Gas may be expensive, but riding the bus remains a hard sell

Apparently it's going to take more than just expensive gas for Southern Californians to give up their cars and ride mass transit for work or pleasure. The most recent figures from the MTA showed that average weekday bus and subway boardings actually fell 4.5% during the first four months of this year compared with the same period in 2007. That translates into 280,000 fewer boardings on an average weekday. What's going on?

MTA spokesman Rick Jager blames last year's fare increase, which raised the prices of many day and weekly passes.   

Of course, low bus fares are no guarantee that Southern Californians will hop on board even as gas approaches $4 a gallon. That's what the owners of the Megabus have discovered.  The bus company began service out of Los Angeles last summer with fares as low as $1 to Las Vegas and San Francisco. But even with rock-bottom fares, Megabus said some of its vehicles traveled with only a dozen passengers on board. Today, the company told The Times' Andrea Chang it would drop the service.

In an earlier story this week, Megabus President Dale Moser said it's not clear why bus service was such a tough sell.

"Maybe, truth be told, we were unable to get them out of their cars," he said.

-- Jesus Sanchez

Comments

[Matt]

In a small town, like Davis, where I am, public transit is much easier for the city to implement, and it's much easier for passengers to figure out. When I go home to LA, I "need" a car because I have no clue how to get from home to work, or home to anywhere else that I want to go, on public transit, without it taking up half my day to get there.

[jeff]

Can someone pls. send City Planner Mike Woo a hundred copies of this article, with reminders that this is the reality of his brilliant plan to make gridlock so bad that people will be forced out of their cars and into mass transit? We're paying that clown, a former Councilman for the Westside, to come up with such schemes to torture the public while rewarding builders who can build dense projects without any parking because "it promotes mass transit and reduces congestion!" WHERE are the white funny suits when we need them?

You can't force people to take mass transit until it's extensive enough to get people to where they want to go AND in a reasonable amount of time. This city has undermined every attempt to get a subway/ Expo line from downtown all the way west for decades, and now even bus service has been cut.... EARTH TO MIKE WOO, ED REYES/ HEAD OF PLANNING AND LAND USE ON CITY COUNCIL AND ALL THE OTHER MORONS ON OUR PAYROLL IN "PLANNING'.

We are Not New York, Mike Woo's stated inspiration, or even San Francisco and certainly not London or Paris or even Moscow or Budapest -- we are a Third World country when it comes to mass transit. (And the existing mass transit mostly carries immigrants from the Third World, to add to the image.)

FIRST, YOU HAVE TO BUILD IT SO THEY WILL COME, NUMSKULLS.

[jeff]

As for the Megabus, when I checked to see what the fares would be, found you can't get them until you log into their website, with a password, etc.

How DUMB is that, could they have sabbotaged themselves by poor marketing? No one ever saw any ads, and if you do find their website, you can't get fares like you can on any land or air carrier without this kind of hassle.

Maybe these people should get a job working for L A City Planning, with Mike Woo and Ed Reyes and the rest. The might be dumb enough for the DOT, even now that Gloria Jeffs is gone -- Dep. Mayor Jaime de la Vega has been pretty clueless at a couple of community meetings I've seen him at, too. Like one with Zev Yaroslavsky, who's trying to make up for sabbotaging our subway 20 years ago and again 10 years ago when he put a ballot measure forbidding money to go towards subways on the ballot.

De La Vega didn't know that the Governator stole our "surplus gas tax" funds last year which were $1.2 million and promised strictly for Transportation. So now the Governator is doing it again, for $800 million, total $2 BILLION. Hey, if no one notices...

That $2 Billion is the entire state deficit Arizona is facing next year -- but reports say that since they've stopped giving benefits to illegals that are intended for citizens, their economy and road congestion has improved so much, they think they're going to close that gap. Lucky us, those leaving are coming HERE, to sanctuary cities like L A and San Francisco. Our roads are only getting worse, so of course State is taking our money. And looking for new taxes...

[Susan]

When people can take the bus and get where they want to go...we will all gladly take it. I drive my son to junior college. It takes 15 minutes because it is only 8 miles away from our house. He takes the bus home. It takes over 2 hours! This is insane!!! What a waste. If the bus ride took maybe 30-40 minutes I would understand because of all those stops and stuff, but over 2 hours. So, I am buying him a car, now there will be one more person out there in a car all by himself, because we were failed by the public transportation system. So much for saving the planet and all.

[Ruby Jackson]

The bus is great, once you are on it, but the wait for it can be hours. Even the Rapid. The most frustrating thing is waiting for the bus, which is late, only to have it arrive, followed immediately by the next one, which is on time. There are not enough options.

[Steve]

Riding the bus anywhere in this community will always be a challenge. Even with
the Metro Rapid Red Bus systems in place the time it takes to crawl through traffic on any line in this town is too long. The buses are fast but without dedicated bus lanes we will forever have a slow and inefficient system. The local buses are even slower by far and leave the rider bewildered often choosing to walk the distance instead on a short run. Plus, waiting for a bus often is the biggest problem. There apparently is a schedule drivers follow, but rarely can uphold because of the amount of traffic forces delays that are compounded upon more delays. This can only be fixed with dedicated right-of-ways for rail and bus lines. More rail is truly the answer. It works correctly in
every major city of the world. We will abandon more car trips when the options
are more efficient. Gas is high and will get higher. The trade-off will come
when the time factor is equal to the experience of the drive. The bus doesn't
always cut it. Rail has more potential but needs to run longer especially in the late hours after bars, clubs, sporting events, concerts and any community event
happens allowing a safe and easy return for riders who began their journey on Metro. This is also true for commuters. People live and work at all hours of the day and night in this metroploitan area. This is never considered is a reality.

At this point getting to work or an event is easy, getting home is the stuggle, without having to miss the last train or waiting for the next bus, one hour later, only this will inspire more riders to experiment with the system and not be left thinking oh! I'll just drive instead.

When is someone going to wake up and realize that until the Metro Rail system
runs later in the evenings, beyond 12:30 AM using the system to get to an event
downtown will allways be difficult. I went to the Orpheum Theatre twice this past week. It's almost impossible to get back to Wilshire/Western my origin of travel.
Taking a late bus is insane! I would have to wait an extra hour just to make the
connection.

[Danny Y.]

I'm not a busrider, but as an experiment, yesterday I tried taking the bus to a business meeting in Glendale. It was a straight shot from my office in downtown. The MTA website was great, giving me a couple of different options at convenient times. I printed out the schedule, and hiked over to Venice and Hill. And waited. And waited. And waited. The bus was 20 minutes late, and then took 20 minutes longer to get to my destination than estimated on the website. I was a total of 40 minutes late.