OCTA cuts bus frequencies, services in light of state budget

OCTA seems to be doing its best to stem the budget hemorrhage by not eliminating any routes, but instead slashing frequencies.

Schwarznegger and state Republican leaders forced the elimination of 100% of state transit funding, so now it's up to the county and cities to fend for themselves. OCTA has even dedicated a whole section of their website to the cuts taking place to public transit and to employees. They write:

Plummeting state sales tax revenue also will result in a $19 million loss for OCTA. The transportation agency is facing a more than $35 million shortfall in this year’s $263 million budget.

Next week's schedule change — less service

The worst omission, by far, is that they've cut the 24-hour route that links Orange County and downtown Long Beach. Line 60 now stops all owl trips at Long Beach V.A. Hospital, thus making it impossible for anyone coming from Downtown Los Angeles on, say, a night along Sunset, to take Metro Rail to link with OCTA.

The schedules contain some slight improvements, most notably re-assigning a bus towards a new southbound route 79 trip (Tustin-Irvine-Newport). This relieves the standing-room-only conditions that students find in the mornings traveling towards UC Irvine.

I myself already feel the pinch of this past winter's service cuts: line 57 to Newport has gotten packed and I've encountered more late buses than ever before. I've also been blocked from boarding the bus because their bicycle racks are always full.

Less friendly customer service

OCTA also will begin to strip timetables from stops, leaving only maps. I've already seen this along line 79 at UC Irvine where OCTA has posted only an ambiguous table of service frequencies. In line 79's case, it's "every 75 minutes" or so on the weekends and, for line 175, "never" on weekends. It's a nice reminder to us UCI students of how poor UC Irvine's transit options are with an anemic ASUCI Shuttle and limited Metrolink connections. Not to mention, this is a step back from making transit more friendly to new riders.

OCTA will also be printing fewer bus books and is trying to push as many of its riders to use their website.

Bravo! rapid bus system delayed another year again, and no one cares

Spokker on the Transit Coalition reports that OCTA keeps pushing back the launch of Bravo from 2008 to 2009, and now to 2010. Bravo is the new rapid bus system that's supposed to make bus travel within Orange County faster, but the launch keeps getting delayed. He writes, "Is it really this hard to run some friggin' limited stop buses?" Yes, in Orange County, better bus service seems politically impossible while OCTA proceeds to throw money at 91 freeway-tollway expansion again.

Doomsday scenario — what will happen to OCTA's future

OCTA's financial gurus released a presentation that, with the current budget, will slash 25% of all bus service hours and 33% of all full-time bus operators.

The "doomsday scenario," as they call it, assumes a plunge in local funding, and predicts a whopping 50% of all service cuts.

(Similar numbers were brought up recently on public radio; OCTA is posting all their budget crisis reports for their employees and the general public.)