Living Car Free - Losing The Public Transit Option In Orange County CA

Now for a as bad as a cold water wake-up call. Orange County CA is going to experience a sharp reduction in public transit service and jobs. For more information:

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oc-bus-cuts10-2009mar10,0,2843358.story?track=rss

and the official Orange County Transit Website:

http://www.octa.net/ (http://www.octa.net/)

Even if you don't live in Orange County CA, think about the possibility of cutbacks where you live. Hell, never mind whether or not if we were slipping into a sorry state of mass transit, obviously we are already there in some parts of the country.

Too bad, people don't realize how important mass transit is for the local economy until it's gone. Certainly if I was a company considering moving or expanding, I would rule out OC if it continues to cut bus service.

Interesting that they fund buses with the state income tax and local sales tax. Here we have a separate millage (property tax) for bus service. The people vote on the bus taxes. In November, we voted in favor of a higher tax by a 2 to 1 margin. People are willing to pay for bus service IF it's operated responsibly and frugally.

The saddest part of the article is that apparently ridership has been going down for well over a year, and that includes the period of time when gas was $4.00 per gallon.

Either the buses really are bad, or the OC is laid out so badly that you can't live without a car. :(



Happily for those of us in Central Arkansas, the CAT, having boosted fares a little, is just adding some new schedules to the North Little Rock side of the river.

Too bad, people don't realize how important mass transit is for the local economy until it's gone. Certainly if I was a company considering moving or expanding, I would rule out OC if it continues to cut bus service.

Try living through a 3-month transit strike!

I think I mentioned this earlier. But the problem with OCTA isn't how OC is laid out it is routing software. They route the busses for the benefit of OCTA not for the riders. School districts use the same software in an attempt to make single passes where ever possible. So they put the stops in places that make it easier on the bus and the bus driver not the customer. Like I said my sister drove for OCTA for years and never took the bis to get to work. Why you might ask? She could after all ride free. But the bus wouldn't get her to work on time. To get to a bus stop that would get her to work on time she had to drive to another area to catch the bus. This is just my opinion however and the leaders of OCTA would most likely disagree.

Why is OCTA so poorly managed? They seem to have problems in operations, finances and in customer service. Did politicians or people in the community ever step in to demand accountability and better service? Sometimes it seems like communities get the bus service that they deserve.

Maybe it boils down to a political problem. Conservatives are trying to cut services to lower costs, which drives customers away. Liberals are always pardoning bus companies even when they do a lousy job, and giving tax money to companies that don't deserve it.

It has been going on for years. It is political but both sides of the coin have been the problem. The even had a county controler quite a few years ago that almost bankrupted the county. BUt california Transit districts are state funded and like I have mentioned a few times transit isn't a high priority.

I live in Orange County and am a daily bicycle commuter. I live near an OCTA bus stop and use the bus occasionally for non-commute purposes, or occasionally when I don't feel like pedaling to work. I think OCTA is one of the larger (over 1200 buses) and better metro area bus systems in the western US. Most of the bus fleet is recent vintage, and they have replaced a large part of the diesel fleet with CNG (compressed natural gas) buses. The buses on my route are all CNG. Every OCTA bus that I have ridden has been clean and safe. Even though there was a recent fare increase, it is still reasonable ($1.50 flat fee, county wide) compared to most other large metro transit systems. Face it, the California economy is lousy and money is simply not going into the coffers of public agencies this year like it was during the faux real estate bubble years. Unlike the federal government, county agencies can't print money to solve their problems. The next few years are going to be full of cases where something is cut back or compromised.

So OCTA made some cuts, but they are also ramping up some new stuff. OCTA will be one of the first bus companies in the US to roll out bus rapid transit on two major routes within the next year. Bus Rapid Transit is where they run buses from both ends of some busy routes every 12 minutes or so and tell them to get to the other end as quickly as they can without breaking any speed limits or safety rules. No "time stops" along the way to "stay on schedule". At each stop, passengers waiting will know how many minutes away the next bus is in real time (using a GPS receiver at the bus stop) since there is no schedule to look at.

Sure, OCTA has some faults but I would say they are better than 90 percent of metro area bus systems in the US.

I live in Orange County and am a daily bicycle commuter. I live near an OCTA bus stop and use the bus occasionally for non-commute purposes, or occasionally when I don't feel like pedaling to work. I think OCTA is one of the larger (over 1200 buses) and better metro area bus systems in the western US. Most of the bus fleet is recent vintage, and they have replaced a large part of the diesel fleet with CNG (compressed natural gas) buses. The buses on my route are all CNG. Every OCTA bus that I have ridden has been clean and safe. Even though there was a recent fare increase, it is still reasonable ($1.50 flat fee, county wide) compared to most other large metro transit systems. Face it, the California economy is lousy and money is simply not going into the coffers of public agencies this year like it was during the faux real estate bubble years. Unlike the federal government, county agencies can't print money to solve their problems. The next few years are going to be full of cases where something is cut back or compromised.

So OCTA made some cuts, but they are also ramping up some new stuff. OCTA will be one of the first bus companies in the US to roll out bus rapid transit on two major routes within the next year. Bus Rapid Transit is where they run buses from both ends of some busy routes every 12 minutes or so and tell them to get to the other end as quickly as they can without breaking any speed limits or safety rules. No "time stops" along the way to "stay on schedule". At each stop, passengers waiting will know how many minutes away the next bus is in real time (using a GPS receiver at the bus stop) since there is no schedule to look at.

Sure, OCTA has some faults but I would say they are better than 90 percent of metro area bus systems in the US.

And there in your last sentence you have said something about "the sorry state of mass transit," to quote another thread title.

The BRT sounds good. Will they incorporate other features of BRT like pre-boarding ticket sales, dedicated bus lanes and efficient boarding platforms? A lot of towns could do well with BRT. My city is shaped like the letter "T" and BRTs along the two arms would add a lot of value to the community.

I used to think that service was first priority and finances were second. Now I'm starting to understand that it's the other way around. You can have the fancy buses and the innovative scheduling, but if you don't have a strong financial base you have nothing. And if a mass transit company isn't prudent and responsible with revenues, the taxpayers (especially conservatives) will not want to support them.

i'll sadly say
SoCal is a major bummer...