Vanpool Eases Commute From Ventura Co. to Warner Center

It’s dawn at The Esplanade mall and the daily commute is well underway.

A couple of passengers climb into a long white van and settle comfortably into cushioned seats. At 6:15 sharp, the vanpool driver, 62-year-old Oxnard resident Ron Walters, pulls out of the lot into a steady stream of traffic on the southbound Ventura Freeway.

Destination: Warner Center in the San Fernando Valley, 45 miles away.

Roughly 8,700 Ventura County residents work at the Woodland Hills office and industrial complex, about a quarter of the center’s total employees. Most of them cross the county line every day alone in their car, clogging up roadways and adding to pollution.

But Walters and the 12 people who ride with him are doing their part to ease the region’s growing traffic congestion, reduce stress and save money, particularly with gas prices nearing $2 per gallon. According to officials at the Warner Center’s transportation department, Walters’ van is the only one--out of 30 vanpools--that transports workers from Ventura County.

A manager in the engineering department at Litton Industries, Walters had taken the same vanpool from Oxnard to work for 12 years. But when the driver retired a year ago, no one would take over the job. So Walters stepped in.

“I figured I have to drive anyway, so I should help others,” he said. “It’s not so bad. We have some good people on it. I allow them to have social hour or sleep or read the newspaper.”

Unlike company-sponsored vanpools, Walters manages the finances and does the legwork himself--securing insurance, washing the van, filling the tank and figuring out who his passengers will be each day. He charges between $100 and $110 per month.

“If I charge anymore, people will say it’s too expensive and will start car-pooling,” he said. “So I keep it within that range.”

Walters said he doesn’t make money at the venture, but keeps a small fund in case gas prices rise.

The van will stop in Camarillo and Thousand Oaks before arriving almost an hour later at its final destination. To avoid traffic, the van leaves early and drops employees at work at 7:15 and leaves in the afternoon at 4:30.

As each person climbed aboard the van on a recent weekday, Walters--wearing a camel-colored sport coat--makes a hash mark next to the person’s name so he doesn’t forget anyone. Seven of Walters’ passengers work at Litton, an electronics and technology company that has 1,500 employees at Warner Center.

Lynn Lewis, 54, from Camarillo, is one of those employees. She has been riding in vanpools from Ventura since 1990 when her car was totaled in an accident on the Conejo Grade.

“That accident did it for me,” she said. “I got paranoid and will not drive to work. With the stress of my job, I don’t need the additional stress of driving.” She said she reads the paper every morning and takes a nap in the afternoon.

The Ventura Freeway is predictably crowded on this morning, but the van moves along at a steady 60 mph pace through Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and across the county line.

Traffic on the Ventura Freeway has grown dramatically in the past decade, especially in the east county, where growing suburbs house working parents who commute to Los Angeles every day.

According to census data from 1990, about one in four county residents of working age commutes to a job outside the county--often to places like Warner Center.

In 1995, the last year for which statistics are available, the Ventura Freeway carried 6,400 cars and trucks southbound into Los Angeles during the peak hour of 7 to 8 a.m.

Chris Stephens, deputy director of the county’s Transportation Commission, said with those numbers the lanes are almost at capacity--defined as the maximum number of cars that can travel in a lane per hour.

“The capacity of that freeway will not increase in the future as it has in the past,” Stephens said.

“We need to have more alternate modes, like vanpools, carpools and buses, going to places like the Warner Center, where there is a critical mass of employers drawing commuters.”

While van-pooling has its advantages, the downside is the route can be discontinued at any time--those who are late can miss their ride entirely.

Stephens said a county bus line doesn’t have those problems. The Conejo Connection, for example, goes to Warner Center after stopping in Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Westlake.

Although the bus line has been in operation for two years, ridership is low and needs to improve if the county is going to continue service, officials said.

Christopher Park, executive director of the transportation office at the Warner Center, said a re-marketing effort is underway to increase ridership.

Park said the most difficult thing is to get people to try the bus for the first time. To do this, the transportation office is providing free bus passes and a $50 incentive to recruit new riders. “It’s a very good, reliable bus line, and people need to overcome their myths and the bad images about public transportation,” he said.

Lety Hernandez, a 40-year-old mother of four who lives in Oxnard, said she rode the Conejo Connection to work at Warner Center for about six months, but it took her too long to get home in the afternoons. Now she rides in Walters’ vanpool.

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“It was cheaper to ride [the public bus], but not worth it because of the time it took,” she said, shaking her head. “When I got home the day was gone. I had to do homework, make dinners. No way.”

She leaned back in her seat in the van, yawned and looked out the window.

“This works for me,” Hernandez said. “Why would I want to change it?”