Steep bus service cuts and layoffs: 25% of all service to be cut in Orange County

This past Monday, OCTA officially voted to axe 25% of its bus service and lay off 400 bus drivers, supervisors, and maintenance personnel to cope with the zeroed State Transit Assistance funds and loss in local revenue to support the transit system.

Riders will endure longer waits at bus stops for more crowded buses, as OCTA is turning down service frequencies. My take: this is much more preferable to axing whole bus lines (San Diego's approach). Since Orange County is such a sprawling suburban area, there are unfortunately no "redundant" bus lines to cut.

According to the Orange County Register article:

"Riders on the Orange County Transportation Authority's buses are already feeling the effects of service cuts.

"With action taken Monday by the OCTA, riders are likely to feel that pinch more over the next year. In planning next year's budget, the board voted Monday afternoon to cut bus trips by about one-fourth and lay off nearly 400 bus drivers, supervisors and maintenance workers.

"The action helps the agency deal with an expected $272 million drop in revenue projected over the next five years.

"Riders may not know or see the effects of such changes until September, because the reductions could be adjusted based on changes in the economy, OCTA executives said."

Committee Chairman Nguyen, in the March 12, 2009 Transit Committee meeting, said that their staff has tried to get more funding from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to no avail. This lack of funding for basic transit services isn't unique to OCTA: the lack of money has prompted AC Transit (the Oakland metro area) to bump up fares, and is causing a transit crisis in New York City, where they are axing several subway lines and enacting steep fare hikes in their "doomsday scenario."

What's hilarious: More than 100 comments on ocregister.com contain hate-filled rhetoric that the unions are at fault (this isn't a union issue), buses are used by "illegals" (legal people use it too, dumbasses), and that all the buses are empty (you've never ridden on a standing-room only bus, dumbass). This is also the same anti-transit attitude I got from Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who wrote that "most studies show that only 2%-4% of the commuting public uses public transportation regularly... I believe that pouring more taxpayer dollars into something used by so few members of the public is a bad idea." (He then proceeded in that very same letter to sell me on his pitch to drill oil off California's shores.)

What no one is getting is that a LOT of people ride transit. They're too busy driving 60 mph and crashing their Ferraris into lamp-posts along Jamboree to notice. Commuters, families, workers, Vietnamese, students, the disabled, and the elderly (which, I should point out, the AARP has just announced they're lobbying for complete streets and better transit) — all kinds of people ride transit. Line 79 is standing-room-only with UC Irvine students in the morning. Line 175, too, is standing-room-only with University High School students. And the senior inhabitants of Leisure World take Line 60 to many places. Do the trolls in Orange County have something against old people and (gasp) privileged Irvine students?

What do you think? Any way to get out of this funding mess? As I said in a previous post, OCTA's "doomsday scenario" is that 50% of all bus service will be cut within a few short years.

Other people's reactions:

• on Streetsblog LA.
• on OC Progressive.