OCTA Funded for 160 Less-Polluting Buses

More than 160 new less-polluting buses will begin rolling along Orange County streets next year as part of a $526-million transportation budget approved Monday.

The budget includes the single-largest purchase of buses in Orange County Transportation Authority history, plus 34 new drivers and an expansion of service.

Laurann Cook, chairwoman of the agency’s board of directors, said the changes were warranted by increased bus ridership, and that the changes would coincide with a planned overhaul of the agency’s bus routes this fall. “The bottom line is we’re enhancing bus service,” Cook said.

The new budget, which takes effect July 1, also provides for the long-awaited completion of the Santa Ana Freeway widening project. The part of the freeway running through Orange, Anaheim, Fullerton and Buena Park is being widened from six to 10 lanes. The overall freeway improvement project started in 1995 and will end up costing $1.1 billion.

The OCTA budget for 2000-01 is $99 million less than the one for this fiscal year, which included revenue from the county’s bankruptcy settlement, officials said.

Some wondered how the agency could reduce its budget and claim to increase services.

“This budget process is quite mysterious,” said Mike Patton, business agent for Teamsters Local 952, which represents the agency’s drivers and mechanics. “This is a problem we’d like to look into.”

Jim Kenan, the agency’s finance director, said roughly $99 million in settlement funds from the old budget were placed in reserve accounts for future capital projects that won’t begin for a number of years, so this year’s budget and last year’s are essentially the same. But increased bus service was a priority for 2000-01, he said.

News of the additional buses, which will run on cleaner-burning liquid natural gas instead of diesel fuel, was greeted warmly by advocates of mass transportation.

“The more they spend on public transportation, the happier we are,” said Jay Laessi, executive director of Auto-Free Orange County. Laessi’s group is a volunteer organization that encourages people to drive less and use public transit whenever possible.

Laessi said he hoped the additional hours of bus service would be in the evenings.

“The No. 1 complaint from people who either ride the bus or would like to ride the bus and don’t is that the bus doesn’t run late enough,” 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 each of the last two years, and a national study has called it the fastest-growing network in the nation. OCTA officials said they hope the restructuring of bus lines would increase ridership 49% by 2010.