Rail Commuters to Have Easier Time Catching Feeder Bus

Jim Hazlett steps off the 7:49 a.m. Amtrak train, which is 10 minutes late, and with four other rail passengers clambers aboard the Route 382 mini-bus for the final leg of his daily trek to Resna Industries, just down the road a bit.

“This is very convenient. . . . The bus lets me off right across the street from my office,” says Hazlett, an environmental geologist and one of a growing number of rail commuters in Orange County. “Without this, I’d have to leave a car here at the station every night. . . . This is more fuel efficient and I don’t have to worry about vandalism.”

Hazlett is among five Amtrak commuters who on this recent Thursday morning are taking the 16-passenger transit van, which winds its way from the Irvine Transportation Center to UC Irvine, through the Irvine Business Center, and on to Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza.

Route 382 is one of eight bus routes created by the Orange County Transportation Authority in the past two years to help rail commuters who have too far to walk after getting off the train.

Without such feeder buses, transportation experts say, rail service won’t be convenient enough to lure drivers out of their cars--an elusive goal for officials trying to tame smog and traffic problems.

Next month, two more feeder routes will shuttle commuters to and from the Fullerton train station to make rail service more accessible to thousands of workers at Hughes Aircraft, Hunt-Wesson, Kaynar Microdot, Kimberly-Clark and other firms nearby. With train service expected to increase dramatically over the next five years, more feeder lines will be established.

But for now, there’s a “limited audience” for such service, says Tom Flecky, personnel manager of Kaynar Microdot, a manufacturer of aerospace fasteners that employs 600 people. “Workers don’t all live along bus routes, and they’re reluctant to walk to a bus stop. And they like the independence a car gives them. But this could work if it is marketed properly.”

Flecky said the effort to increase ridership would mean heavy newspaper advertising as well as an in-house promotion at Microdot.

Mike Chaffey, the commuter services administrator for Hughes Aircraft Co., is more upbeat, in part because the new bus routes will allow his firm to discontinue ferrying workers to and from the Amtrak station in company vans.

“I think we probably have 20 to 30 employees who will take advantage of it,” Chaffey said. “This is exactly what’s needed. . . . You have to tie transportation systems together. It makes people very angry when they travel 90 miles on a train and then have no way to go the final two miles.”

Although the cost of the new rail feeder service caused OCTA to postpone new bus service on Imperial Highway and Yorba Linda Boulevard for several months, OCTA officials say that no existing routes have been cut in order to serve rail passengers--46.4% of whom have household incomes between $80,000 and $100,000.

Regular bus service recently was reduced by 35,000 hours, said John Catoe, OCTA’s operations manager, but he added that the reduction was due to a sluggish economy that depressed both ridership and sales tax collections needed to pay for bus operations.

Nevertheless, Chris E. Ema of Santa Ana, an engineer, rose from the audience at last week’s OCTA board meeting to accuse the agency of catering to rail commuters when improved bus service could be a less costly substitute for rail altogether.

OCTA board members told the agency’s staff to prepare a written response to Ema, which is still forthcoming. Generally, however, board members argue that Orange County voters have mandated the agency’s support for rail commuters by approving Measure M in 1990. Measure M is a half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements, including rail projects.

Also, OCTA’s marketing department argues that current and future rail-oriented bus service will help make public transit more lucrative to motorists, thus helping to reduce solo driving and smog.

As for recent, financially driven cuts in regular bus service hours, OCTA Chief Executive Officer Stan Oftelie protests: “We’ve only cut non-productive routes.” OCTA board member Dana W. Reed, who last year persuaded the agency to spend more money on rail feeder buses, insists: “We’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

OCTA now plans to have buses serve several new rail stations when they’re built, although “some will be served more than others” based on passenger volumes, says Mike Greenwood, an OCTA service planner.

Most of the feeder routes are meeting ridership goals, Greenwood says.

For example, the Route 382 bus, which makes three pickups at the Irvine depot during the morning and three return trips in the late afternoon, has average daily ridership of 88 passengers after 11 months of service.

But average daily ridership varies greatly among the feeder routes, as these figures show:

* Route 308, which connects Laguna Hills to the Irvine train depot by way of El Toro, averages 65 passengers daily. Several underutilized trips on this route are being cut next month.

* Route 309, which links Rancho Santa Margarita to the Irvine train depot, averages 31.

* Route 333, which connects The City and UCI Medical Center in Orange, the Anaheim Civic Center, Fullerton College and several major Brea employers with the Fullerton Amtrak station, averages 62.

* Route 362, which circulates commuters between the Santa Ana Amtrak station and the Santa Ana Civic Center, averages 42.

* Route 363, which serves the Santa Ana depot and major employers along Grand Avenue, including Gish Biomedical and Caltrans, averages only five, and the service is provided by taxicabs under contract to OCTA. The service is expected to switch to mini-buses next month.

* Route 394, which serves the Amtrak stations in San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano by way of Saddleback College, the Mission Viejo Mall, and residential areas in San Clemente, averages 96.

* Route 352, which started on July 6 and connects the Anaheim Amtrak station with Disneyland and the Anaheim Civic Center, is too new to evaluate, OCTA officials say.

Not all feeder route passengers are going to and from the train. For example, OCTA acknowledges that most of the riders on Route 382 are regular bus users, not rail commuters.

The route serves two major thoroughfares--Alton Parkway and Harvard Avenue--which previously lacked bus service. Indeed, all five rail passengers who joined Hazlett one recent morning were all off the bus by the time it reached UC Irvine, less than midway through the route.

“We make adjustments continually and there are trade-offs,” says OCTA’s Greenwood. “It can take two years to get a route to the point where we’re happy with it.”

But rail commuters such as UCI computer systems manager David Walker like Route 382 just fine the way it is.

“I wanted to ride the train for a long time,” says Walker before disembarking at the Irvine Market Place, the shopping center across the street from UCI. “But I was waiting for something like this feeder bus to make it practical.”