OCTD Plans No New Bus, Rail Service : Chairman Says $11-Million Loss in Subsidies Expected

Facing a potential loss of $11 million a year in federal operating subsidies, the Orange County Transit District will have to postpone new bus service and rail transit in favor of car pools, van pools and a countywide network of freeway commuter lanes, board Chairman Ralph Clark said Thursday.

Although the district’s foundation will always be based on “a bus stopping at a curb on designated routes at designated times,” the district must cope with leaner years ahead by finding new ways to move people using existing resources, Clark said in his annual State of the District report.

“We’ll be tested to stretch our resources to the limit, and to develop some of those resources in ways not imagined just a few years ago,” Clark said. “The people are telling us to do more with less.”

The Transit District enters the new year with record-high ridership that has gone up 17% in the past three years, while productivity, measured in the number of passengers for every hour a bus is on the road, is up 20% during the same period.

Yet a five-year transit plan proposed Thursday by the district’s staff calls for maintaining bus service at present levels while increasing the district’s role in establishing new car pools and van pools and developing the network of freeway commuter lanes like those in operation on a trial basis on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

The focus will be on “providing a full range of alternatives to the single-occupant automobile,” the transit plan suggests.

Several Factors Cited

A number of factors have combined in recent years to push the district’s focus away from traditional--but expensive--forms of mass transit, General Manager James Reichert said, including the 1984 defeat of a local sales-tax increase for transportation projects and expected cutbacks in federal operating assistance.

The “flying scalpels wielded by the Gramm-Rudman Act” are likely to reduce the district’s annual federal operating subsidies from $11 million to zero over the next four years, Clark said.

Moreover, federal revenue-sharing cuts will mean an end in June to the county’s subsidies of bus service for senior citizens, now at slightly under $1 million, with a substantial corresponding loss in ridership, district officials say.

“Primarily, we’re looking now at the best mobility possible with what we have,” Reichert said.

‘Good, Basic System’

The district’s present bus fleet provides “a good, basic system with very broad coverage,” and the district will focus on filling up the buses it has rather than adding new buses, Reichert said.

However, the district will be looking to private companies to offer express bus service on the freeways and also to take over express routes into Los Angeles now handled by the Southern California Rapid Transit District through contracts with OCTD, Clark said.

Part of the costs for operating express buses could be borne by major employers who benefit from the services, Reichert suggested.

Reflecting the new emphasis on freeway commuter lanes, the district will be beefing up its Commuter Network ride-sharing program by about $500,000 a year beginning in 1987, an expansion to be paid for by the California Department of Transportation that will allow car-pool coordinators to be stationed in field offices in major employment centers, such as the Irvine Business Complex, throughout the county.

Rail System Missing

Noticeably absent from any discussion in the district’s transit-improvement plan is a long-sought $1.3-billion rail system once proposed to link the major activity centers between John Wayne Airport and Anaheim.

The defeat of the sales-tax increase has placed the system “on a back burner” for at least the next 10 years, Reichert said.