, but thankfully, they're still enabling students to get a pretty good discount for riding OCTA. The U-pass, which lets UC Irvine students ride almost any OCTA bus for free, now costs $95 a year and the cards expire on June 30, 2010.

Unfortunately, students have to get their passes at the Parking and Transportation office, instead of UCItems. And oddly enough, UC Irvine now issues individual bus pass cards instead of encoding the bus pass on photo-personalized student ID cards, creating a huge opportunity for cards like this to be sold on Craigslist or the Anteaterforums. (At UC Berkeley, there was a black market for the AC Transit Class Pass stickers for unlimited bus rides.)

No word yet on what Cal State University at Fullerton's U-pass situation will be this year. read more→

UC Irvine may end their successful U-pass program, which allows UC Irvine students to ride OCTA buses for free. I tried to get my pass renewed at UCItems today, where they normally renew OCTA passes. Their manager said the buzz on the street is that the U-pass program normally costs $60,000, but this coming year may cost UC Irvine about $300,000 "due to abuse" by non-students. UC Irvine's Parking and Transportation website says to "stay tuned," so there's no official word quite yet.

I got a similar vibe that something to the U-pass program would happen. I attended a customer roundtable earlier this year, with OCTA staff saying that since the U-pass is used so much that students may have to bear more costs.

If the U-pass program does end, all UC Irvine student passes would expire at the end of this month, June 2009. Cal State Fullerton passes would expire on August this year.

The U-pass program began in 2003 at Cal State Fullerton and in 2004 at UC Irvine. read more→

The Transit Advocates held a rally in Santa Ana this past Thursday night.

Students from Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach, Santa Ana College, and UC Irvine helped conduct a peaceful rally that attracted more than 40 people, which is a pretty decent outcome for Orange County. The crowd included a lawyer, UC Irvine's CALPIRG transit committee president, social advocates, members from the Latino community, the disabilities community, Serena Maria Daniels and staff from the Orange County Register, a reporter for UC Irvine's New University newspaper, and Joel Zlotnik, in charge of media relations at OCTA.

The rally was both emotional and informative: members of the Transit Advocates (such as Roy Shahbazian below) outlined details of the service cuts (many of which this blog has covered — so I won't rehash the details).

If you missed the rally, the main point was handed out in this flyer I designed below. I've also uploaded more photos of the Orange County Bus Cuts Rally here. Here's the text of the flyer:

ATTEND OCTA’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING.

Monday, June 8, 2009 – 9:00 am
OCTA Headquarters, 1st Floor, Rm. 154, 600 S. Main St., Orange, CA
This is where the directors decide what to do with your bus service. Attend this meeting to tell them and Orange County that we demand better transit service.

CALL YOUR LEGISLATOR.

The only way to stop the cuts: restore transit funding! Most legislators voted to eliminate funds to keep your bus running — and they don’t know the severe impact they had on transit. Tell them how the cuts affect you and demand they restore funding.

Speaking points to legislators:
• Budget cuts impact bus riders. Bus service is being reduced by almost 40%!
• Bus service is a lifeline transportation for people with no alternatives — riders will lose their jobs and healthcare.
• We have bus capital funding, but we need bus operations funding.
• Ask them to explore ways to restore operations funding, or ask feds to make capital funding flexible on a temporary emergency basis.

Not sure who your state legislators are?
• Call (714) 567-7600, the OC Registrar of Voters
• Visit www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html read more→

The financial "doomsday scenario" now has a deadline: June 2010.

OCTA just posted a dedicated section of their site outlining their cuts and explaining the budget situation. They have a list of 59 routes that they say they may curtail service on or are considering for outright elimination. Let me break it down for you. I modified their system map with these cuts (click on the image to the left; 400 kb PNG file). A summary of potential cuts:

• 59 bus routes may be cut, along with...
• All 24-hour service
• All "community bus" service
• Nearly all community shuttles
• Nearly all intra- and inter-county express buses

Santa Ana, for example, will find a lot of their bus service cut, leaving behind a skeleton of local service for the transit-dependent.

It's now impossible to get to the airport:

But I think, worst of all, it's now impossible to get to and from UC Irvine. OCTA may eliminate lines 59, 79, 175, 178 (along with 213 and 473), stranding students, faculty, employees, and, well, making the UC Irvine U-pass useless.

Of course, that's my interpretation of what OCTA posted. I've pasted the summary from OCTA's page. Got any thoughts? Make sure you send your comments to them! read more→