New Year's Eve service

So RTA woke me up this morning with a text message touting their free New Year's Eve service. Yes, passengers may ride RTA routes free today, starting at 18:00 until the end of service on that route. On some routes, of course, that means there's maybe one free bus. This service is funded by the CHP and other law enforcement agencies as an attempt at reducing drunk driving, and in places like LA or Orange County, where they actually have late-night bus service, I'm sure it does just that. However, by the time the buses stop running around here we're only JUST breaking out the bubbly. And who really wants to go home before midnight on New Year's? Isn't that the entire point of being out in the first place?

If RTA and their law-enforcement partners REALLY wanted to persuade folks to catch a ride home on New Year's instead of driving, perhaps they could fund hourly service on all routes until 02:00 New Year's Day. That might actually make a difference. Of course, it would be a logistical nightmare, and it would cost a lot more than two or three hours of lost fare revenue... but it would actually accomplish something. This program? It's a meaningless gesture, a useless waste of administration costs and taxpayer money.

Flip-flop?

This story in the Press-Enterprise caught my eye. A former City Councilman, Dom Betro, wrote an Op-Ed piece about the current Greyhound situation, and it's worth a read. However, what's even more interesting is the guy who wrote it. This is an eminent domain story, and Mr. Betro was the key player in a bit of eminent domain abuse a few years ago in the neighborhood around RCC. He even approvingly cites the Fox Theatre restoration downtown, which is the source of substantial controversy on the same issue, and yet here he is talking about the shameful abuse of the City's power to kick out the Hound. Strange how the tables turn, eh?

Also of note to transportation advocates, note how Betro uses the phrase "misfortune of not owning a car."

More on the new Ride Guide

It's worse than I feared. I was riding the bus today, and I picked up the "Service Guide 2009", a "preview of route improvements and modifications coming January 11, 2009." It drew my attention to a few more things, some good... most bad.

Good: Route #12 is getting a new trip in the morning and afternoon, though it will be routed via Main and Center to Center/Orange, rather than the current routing. Woot! At least there's ONE bright spot in this thing.

Bad:

• Route 3 (which serves Riverside, at La Sierra and Arlington) will be dropping from 35 minute headways to 50 minute headways. Beauty.



• Route 52 (The Trolley Green Line) will only run 06:00-08:00, 11:30-13:30 and 16:00-18:45. Mid-day "unproductive" trips will be entirely eliminated. Though it will be adjusted to actually stop at the bus terminal, which is a plus.

So there you have it. Everything in my previous rant stands. Bad policy, yaddah, wrong direction, blah, need more, not less, etc.

Metrolink is a bad joke...

"Every five hours" does NOT count as a headway in any respectable urban rail system.

I got a bit of money over the course of the holidays, from generous family members, and my desktop has been without a video card for quite a while. Rather than order it on the interwebs, I figured I'd spend some time out at one of my favourite pillars of consumerism, Fry's Electronics in Anaheim. After-christmas sales tend to be good places for deals, especially in those old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores, and if I can save a buck or three on shipping, why not? However, after a successful and nearly entirely transit-oriented holiday, I wasn't about to battle traffic on the CA-91 to get there. So I hopped on the RTA 149 express to Orange.

Did I mention that U-Pass has a warm, squishy place in my heart? While most pass holders have to pay an extra $1.65 to ride the 149, U-Pass riders still ride free. *purr*. But I digress.

Bought an OCTA pass, took a bus up to Fry's, found a video card (nVidia 9400GT for $70 w/ $20 rebate!), took a bus back down towards the mall, munched on some In-N-Out, and when I was all done it was 14:25. So I looked at the pack of schedules in my bag and determined that I could either take the Metrolink home at 16:02 or the 149 at 16:55. Beauty. I splurged a bit and treated myself to a slightly-more-expensive train ride home. After taking the bus back up to the Anaheim Canyon Metrolink, I got to enjoy an hour and a half of waiting on the platform until the train carried me away.

