Last Updated on May 25, 2017 by CCAR Staff
Here in the transit world of 2017 — the world of Uber and Lyft, of light rail and, yes, that century-old Los Angeles favorite, convertible sports cars — there’s nothing sexy about taking the bus.
But there never was anything sexy about taking the bus.
While many who never rode them are nostalgic about Henry Huntington’s old Red Cars, the tracks of which criss-crossed our county and encouraged its growth, not a soul is nostalgic about the diesel smoke-belching RTD buses that were the 1960s version of rapid transit in these parts.
Any number of doctoral theses could be written about why there is a certain romance to hearing that lonesome train whistle blow and a certain drudgery is forever called up when imagining boarding a municipal bus, but the reasons will forever remain a little ineffable. Suffice it to say that when Metro wants to make a bus route seem cooler, it dubs it the Orange Line, as the dedicated-lane buses in the San Fernando Valley are called. You’re supposed to think you’re on some kind of train, when you are not.
But even as transit planners are calling for a massive, multi-billion-dollar expansion of light rail in Los Angeles County thanks to the 1 percent sales tax for Metro voters approved this spring, the fact is that public buses will always play a part in getting around L.A. Unlike fixed-rail lines, their routing and timing can — in theory, at least — be quickly adjusted to meet commuter demand.
That’s why it’s good to hear that, in response to sluggish new ridership figures that show the number of people using buses throughout the Metro system fell 18 percent in April as compared with the same month two years ago, the transit agency will investigate what it can do better to get riders back onto its buses.
It’s disheartening, though, to see that the study won’t even begin until January of next year, and that the results will be presented to the Metro board in the spring of 2019.
That’s two years from now. Is that Metro’s version of turning on a dime?
Public transit ridership always goes down when gas is cheap, as it is now. But riders already report that safety issues, poor routing and lines that don’t run late enough in the evening are driving them from buses. Metro can and should address those problems right now rather than waiting for some two-year study.
