ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Bus Route (Line 85) Keeps on Truckin’

The Orange County Transportation Authority this week thought better of plans to eliminate a popular bus line, from Santa Ana to Capistrano Beach. The strong response of riders prompted the reversal. It came both from people who depend on public transportation to get to jobs in South County and from South County residents who commute north. So OCTA deserves recognition for listening to what its constituency had to say.

Unfortunately, however, the budgetary problems that threatened Line 85 have not been resolved. That route turned out to be only one of several slated for changes as a result of OCTA’s projected budget gap of $10 million. It also was targeted because of a slight drop in systemwide ridership said to be a result of job losses around the county.

The popularity of Line 85 was made dramatically apparent earlier this year when the California Highway Patrol went on a troubling campaign to ticket bus drivers who overloaded vehicles. Obviously it wouldn’t make sense now to get rid of a route for which there is so much demand.

An alternative proposed by board member and San Juan Capistrano Councilman Gary L. Hausdorfer to retain Line 85 and to reduce from $2 to $1 the fare on Line 205--an express bus taking a parallel route--turned out to be a sensible way to keep the buses running. Still, in the effort to trim back OCTA’s spending, more than 35,000 service hours had to be cut throughout the system.

One annoying and illustrative choice was the elimination of a bus line across Costa Mesa, even though that city actually is widening streets and putting in bus turnouts along the route.

Such incongruities in policy at various levels of Orange County government reveal just how much stress the public transportation system is enduring as a result of a shaky economy.

Moreover, the budget crunch could not have hit at a worse time psychologically. It arrived as communities such as Costa Mesa have altered their thinking and are now doing what they can to make public transportation easier and more attractive as an alternative to the automobile.

Unfortunately, the inconvenience of finding alternate routes, which was the concern raised successfully by the riders of Line 85, won’t go away.

It’s good that Line 85 was spared, but the pressure remains on OCTA to do more with less. And sadly, on other routes, the burden will fall on the working poor and on people who must get around a sprawling county without a car.