County Leads U.S. in Bus Rider Growth

Despite being in the land where automobiles rule, Orange County has the fastest-growing population of bus riders in the country, according to statistics released this week by the American Public Transit Assn. in Washington.

“It confirms that our growth is really impressive,” said John Standiford, a spokesman for the Orange County Transit Authority, which operates the county’s bus system. “There are more and more people living in this county who rely on the bus as their primary form of transportation.”

During the first nine months of 1997, the number of bus riders in Orange County increased from about 34.3 million to about 37.6 million, or 9.66%. The second fastest-growing area, according to the report, was Houston, where 8.57% more people took the bus.

“We’ve been doing real well,” said David Armijo, director of operations for the OCTA.

Armijo attributed the growth to several steps the transportation agency has taken over the past three years. Since 1995, he said, OCTA has reorganized its routes, creating some new ones and adding new buses and drivers. In addition, he said, the authority has mounted an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at getting more people to take the bus.

“It’s a combination of more efficient routes, target marketing and some expansion of service,” he said.

Transportation and planning experts, however, point to several other factors as well. Economic and demographic changes in the county, they say, set the stage for the apparent bus riding boom.

“There’s a booming economy,” said Scott Bollens, chairman of the urban and regional planning department at UC Irvine. “There are a lot of entry-level positions that lower income people are tapping into, and they are the primary users of buses.”

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According to Chapman University’s most recent economic forecast, about 35,000 new jobs were created in Orange County last year, with the same number expected to be created this year. Most of the county’s job growth over the last four years has come from the service sector, the forecasters said, and that pattern is expected to continue.

Marlon Boarnet, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at UCI and a faculty research associate at the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies, believes the economic changes have fueled important demographic ones. The recent growth in bus ridership, he said, “is a sign that Orange County is continuing to develop into an urban area as opposed to the bedroom suburb-type of community that we were two or three decades ago.”

“We’re continuing to get more dense and the population of the county is a lot more diverse,” he said. “It includes segments with lower incomes who are probably more disposed to use public transit. In short, the county is becoming the type of urbanized area where there could be an increasing demand for transit . . . and a bus system able to meet that demand.”

All of which pleases and excites the OCTA.

“It’s scary at times,” Armijo said. “It’s exciting to be No. 1, but you wonder, what are you going to do next quarter.”

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Ridership Rise

Orange County’s bus ridership was the fastest growing in the U.S. during the first nine months of 1997 compared to the same period in 1996. Areas with fastest growth nationwide and others in California, percentages rounded:

Fastest growth nationwide

Orange County: 9.7%

Houston, Texas: 8.6

San Jose: 6.5

St. Louis, Mo.: 4.9

New York City: 4.1

Others in California

San Francisco: 1.6

Los Angeles: 1.5

San Diego: -1.3

Nationwide: 1.6

Source: American Public Transit Association; Researched by DAVID HALDANE / Los Angeles Times