Riding Bus May Be an Option but Not When Car’s Available

Brian Johnson makes the round trip from North City West to downtown San Diego and home again every weekday via bus, a commute he never dreamed he’d take.

He purchased a town house in the live-work-shop self-contained community because he had a job with a high-tech firm with offices right near his new home, close enough to walk to work, or jog, or ride a bike.

That entry-level job disappeared in a recent economic downturn, leaving Johnson with stiff house payments and no income.

Now, he’s selling shoes in Horton Plaza, a position that does not bring in enough money to allow him to lease an $80 monthly parking space downtown for his 3-year-old Honda, make his monthly mortgage payments and feed his family.

But if Johnson’s paycheck fattens or if he finds a downtown parking slot for about half that price, he’ll be back in the fast lane on Interstate 5.

Paul Kavanaugh, a government analyst, travels the same freeway route to work that Johnson does, but he covers it alone in his car, one of the majority of commuters who put their minds on automatic pilot twice a day when they switch on the car’s ignition.

Despite the cost of downtown parking, Kavanaugh has never given a serious thought to riding the bus from his Encinitas home to San Diego’s center city.

Not until this year, with the advent of North City West and other new bedroom communities, has rush-hour traffic on Interstate 5 come so close to capacity, producing stop-and-go bottlenecks in his previously smooth commute and prompted Kavanaugh to consider changing his travel pattern.

But he won’t take the bus. He’ll simply start his solo car commute a little earlier or later, to avoid the morning-evening freeway crunch.

Harold Montag, in his 80s and retired from his 9-to-5 job as a manufacturing company executive, still makes the weekday commute from his Del Cerro home to his son’s law offices downtown.

He was forced to give up driving when his eyes failed him a few years ago, so he takes the bus. Unlike most mass transit riders, who make up about 4% of the region’s commuters, Montag makes good use of his bus ride. He picks the brains of his fellow riders to gain fodder for an economic treatise he is writing. He finds the time aboard the bus scarcely suffices before his subjects disembark at San Diego State University and other points.

The young, the old, the lower income groups make up the bulk of San Diego County’s bus riders, transit officials agree, and no amount of clever advertising--”Take Twice a Day to Relieve Congestion”--seems to change that fact.

A 1985 survey showed that 83.3% of the bus riders didn’t have a car available. They are captive transit riders and most of them hope to escape.

Meanwhile, perplexed transit officials and San Diego Assn. of Governments traffic planners try to solve the riddle of what would entice more San Diego County residents take the bus.

The experts in the field, the bus drivers themselves, think they know some very good reasons for the reluctance of the middle-class San Diegan to board a bus.

“It’s boring. It’s hot in summer. It’s smelly all year round,” said one veteran driver of his San Diego Transit vehicle. “No matter how we try, we can’t provide the convenience of a personal car.”

He asked not to be identified because, “This is too good a job to lose.” He added that he and many other bus drivers--”85% to 90%, I’d guess”--drive their own cars to work at the bus yards even though they could ride free on the transit system buses or trolleys.

Velma King, a 13-year bus driver for San Diego Transit, works “extra board” as a substitute driver because she likes the variety, doesn’t like to get stuck on one route, especially one which means a daily battle with downtown traffic.

Believe it or not, she said, bus drivers do not take great pleasure in bullying compact car drivers in the crowded Broadway traffic lanes. Bus drivers are simply trying to maintain some sort of a semblance of the schedule that the bus company prints up for patrons.

Richard Millan, another 13-year veteran, prefers to drive in the early-morning hours when his riders “are either asleep or at least a little more pleasant” than they are after a day at their jobs.

Vern Thario, who’s been driving San Diego Transit buses for 12 years, has a mellow attitude toward his passengers.

“Remember, we may be the first person some of our riders meet in the morning. Our attitude may set their moods for the rest of the day,” he points out. “And, when you get a bad one, one that gives you trouble, you just remember that he’s going to be with you for 20 minutes at most, so you shouldn’t let him spoil the rest of your day.” The worst possible workday for a bus driver, all three agree, is a split shift that puts you downtown during morning, noon and evening traffic crunches.

Why doesn’t everyone ride the bus? The drivers cite a number of reasons:

- The main gripe of riders is the lack of evening and weekend service. Express buses, for instance, usually leave for the homebound commute between 4:45 and 5:15 p.m. For commuters who work later, the alternative local buses can take up to 2 hours to cover the route an express bus travels in about 40 minutes. Morning commute service is reasonable, drivers say, but it’s tough to get back home.

Transit company officials counter that night and weekend routes carry lower passenger loads. When Proposition 13 cut into local transit funding, night and weekend bus service was the victim, they say.

- Riders also complain that the bus doesn’t go where they want to ride. Often a short hop from point A to point B takes an hour or more because riders must go to a central transfer point, then backtrack to their destination. Everything is oriented toward downtown areas, riders point out. Cross-town travel and intercity service is inconvenient and sometimes impossible.

Again, transit officials respond, only routes that carry the highest number of riders can be supported. New routes, longer operating hours, increased weekend service all wait additional transit subsidies from the state or federal government or new funds from local sources.

- Lack of comfortable accommodations. Buses lack the comforts of a car. Air conditioning, drivers joke, “is something that goes wrong in the spring and gets fixed in the fall.” Softer seats and smoother road surfaces would go far to increase bus ridership, drivers contend.

Management responds: Give us more money and we’ll give you better buses.

If the guys who do the driving were in the driver’s seat, they would reinstate substantial nighttime bus service, issue more realistic transit schedules (“that give us time to fight the downtown traffic and to wait for the elderly to board the bus on routes that service Pill Hill and Ben Gay Lane”) and they would tailor weekend bus service for tourists, serving Sea World and the San Diego Zoo with direct routes from the train station, tourist hotels and intercity bus stations.

Express commuter buses, operating on freeway routes from Oceanside, Escondido and Poway to downtown San Diego and back live up to the title of “rapid transit.” The buses, operated by the County Transit System, cross jurisdictional lines between the North County Transit and San Diego Transit without slowing down and can make the trips down Interstates 5 and 15 from their North County terminals as fast or faster than many auto commuters.

For $50 a month, CTS offers a speedy, direct ride to work and home again if commuters can fit their work schedules into a rigid early morning and late afternoon commute schedule. And the buses are packed with 35 to 50 riders who otherwise would be adding 35 to 50 more cars to the freeway commuting congestion each weekday.

To North County Transit’s Gillespie, the object lesson is clear, the CTS and the San Diego Trolley prove a point that transit officials have not emphasized enough. Mass transit, he said, must be competitive with the automobile in both cost and time.

Gillespie admits that he never rides the bus, even though, as an NCTD employee, he could do so for free.

“Time is my most precious commodity,” Gillespie said. “And I don’t want to waste it riding a bus.”