Friday, May 7, 2010

New Ride Guide

Service changes (cuts) take effect this Sunday, May 9th (which is also Mothers Day- so send your mom a card or something), and I got my hands on a copy of the new Ride Guide, just so I could tell all you readers about it. The following routes are affected: 1, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 32, 42, 57, 79, 149, 202, 206, 208. If you ride any of those routes, read on.

Minor Schedule Adjustments: 1, 7, 8, 22, 79, 206, 208
All of these routes had schedules adjusted for connectivity- 1, 206 and 208 with Metrolink, 7 and 8 with each other and 22, 22 with 27, and 79 with school bell schedules.

Weekend Trip Reductions: 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27
All of these routes have lost trips on the weekends only, on either end of the schedule or both.

Weekday Trip Reductions: 32, 42
These two routes have lost trips on weekdays, 32 in the morning and 42 in both the morning and mid-afternoon.

Weekday and Weekend Trip Reductions: 13
13 lost a weekday school tripper and a weekend morning trip.

Route Discontinued: 57
The Temecula Trolley Red Line was discontinued due to low ridership, and to divert funding to the successful Green Line. RTA has really bad luck with these trolley services- is it perhaps the funky scheduling, rather than running them as all-day frequent routes? The 50 and 51, all-day frequent service, seem successful.

Service Expanded: 202
The annual Beach Bus service to Oceanside will begin June 21, and run through September 5. During this time, Route 202 will run during off-peak times and on weekends.

Converted to CommuterLink: 149 (216)
Route 149 will be converted to a CommuterLink route. This amounts to a $0.10 hike in cash fare, but frequent riders can now buy CommuterLink passes which will cover their full fare. Before this change, all riders had to pay an extra $1.40 for journeys into the OC (except CityPass and UPass riders). I'm also told that this change should bring more comfortable, recognizable Commuterlink coaches to the route. This change occurs on July 1.

As always with a service change, starting Sunday, be sure to check Google Transit (preferably via the new IE511.org trip planner- show 'em some 951 love) or the new Ride Guide for your route and schedule. Ride Guides are available on board, at City Hall, at your local library, or at UCR's Transportation and Parking Services office.

2 comments:

k said...

OFF TOPIC:

Just ran across the bid website (but did not copy the link like I thought) and when scanning the CLOSED BIDS for which you can no longer look at the detail, I found the link below and a bit of information about RIVERISDE's MULTI-MODAL TRANSIT CENTER, and noted that GREYHOUND, TAXIS, PARKING FOR FOLKS DROPPING OFF AND PICKING UP GREYHOUND AND OTHER, ETC did not seem to be mentioned, at least not in the overview to which we still had access.

Text below from CLOSED BID Riverside Website:

Request for Proposal Multi-Modal Transit Center Feasibility and Design 4085 Vine Street

Bid Due Date:03/05/2010 12:00 PM Pacific Time

Study Area:

The Project is comprised of approximately 13 acres, located generally between the State Route 91 Riverside Freeway, Mission Inn Avenue, Fourteenth Street and Commerce Street, and developed with the Metrolink surface parking lots, a City water well site and two (2) vacant buildings with associated parking (see Study Area - Exhibit A). The waterwell must remain in place and be protected at all times. The two (2) vacant buildings may or may not be retained as a part of the Transit Center, depending on the results of the study.

Study Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify a suitable location for a Transit Center within the Study Area that will maximize operating efficiencies of the RTA buses given the development planned for the Study Area. The study will examine the practicability and cost of routing existing RTA bus operations through the Transit Center to major destinations in and around the Downtown area, with emphasis placed on identifying the origins and final destinations of riders traveling into and around Downtown.

Allie Cat said...

k-

Looking through the study contract that you provided me with, in the City Council's backup to approving this contract, Greyhound is specifically included. The existing Metrolink station has provisions for taxis and "kiss-and-ride" drop-offs and extensive free parking. The contract also suggests the provision of a possible parking structure, to offset the loss of the western Vine St. parking lot. (I think that we ought to just charge for Metrolink parking, but the point is that these ARE part of the study.)