Bus Route Cuts Send Riders Scrambling

For the last three years, Wendy Morales has relied on city buses to take her from the Ventura Marina Mobile Home Park to places in the city she couldn’t reach on her own.

Twice a week, the disabled Ventura resident made a midmorning run to a Vons grocery store, before her medical appointments in the early afternoon.

But on Monday, daily bus trips on the line Morales rides were cut in half, forcing her and other riders to rearrange their schedules and priorities to catch a lift.

The City Council in May voted to slash to six the number of trips on Route 12, which once offered hourly runs between Ventura Harbor and the Buenaventura Mall. Now, two trips are offered before 8 a.m. and four between 3 and 6 p.m.

The cuts, which are expected to save the city about $55,000 annually, have most adversely affected disabled riders and senior citizens--some of whom do their bus travel in the midmorning and early afternoon, officials said.

“It’s been hard,” Morales said. “Sometimes I have to do just one or the other. You can’t come and go when you want.”

She isn’t the only one who has felt the crunch. Senior citizens in the same mobile home park as Morales, as well as students attending Ventura College, have also been forced to make changes in their schedules.

“Some employees [who work at businesses along the route] are having a hard time getting to work or they are getting there very early,” she said.

Morales said she also enjoyed going to the harbor at midday--which she can no longer do with the new, tighter bus schedule.

Councilman Jim Monahan, who voted against the change, said Friday that dozens of seniors and disabled riders have voiced complaints about the cut since it was first proposed almost two years ago.

“It’s a low percentage, but still there are people for whom this is their sole method of transportation,” Monahan said. “What we are creating is an unmet transit need.”

Peter Drake, the general manager for South Coast Area Transit, said dozens of residents had expressed concerns to the transit system’s board of directors. But, he noted, the decision was better than the alternative.

“This was the best compromise,” Drake said Friday. “The council was ready to cut the whole line.”

Route 12, which has an average of 140 riders a day, was generating only about 9% of its $105,000 annual operating cost, Drake said. A viable route can generate about 30%, he said.

“There are others that are low, but none that low,” Drake said of the transit system’s eight routes running in Ventura, Oxnard, Ojai and Port Hueneme.

“They [City Council members] believed the productivity was below what is viable,” he added.

Less than 10% of the line’s riders used the midday trips regularly, Councilman Brian Brennan said.

“It does mean bending and flexing a little bit,” Brennan said. “On my travel schedule, I have to work around the airline schedule, not what my personal schedule is. But I’m not saying take-it-or-leave it to these folks.”

With 48-hours advance notice, disabled riders can use the para-transit system, a fleet of small buses for physically and developmentally disabled people. The bus has doorstep pickup and drop-off service.

Para-transit is $4 round-trip compared with $1 on the regular bus, Drake said. The city also offers a trolley that runs to the harbor for unlimited travel at $1 a day. However, the trolley does not have disabled access.