OCTA Will Shift Service to Alleviate Crowding

Orange County transportation leaders, looking to keep pace with one of the nation’s largest bus ridership booms, voted Monday to boost service in the county’s central corridor by shifting buses to more popular routes and reactivating 14 buses from the “mothball” fleet.

The unanimous vote by the Orange County Transportation Authority board to spend an additional $2.15 million annually will create 39,000 hours of new service beginning in September, when more buses will be added to Harbor Boulevard, Bristol Street and other busy routes.

Mechanics also are working on “upgrading” 14 buses that had been taken off the road after logging a dozen years or more of service, said Kurt Brotcke, a principal transportation analyst for OCTA.

“One of the things we’re having to do to make this work is to put mothball buses back on the street,” Brotcke said. “It’s better to have them out on the street than to have nothing.”

The new service will help ease a ridership crush that has forced standing-room only conditions on many main routes and led to hundreds of “pass-bys” every month--when drivers don’t stop for would-be riders at bus stops because there is no room on board.

In May, for instance, there were 349 instances in which drivers reported that overcrowding forced them to skip a bus stop where people were waiting. Riders on the Harbor Boulevard and Bristol Street routes are among those most often left frustrated and waiting as a full bus passes.

“It’s something we can’t continue to do,” OCTA spokesman John Standiford said. “We’re trying to get people to use a service and then we tell them there’s no room.”

Among the most common calls to the OCTA public comment lines last month were complaints about pass-bys, Brotcke said. “It’s very upsetting for people and very inconvenient,” he said.

The county’s bus system handles more than 50 million passengers a year, and the number is climbing. The system saw more than 5% ridership growth in the last year, and a recent national study called the network the fastest growing in the nation.

The approval of stepped-up service was welcome news to Carlton Clairmont, a Santa Ana resident who relies on the bus system to get him to his workplace in Los Angeles.

“I hope this will be better. A lot of times I watch the bus go by,” he said, as he stood Monday at a bus stop near Harbor Boulevard and McFadden Avenue. “And then I’m late to work. What can I do?”

Ridership is expected to surge even more in September when the school year begins, Standiford said.

The service changes also will bump up the number of buses running on weekends along routes 42, 43, 47 and 57, which serve North County cities and the dense central core of the county.

Also, a popular route for beach-goers will be bolstered. Route 29 begins in Brea and winds south through five cities before terminating on Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. A bus will make pickups at most stops on that route every 20 minutes instead of the current 30-minute interval.

Several changes also were approved to help seniors who use the bus as their primary transportation. Route 175 will go directly to the Rancho Senior Center in Irvine and Route 177, which runs from Foothill Ranch to Laguna Hills, will go to three mobile home parks in Lake Forest.

The resources being shifted to problem areas were created by thinning out service on less-popular routes, such as Route 72, which runs from Santa Ana to Sunset Beach, and Route 38, from Anaheim Hills to Cerritos.

Buses also were pulled from the OCTA backup fleet, vehicles that may be 15 to 18 years old and had been removed from the field, Brotcke said. All the buses will be safety approved, he said. OCTA leaders hope to add new buses to the fleet of more than 400 in upcoming months, but that purchase has yet to go before the board, Brotcke said.

The route changes and additions will begin in September and will be publicized in advance with publications handed out on buses and in the new bus schedule books due out in the fall.

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Crowded Out

In May, there were 349 “pass bys,” or occasions in which bus drivers didn’t pick up passengers waiting at a stop because their vehicle was full.

July 1997: 310

Sept. 1997: 287

Nov. 1997: 273

Jan. 1998: 194

March: 341

May: 349

Source: Orange County Transportation Authority