Bus Line Has Everything Except Riders

Transportation planners have fashioned what they say is a Cadillac of a commuter bus line, linking the east San Gabriel Valley to the central San Fernando Valley, but so far they are having difficulty luring motorists out of their cars to use it.

“If only this were like a vaccine we could give, where you touch somebody once, and they’d say: ‘That’s a good idea!’ then it would be great,” Los Angeles transportation planner Philip M. Aker told a few community and business leaders who rode the bus last week, hoping to drum up interest.

The group, lumbering along the Ventura Freeway from Pasadena to Encino and back again during Thursday morning’s rush hour, got a firsthand look at the Commuter Express line, which was inaugurated in October but is averaging only 70 to 80 riders daily. The goal by year’s end is close to 1,600 riders daily.

“We know we have to market this line to make an impact on people changing their mode of transportation,” said Kathryn Nack, a Pasadena city councilwoman who is president of the Tri-City Transportation Coalition. The organization is made up of representatives from business and municipal governments in Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank.

“This has the potential to do just what we want,” she said, “moving people en masse.”

The new link consists of two routes--one from Claremont to Pasadena, operated by Foothill Transit, and the other from Pasadena to Encino, operated by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

Fares are reasonable, Aker said. A one-way ride from Pasadena to Glendale or from Glendale to Burbank is $1.50, and a monthly pass is $54. The fare from Encino to Pasadena is $2.70 a day and $90 a month.

“We have to stop thinking that downtown Los Angeles is the only place people commute to,” said Joyce Baner, who was on the tour. Baner is a spokeswoman for West Covina-based Foothill Transit.

The bus service was created as an experiment by San Gabriel Valley cities that are unhappy with Southern California Rapid Transit District service.

In May, on the assumption that Pasadena companies attract many workers who live east of the city, Foothill started a Pasadena-Claremont commuter express line. It stops in La Verne, Glendora, San Dimas, Azusa, Monrovia and at 10 places in Pasadena, including a connection with the Pasadena-Encino line.

“We’d like to work toward people being able to commute by bus from Encino as far as Claremont,” Baner said.

But like the Commuter Express, the Foothill line has been slow to attract riders. Recent counts indicate that there are 75 to 87 riders daily. The Commuter Express line covers 24 miles, with stops in Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and Encino.

Baner said she hopes that will change when fares are reduced 15% to 20% beginning March 2. Then the $80 monthly pass for Claremont-to-Pasadena rides will be cut to $68, or $1.90 one way.

By fall, she said, she hopes that the high-occupancy lanes will be completed on the Foothill Freeway, cutting the trip by 15 to 20 minutes. In rush hour, the commute is an hour and 15 minutes.

As the officials on the bus last Thursday brainstormed about how to market the bus line, one of the four paying customers talked about how, in less than a month, she has become a believer in the commuter bus.

“It’s a real money-saver,” said 49-year-old Jeri West, who commutes four days a week from her home in Pasadena to work in Burbank at St. Joseph Medical Center. She takes a seven-minute RTD bus ride to reach the commuter bus and travels another 25 to 30 minutes to Burbank. It costs her $2.15 for a one-way ticket. Her husband, who commutes to Carson, picks her up in the afternoons.

Previously, she had to take an RTD bus from Pasadena to Chinatown and then transfer to a Burbank bus. The trip cost more and took twice as long.

She didn’t even know about the new Pasadena-Encino line, she said, until last December, when she saw a Commuter Express bus on the freeway and saw the phone number, (800) 2LA-RIDE.

Aker said about 40,000 people work at companies not far from the bus stops on the Pasadena-Encino line, and about 10% of them live close enough to the bus route to make it practical and easy.

“If a year from now we have 70 riders a day, I can’t tell you we will run it indefinitely,” he said.

It took 18 months to two years, he said, to get substantial ridership on the commuter line from Encino to downtown Los Angeles.