FSP 1.1: Transit Board rides bus (every year)

May 27, 2003

Transit Board rides bus (every year)

Though they oversee a bus system that provides 65 million trips a year, none of
the 14 regular or alternate board members are regular bus riders - and at least
four had never set foot on an OCTA bus before Friday.

"Ever since I've been on the board, I've made a point of taking the bus at least
once a year," said Tim Keenan, Orange County Transportation Authority Chairman
and Cypress councilman.

A great idea. Or as it's known in the software industry, eat your own dogfood.

From Orange County Register

More like this: transit blog

Full story

2003 May 03 (Saturday)
OCTA officials driven to see how bus riders fare
The board chairman decides that the best route to understanding the needs of
passengers is a ride-along.

By PETER LARSEN
The Orange County Register

ORANGE – Laguna Niguel Councilwoman Cathryn DeYoung scrutinized her bus
map and her schedule book Friday as she and seven other OCTA board members
set out on a four-hour bus trip around Orange and Santa Ana.

"In order to get around, do you need the map or the book?" she asked Art
Leahy, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority.

"Regular users - " Leahy began.

"What do they do?" DeYoung interjected.

"They know the lines," Leahy finished.

Which is something few if any OCTA board members can claim to have
mastered.

Chairman Tim Keenan, a Cypress councilman, said he organized the scavenger-
hunt-by-bus to get the board out and about on the system.

"Ever since I've been on the board, I've made a point of taking the bus at least
once a year," Keenan said.

He said the outing Friday was prompted by a rider at a recent meeting who stood
up and said: "When I hear the board talk, they all know the highways and
streets, but when a rider says, 'I don't like the way the new fare box takes my
dollar,' I never hear a board member say, 'Yeah, that's right.' "

To increase the board's knowledge of its bus system, the OCTA staff worked up a
scavenger hunt that required the kinds of transfers and route changes that
everyday bus riders experience. As they traveled along thoroughfares such as
Main and Bristol streets in Orange and Santa Ana, they got off at specific spots to
pretend they were running errands bus users might run for real - picking up
paychecks, visiting the doctor, making a deposit at the bank.

"It's an excellent experience because we need to know what people go through
when they ride the bus and do what we can to make it better," said DeYoung,
who some 20 years ago rode a Los Angeles bus regularly when she worked there
- but rode her first OCTA bus only Friday.

None of the drivers on the routes taken Friday - primarily 53, 70 and 57 - were
told the OCTA brass would be boarding Friday, Leahy said.

"We're a good system. We're a human system," Leahy said. "We can do better.
When the employees see that the board takes what they do seriously, that
improves service."

Problems that Leahy said OCTA continue to work on include overcrowded buses
or buses that run early or late. Regular riders on the buses Friday mentioned
those issues as well as lack of bus frequency for certain routes or lack of
benches or shelters.

Several riders said they liked that the politicians and officials in control of their
buses were out getting firsthand knowledge.

"They're able to know what people need," said Maira Torres, a freshman at
California State University, Fullerton, who uses the 57 line to commute between
campus and her home in Santa Ana.

"And they don't just sit in the office thinking, 'I think the people need this,' "
Torres said. "So it's good."

Several transit advocates who tagged along said they, too, feel that it has to be
good for the board to get any kind of experience on the buses.

"Elected officials are always riding the freeways, and they know which
interchanges are bad," said Roy Shahbazian, who no longer owns a car and uses
buses and trains to commute to work.

"But they have no firsthand experience of riding the bus - what it's like to wait for
a bus, what it's like to be on a crowded bus," he said.

"I hope this is just a first step in more regular riding of the bus."

Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido said the trip left him with a few ideas to make bus
trips better for riders.

"I learned that along Santa Ana Boulevard, probably one of the most heavily
used transit stops in the county, we have a shelter that has nothing but a bench,
and if it rains, people get wet," Pulido said. "And I'm going to look into that come
Monday."

Posted by dc at May 27, 2003 10:21 PM | TrackBack

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