During the course of this hour-and-a-friggin'-half wait, it occurred to me that Metrolink is probably just a bad joke being perpetrated on the populous of Southern California. Now officially the deadliest rail system in the country this decade, when the trains aren't crashing into freighters they're usually just not on the tracks. On the IE-OC line, there are three trains in each direction on Saturdays, and two on Sundays. Combined with inter-county express bus service, which is notable only because of its absence, and you leave passengers waiting on hard metal benches for hours and, undoubtedly, in cars or stuck at home.

New Bus Book, same as the old Bus Book

Well, the January edition of RTA's Ride Guide has been released, both on the web site and on board buses. Being the transit geek that I am, I'm always among the first to take a look at the book and see what's changed in my local transit system. This quarter's offerings are... disappointing. We all knew that some routes were losing service. The only route that serves Riverside proper that will be downgraded is the 206, which will no longer run on Saturdays. (On Saturdays, it terminated at Tyler Mall instead of the Corona Metrolink.) However, we lost route 39, formerly the Jurupa Shuttle, which was one of a small handful of services in the poorly-connected Jurupa Valley. Also, routes 17 (Moreno Valley), 33 (East Hemet) and 36 (Yucaipa/Calimesa) are all losing Saturday service. (Many other routes have had times "adjusted", so be sure to check your route before January.)

Note what we HAVEN'T seen- the recently promised Commuterlink 212/214 (San Jacinto and Hemet) and late-night expansion on routes 1, 15, and 16. Though "late-night" is a bit of a misnomer, as the expanded service would only extend for an hour after the current last trips (which currently end at 22:00, 21:00 and 20:30 respectively), even this modest expansion seems to have been passed over. Must the beleagured denizens of Riverside wait yet another quarter for desperately-needed connectivity?

I think it goes without saying that the Winter 2009 schedule is yet another example of the worst possible policies for this situation. We are heading into a deep recession, with most economic indicators nose-diving and unemployment skyrocketing. Our region is already poorly-connected as far as public transit goes. Ridership has been increasing by huge margins, and the last thing we need to do right now is to cut service. This simply closes opportunities and drives people back to their cars (no pun intended). Another quarter without an upgrade is another quarter where the people of Riverside suffer.

Times edited for standards compliance, typo removed.

Merry Xmas

Happy solstice to all (two days ago), and Merry Christmas to those who enjoy it.

Remember that there's no service today.

It's over...

Wow... Let's hear it for transparency and accountability, eh?

As you may already know (because I'm a bit late reporting on it), the City of Riverside has successfully ousted Greyhound from their downtown Riverside terminal. In a back-room political deal that the old Democratic machine in Chicago would be proud of, the Council told the City Manager to negotiate a deal with the company. They gave said manager a range of payout amounts, and he and Greyhound officials negotiated a settlement within that range. So, for the sum of $625,000 (of our tax money), the City has sent Greyhound packing. This agreement never came to a vote of the city council, and was never even reported to citizens until a local activist asked City Hall a direct question about it. The agreement was signed on December 9th, and service will end on January the 31st.

Interestingly enough, many community groups were taking up the cause of saving the Greyhound station. Even the local League of Women Voters was going to hold a forum on the station, in mid-January. Just a cursory jaunt through the letters-to-the-editor of our local paper shows broad opposition to this move, and yet the City did it anyway. Even stranger, they managed to spend over six hundred thousand dollars of our tax money to buy out the next 15 years of a $1/year lease.

Not only does this blatant example of underhanded politics deprive our city of yet another transportation option, at precisely the time when we should be expanding our choices, but it deprives local citizens of the involvement and oversight that they deserve from their government. This is shameful.

For more information on the story, read the Press-Enterprise articles here and here. Oh, and come to the City Council meeting on Tuesday. Local eminent domain protesters are going to be there, telling the Council that they can't just go behind our backs like they did. (I won't be there, I'll be on a northbound Amtrak, but I wish all of you the best.)