Next issue, market/ridership/service level problems
So after the consultant’s study of the early 90′s detailed the half dozen major trunk routes, AC began a very tentative program on the San Pablo Avenue corridor. The first version was more articulated buses; next came the halk low floor/ half standard units. Painting this segment of the fleet in a low visibility dark green scheme was supposed to give the route a special ‘brand’. Ridership did not significantly increase. The next layer was the renaming of the Limited to Rapid with newly bought Van Hools and slowly a few tentative BRT features.
The surveys hired by AC claim a net increase of riders in the corridor citing some former drivers.
Now we also have the 1R from Berkeley to Bayfair.
Results are at best mixed from this rider’s view.
First off, the Nextbus signage, even though the service was delayed 9 months by union management squables, was incomplete and is still missing in many places. Second, the East Oakland and North Oakland/Berkeley segments have very different load characteristics. While articulated buses are often well loaded east of downtown, they are often nearly empty heading north in off hours. AC recognised some of this by having the R M-F north M-Sat east, but what does that indicate for spending millions on “stations”?
Even if you dismiss anyone from Berkeley who opposes BRT, the question remains what level of bus service on Telegraph is needed by the market?
AC Transit ridership has not signicant grown since the late 70′s. In the 80′s an SF Examiner column had total ridership at 240k today AC’s site shows 227k and the earlier figure reflected much leaner service in the Fremont area. To paraphrase on of the Directors at a recent meeting, we raise fares riders decline three years later we have barely gotten back the lost number and staff comes to us for another fare increase, repeat, repeat. This isn’t working.
So this transit dependent victim of AC says no more money down the drain for cute station crap, figure out how to get MTC to turn loose more subsidy money, because on a per capita figure AC is efficient it just needs to recover.