Big Blue Bus Proposed Fare Changes 2025-2027 - Virtual Public Hearing April 2, 2025
Public Comments
Juan Matute: I had a couple questions about the fare that will be charged for open loop payments. You know Title VI analysis requires an equity assessment for both fare amount, but also fare media. And so there's some question about whether moving to open loop represents a cash fare or represents an extension of the TAP fare. And so I’d encourage you to be more explicit about what the open loop payment fare would be as part of this Title VI analysis so that you don't have to do this same thing in a year in order if the FTA cares and they may care in strange ways about things like this I'm finding, so I'm finding with other DOT [unintelligible] so I would just encourage you to include the open loop TAP plus fare amount in this analysis and your findings and everything that goes through the City Council. Also, Big Blue Bus’ last two fare increases led to a pretty huge drop in service, about 25 – ridership – about 26% versus what was expected and a lot of this came because of just market trends in LA, but also Big Blue Bus’ service became a lot more expensive - not expensive - slow at the time because of general congestion on the West side. I've been participating in a statewide [unintelligible] trying to improve public transit in California and one of the things that I found that people forget is that when your vehicles go slower, you lose riders and it costs you more to operate the same amount of service, so your per passenger and per mile costs go up. And I'd really encourage the agency in increasing fares, which I understand is necessary to really redouble the efforts to improve service quality and reliability and so roll out the front facing camera ability and then also pursue whatever bus lanes that you may be able to both with Caltrans on Santa Monica and then also on Lincoln, also with Caltrans and any others. I know the Santa Monica Blvd. Safety study is coming up in the Abbott [unintelligible] community is going to be pushing for bus lane considerations for that. And so I would encourage the agency to take a more active role in those efforts where it's been much more passive in the past, because your customers are paying you to do that. That's part of what this fare goes to is to improve the customer experience.
Big Blue Bus Proposed Fare Changes 2025-2027 – In-person Public Hearing April 3, 2025
Santa Monica Main Library
Public Comments
Chris Doyle: I’m Chris Doyle, I’m a Venice resident. I don't have my own transportation so I rely on you guys heavily, I'm on a blue bus every single day. My comments are more geared towards service enhancements because we all understand inflation, we understand the need to raise fares if it's not a huge increase I mean a few cents here or there I don’t think is gonna break the bank. But here are my comments. I think everybody in the room would agree with me that Route 3 down Lincoln to LAX is notoriously late, am I correct? I mean on average five minutes late. I take the earliest bus a lot of times down to Westchester, it runs around 5:20 to where I… the first bus is a couple minutes late, if you start off late with the first bus I don’t know how you keep on schedule for the rest of the day. It seems to me that the Route 3 is one of your more adjusted routes, it could use some more buses, I don't know if that's in the Brighter Blue, I didn't even know about the enhancement program until today. I'll look into that.
But that would be a suggestion because that's really, that's the bus I use all the time.
More buses on that one, maybe fewer buses on the 1 and 7. My experience has been that a bus stop along those routes, you'll see two buses at the same stop at the same time, seems like they’ve got a plethora of buses on the less used routes. It would make sense if the three ran 24 hours to LAX because a lot of people can't make their flights with the schedule the way it is and I figured if Metro can run bus 4 all the way up to Santa Monica and downtown all night long it seems like one route could be open all night to the public. That would make sense to me. Seems like we have like three buses that serve UCLA, last I checked on the map UCLA is nowhere close to Santa Monica.
I'm not sure how we got involved in serving that college unless we just have that many students on the beaches that are going there. That seems an unusually large amount of buses going all the way up to UCLA, seems like they could be handled by Metro. One other concern I have when I do take the Pico bus, the number seven, it's always very congested at the 18th St. stop which serves the college. It seems like there could be some kind of agreement worked out maybe with the school where you get a shuttle that would only have to go maybe five blocks north or south on Pico and alleviate all that congestion, because when you stop there, I stopped there today, it’s like a sardine can because of all the students that flood the bus. I think they’d be better served, there would be better security and better service all around, if there was a a shuttle that served them directly just for a few stops and alleviate all that on the seven because it’s crazy every single day. And lastly the rapid buses aren’t rapid. I don't really see the point, like for example to take the Rapid 3 from here just as far as Venice, you're gonna skip Navy Street and Sunset I think, a couple of little side streets. Well if I get on the bus in Santa Monica, if it's a rapid bus, I'd like it to get me all the way to LAX with very few stops, maybe a couple here, a couple in Venice. That’s something I would look into. So that’s my feedback. Thank you.
