uc irvine

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? read more→

OCTA CEO Will Kempton will meet with the Transit Advocates of UC Irvine — and, tentatively, UC Irvine's Parking & Transportation folks — to discuss a possible routing of line 57 with UC Irvine to connect with South Coast Plaza and UC Irvine Medical Center, weekend service on line 59, late buses, and how OCTA can coordinate with the Anteater Shuttle and the Irvine Shuttle.

Thanks to Chad Eun Kim for permission to post! read more→

• Where: UC Irvine Student Center's Emerald Bay, rooms D & E.
• When: Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 3:30pm-4:30pm

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→