LONG BEACH : Bus Usage on Route to Downtown Monitored

Transportation officials are monitoring a bus route that runs from East Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles to determine whether the route should be eliminated because of declining ridership.

Service on Line 457 was recently cut from 10 to six trips a day because the number of passengers on the route has fallen from 400 riders a day in 1990, when the Blue Line began service, to below 100. The route runs along the Long Beach Freeway. The fare is $3.35 one way.

“We’ve been actually trying to cancel this line for a number of years because of the Blue Line,” said Jon Hillmer, manager of operations for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He added that Line 457 costs the MTA more money to operate than any other route because so few passengers patronize it.

MTA officials had proposed eliminating the route and two other express routes into Los Angeles from San Pedro and the South Bay, but instead decided to reduce the number of daily trips and monitor how many ride the buses until the end of the year.

If the number of daily passengers on all three routes does not increase from about 300 people now to about 450 by the end of the year, the lines may yet be eliminated, Hillmer said.