FOR THE COUNCIL MEETING OF APRIL 16, 2024
COUNCIL AGENDA REPORT
TO: City Council
FROM: Interim City Manager Alex Posada
BY: Director of Public Works Brett Fulgoni
SUBJECT: Transit System Update
The City Council will receive a presentation regarding an update on Santa Maria Regional Transit system, growth, opportunities, and outlook.
BACKGROUND:
In November 2021, the City of Santa Maria City Council approved an addendum to the City’s adopted 2019/2020 Short Range Transit Plan. The addendum outlined the publicly supported transit service changes. These challenges include significant supply chain issues, changes to rider travel patterns, and labor shortages causing potential service reliability issues at a time when transit was most critical for many in our community.
DISCUSSION:
Pre-existing gaps in service were made only more notable as ridership demographics and travel patterns had changed dramatically, namely around an increased need for service to school sites as school district s struggled with their own driver shortage and post - pandemic recovery issues.
The approved system-wide service changes went into effect on January 1, 2022. These changes reshaped transit routes to meet several objectives. Primarily, the transit service area coverage needed improved reliability and improved service area coverage, while simultaneously being performed with a smaller labor force.
Since enacting these changes, Transit service in Santa Maria has seen an immediate and measurable rebound in r idership. The reworked routes have helped ensure 100 percent service reliability while creating more efficient and conducive routes for both riders and drivers, leading to longer retention and compounding growth of both groups.
Subsequently, two new route s have been added since the enactment of the service changes, to support the growing demand from riders, with an additional two more new routes that are currently being planned to continue to support the continuous growth in ridership. As a result, ridership is up 96 percent since the lowest point and is projected to continue to grow to be at 116 percent by the close of this fiscal year.
2 Respectively the Santa Maria Regional Transit system continues to make improvements to its operations, fleet vehicles with the introduction of electric buses equipped with rider- centric amenities, and by growing transit service options to help ensure the mobility needs of our communities are being met, even in the most challenging of periods. Staff’s presentation highlights just some of the work already undertaken and the efforts that are underway.