OCTD Commuter Hot Line Keeps Former Bus Passengers on the Road

On the first day of the bus drivers’ strike last week, panic-stricken Judy Ernst called the Orange County Transit District’s Commuter Network hot line hoping to arrange a ride to her job at an Irvine-based restaurant company. Within two hours, Ernst was matched with Irene Tafulu, a technician at an Irvine computer firm.

“When the buses went out of service, there was no way for me to get to work,” Ernst said in an interview this week. “They certainly helped me out.”

Ernst, who lives in Garden Grove, has no car but now shares gasoline expenses with Tafulu, a Westminster resident. During her car pool this week, she spent 30 minutes less time traveling between home and work each way than when she took the bus.

Transit passengers have found many ways to cope with the 11-day strike, with most relying on neighbors and co-workers for transportation without help from public agencies.

But OCTD officials said that their Commuter Network operation helped at least two dozen people form new car pools as a result of the strike and that they’re hoping that the experience will persuade more people to try ride sharing and keep car pools intact after the current labor dispute ends.

During the first week of the strike, Commuter Network received 216 calls, according to program supervisor John Reimers. After the first two days of the strike, only 12 people were known to have been successfully placed in car pools, Reimers said, but it normally takes a week to check back with people to see if their needs have been met.

Normally, Commuter Network receives about 15 ride-sharing requests each week. On the first day of the strike, 36 people called. On the second day, the number increased to 71 and then fell off.

“We have about a 30% success rate,” Reimers said. He added that about 17% of Orange County’s commuters car-pool regularly.

Ernst said that she had been thinking about car-pooling before, “but the strike pushed me to do something about it.” She said that she called the Commuter Network hot line, (714) 636-RIDE, and within two hours was given a computer-generated list of possible matches with people who live and work near her.

“I followed up from there,” Ernst said.

Reimers said that during the strike, Commuter Network staffers offer to contact the people on a match-up list if they’re too shy to do it themselves.

He added that his operation relies heavily on help from major employers who try to organize their own car and van pools, but during the strike several were quick to seek extra help from Commuter Network, including J.C. Penney, UC Irvine, the County of Orange and Butterfield Savings.

When someone dials 636-RIDE and requests car-pool information, Reimers said, the call is routed from the Transit District’s administration building on Acacia Parkway in Garden Grove to the Commuter Network staff, which works in leased offices next door.

There, two women sit in a small room taking information from callers. Hourly, batches of the handwritten reports are taken to another room where additional staff members type the information on video display terminals. The terminals are connected by phone lines to a computer in the OCTD administration building, where printouts are generated and then hand-delivered back to Commuter Network next door.

During a visit this week by a Times reporter, Teryl White, 21, used a slow period in Commuter Network’s telephone room to call last week’s clients to see if their needs had been met.

Several people could not be reached. One client said she had contacted several potential ride-sharers but had been unable to arrange a car pool. White gave her some more names and phone numbers.

White said of the client: “She found some people who were already in a car pool and didn’t want another rider. She’s relying on a neighbor right now, but she desperately needs to make other arrangements. I’ll keep checking with her to see if we can’t get her situation resolved.”

White said the most common reason cited by clients for an inability to arrange car pools is “people’s inflexibility.” For example, she said, a woman in Tustin was unable to join a car pool with another person who worked five minutes away in Santa Ana.

“On a map it looks like they’re not very far apart,” White said. “But psychologically it can be a barrier.”

About 65,000 names have been placed in Computer Network’s ride-sharing database.

“It’s a slow process,” Reimers said. “You measure your success in 5% and 10% annual increments. But if you can achieve that much, you have a chance of staying on top of the transportation problem.”