Amy Gottstein: Good evening. Thank you so much for your presentation. I’m a big fan of the Big Blue Bus, gave up my car eight years ago almost to this very day in favor of public transit exclusively and it's been working really great. I'll admit that I perhaps misunderstood the Brighter Blue, I thought it was guaranteed by Council but apparently not so I take that back. I wish though that there was a better way to attract and retain drivers, perhaps if they knew that it wasn't really an easy job, it's not just sitting there driving, there's a lot more to it, it's very complicated. I would definitely agree with Chris, the first speaker, about frequency, about the like doubling up of buses like the number seven which I experience more often, I’m not really on the three so much. It would also be really nice, as it turned out, the way that the buses are scheduled they often meet in intersections at the same time and at shared stops at the same time, which means that people can't catch their transfer. But I also, late one night I experienced a late night ride home from the airport, and missing you know that the driver who was on the seven wouldn't wait for me to board the bus, he saw me, he was at a red light and didn't let me board. And so I would appreciate if drivers might be a little bit more flexible when they see somebody running across the street desperate to catch the bus instead of denying them and being like, you know, too bad, so sad, you know, it’s like, I then had to carry a suitcase uphill to, you know, from Lincoln to 23rd St. as a result and I wasn’t very keen about that. So, but overall I'm just really grateful, you guys are doing a great job, I really just wanna see more frequency and I feel like I'd be more supportive of the fare increases if there was an equal trade-off as far as like the benefit to riders rather than kind of teasing us with, you know, some of these things, so anyway. Again, thank you so much.
Jerry Rubin: Thank you very much. My name is Jerry Rubin, longtime resident of Santa Monica and been taking the blue bus forever. Never had a driver’s license, never had a car in my life and kudos to the blue bus. Great bus company and I'm sure it's gonna be utilized more as the Olympics come here and as the World Cup comes here so, in our great environmental city, let’s remember like their motto says, go green, ride blue. I thought the fare increases were gonna be much more actually. They seem extremely modest and I know the others are here talking about service changes but it doesn't really look like anybody's opposed to this modest change over the years. I think it's good that they're not eliminating the transfers or not doing, my gosh. I would’ve thought that fare increase would’ve come five years ago. But I'm a senior citizen, I get a deal. I still wish there was a way to get it to all TAP cards cause I see the delay so much when those dollar bills get stuck there and my gosh people would love it if they said my gosh I wish I would've gotten the card earlier instead of fussing around with this money, it makes it harder on the drivers, their job is to be safe driving, not to get stressed out. So I know you did it and then because of the pressure you went back again, but I just wish you would do it. You'll be needing it more as the Olympics come and everything, so get people to know that PayPal, all that kinda stuff, faster… faster service, everything. I kind of like the local buses, the 3, better than the rapid, I don’t think it gets there much faster but you guys are expert, you know better than me about scheduling. I'm pretty good. I go to my app, come out, buses are usually pretty much on time. I can, I take a lot of them and I think they are, for the most part, pretty darn good. And I love it, and I love that I got that Transit app, so I can just schedule when I'm gonna leave Starbucks to go over and catch the bus home. And by the way, when I think of the price increase, for the price, man, that's even cheaper than a scone at Starbucks now. So what I'm saying is, it's a real deal, try to encourage your people to do it. And one thing I hope could be done in the future is at some point wherever you have the room to do it, to get T-shirts and things that’ll promote the blue bus, and our City Council members and elected officials can wear it, and get people excited about using the blue bus because it's really such a deal. And I have friends that are so addicted to their cars but once they got on the bus, they realized, wow this is easier than I thought it was. So please, let's all be ambassadors for the blue bus and let's get out there and push it. That’s it. Thank you.
Su Nitao: Good evening. Thank you for the slides. [unintelligible] It’s very good for, you know, the community to know the changes. And thanks for the nice refreshment. [unintelligible] Thank you. My question, I’m concerned because the Culver City bus doesn’t go through, no more, station, Aviation Station or LAX stop. [unintelligible] Not only me. I guess more people get off from Culver City… I live in Culver City, Culver City bus [unintelligible] LAX bus terminal, the number three bus, but like ten minutes, twenty minutes, doesn’t come, show up. You know, all stopped, more crowded the bus. You know that’s [unintelligible] the minute, I just I want more bus come, you know, frequency.
That's my concern. Used to be the K line, Metro K line, go to the 14 bus [unintelligible] 14 bus doesn’t go to the LAX, just go to the Culver City, you know, center. So, I don't have a lot much. That’s, I did more bus coming, you know… [unintelligible] that’s my point. thank you for your presentation and nice auditorium, very wonderful. I didn’t know, I didn’t much know, I just asked, what today [unintelligible]. Thank you.
Amy Gottstein: With respect to folks who pay cash fare, more often than not they're not paying the full fare, so as it stands today, fare, cash fare is $1.25 for non senior/disabled, and more often than not folks only pay $1.00, and so I'm afraid that this pattern will continue regardless of the fare increase, but at the same time it will hit folks who use TAP card harder than it'll affect the folks who pay by cash, so there’s that.