Transit Needs: Unmet

Ventura County’s greatest “unmet transit need” is for a fresh, positive attitude toward public transportation. What we have now is a system designed to say no.

This was clearly demonstrated at last week’s public hearing on how to use money allotted to the county and its cities under the state Transportation Development Act. Each year the Ventura County Transportation Commission collects comments about the quality of transit service in the county. About $19 million is available in the upcoming fiscal year. VCTC has the authority to require the county and its cities to spend their shares to address transit needs that can be reasonably met within their jurisdictions. If it decides that all such needs are being met, the remaining funds may be spent on roads.

The problem is that the definitions of “unmet transit needs” and “reasonable to meet” adopted by VCTC are so narrow that they create bureaucratic gridlock.

One example: To be considered reasonable to be met, any “proposed service [must] respond to an existing rather than a future need.” Consequently, improving service to the point that more people would find it an attractive alternative to cars is not considered reasonable.

Similar cul-de-sacs of logic appear everywhere in this process. Why don’t more commuters use buses? Lance Christensen of Thousand Oaks said he would love to but the bus schedules would allow him just seven hours at work before he had to head back home. Is this sort of useless scheduling an unmet need?

Retiree Ann Gaines and some friends used a dial-a-ride service to go to a Saturday movie in Camarillo. When the show was over, there was no sign of their promised ride home. They were forced to flag down strangers and essentially hitchhike home. Is that an unmet need?

At the annual Economic Forecast Seminar on Thursday, a UC Santa Barbara official listed many positive indicators for Ventura County’s bright future. The biggest negative: “Traffic getting worse.” Is this an unmet need for better public transit systems--and fast? We say yes.

Without question, improving roads and freeways is important. But there is no way to build roads faster than cars can fill them. Ask the city of Houston. Its massive road-building campaign has barely kept pace with its increasing congestion--and last year it leapfrogged Los Angeles to become the smoggiest city in America.

The only answer is to approach traffic and transit from a wider, more positive perspective. Nobody wants to outlaw cars; the key is to provide convenient alternatives so more people will save their cars for special occasions rather than every daily trip to work, school or store.

Some of the reasons more people aren’t using Ventura County’s transit systems were eloquently voiced at the hearing:

* Transferring from one local system to another often entails a long wait. Numerous speakers urged scrapping the crazy-quilt approach in favor of one integrated regional system.

* There’s too little promotion of available services. The South Coast Area Transit system took a survey of its riders; one speaker said, “I’d suggest a survey of non-riders.”

* Bus stops need rain shelters.

* Buses must run at night and on weekends.

* Using public transit is a learned skill. Every Ventura County school ought to teach kids how to read bus and train schedules, figure out a route, pay their fare and signal for a stop.

There have been some significant improvements in recent months. SCAT has added evening hours and reconfigured its routes. Simi Valley Transit has also reworked routes to riders’ benefit. Thousand Oaks Transit now connects more efficiently to the SCAT system in the West County. We applaud these steps and the effort that went into them. Like the highways, an efficient mass transit system isn’t built overnight.

We believe the greatest transportation challenge facing Ventura County today is finding a way out of this chicken-and-egg dilemma:

If we can only spend the TDA money to serve the people who already ride buses and trains, we will never be able to improve the system very much. And if we don’t improve the frequency, convenience and reliability of the system, there will never be enough riders to justify spending the money.

VCTC adopted the definitions of “unmet transit needs” and “reasonable to meet” and it has the authority to change them. It’s time to stop saying no and start saying yes. The alternative is more and more pavement--and that is one thing Ventura County definitely does not want.