The United Transportation Union (UTU) is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. We are a broad-based, AFL-CIO-affiliated transportation labor union representing about 125,000 active and retired railroad, bus and mass transit workers in the United States and Canada.
Local 23 was formed in 1980 and has represented the Bus Operators at Santa Cruz Metro ever since. After the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, the District was forced to cut service as a result of the loss of sales tax. The District came to the Union with a plan to end night service on weekdays after 7:00pm and to run service on weekend between 9:00am and 5:00pm only. UTU, having the benefit of being on the front lines, knew that there was under-utilized service that could be used to save the night service.
Thus began the partnership with Metro management and staff that continues to this day. Routes such as the 91, 81 and 69A for the most part were ideas emanating from the needs seen by Metro Bus Operators. It is to the credit of Metro management and staff that they have continued this partnership for so many years.
Our Perspective
It is our perspective that the MTIS process has two principle objectives. The first is obvious: meeting the transportation needs of our ever-expanding population over the next 15 years. The second principle objective is an even more difficult challenge:
how do you change the non-transit dependent population into one that sees bus transit as viable alternative? This question in turn generates another: what is the optimum frequency of service needed to encourage a change in behavior.
We believe that for all practical purposes one bus every ten minutes is the optimum; with not much more than a 15 minute interval acceptable to most choice riders (those that have the option to choose between an automobile or public transit).
We know that many of our routes are long, circuitous and take too much time. To this end in our proposal we tried to get back to bi-directional service that is direct, quick and wherever possible, frequent.
It is also important to try and gauge where the growth in the county will occur. The cities of Santa Cruz and Capitola have little room to spare so we can assume that some of our outlying areas are likely to bear the brunt of development. For these reasons as well as others, we believe that it will be important for the representatives of the communities we serve to be a part of the process when Metro Service Planning takes on the task of implementing new service.
Although the MTIS was directed at the Highway 1 corridor between Watsonville and Santa Cruz, it is obvious that traffic congestion along this corridor does not develop in a vacuum. How people access that Highway, whether it be from Highway 17, Live Oak, or Watsonville, has an impact on congestion in that corridor. We believe if you make transit service convenient and frequent, traffic will be reduced throughout the county and nowhere more significantly than Highway 1 between Watsonville and Santa Cruz.
Infrastructure
Other than the obvious improvements to bus stops and other Transit District facilities, there are some improvements in infrastructure to be considered to get the most out of bus transit in Santa Cruz County. One such improvement recently adopted by the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission is HOT lanes on Highway 1.
As part of this project, we are hoping that some elements of Bus Rapid Transit and highway bus stops at the 41st Avenue and Soquel interchanges will be implemented to further facilitate truly "rapid transit". This may also be advantageous for service other than express. Today, for instance, on Soquel Avenue between Morrissey and Capitola Road there are no fewer that 10 buses per hour in each direction, having destinations throughout the county.
By 2015 there undoubtedly will be more. A dedicated bus lane, especially during peak hours, would be a major improvement in transit service in our community. (This will also be important for emergency services as the increase in traffic will certainly have a negative impact on their response times.) There are other major arteries in need of such vision.
We first began this process by looking at what transit dependent needs would most likely look like over the next fifteen years. Of the projected growth in the county, only a small percentage would likely be transit dependent.
The MTIS projected an increase in population of 28% between 1990 and 2015 and an even higher percent increase in transit ridership in all Alternatives except the Baseline. In 1990 Metro's ridership was over 6.7 million. In 1998 it was over 7.7 million, a jump of 14.3% in just 8 years.
By 2015 ridership will have increased 42% if this trend remains consistent, almost 2 million more riders than we carry today. Obviously, the actual figures will be highly dependent on how intelligently transit service is expanded.
Next we began looking at what it would take in additional service to attract choice riders to the system. We do this primarily by adding frequency to the main routes and creating some new routes to encourage the bus alternative.
At the end of this document is a spreadsheet. It is designed to be used alongside the narrative. We have also posted this project on our website www.local23.org The spreadsheet itself is available for download on the site so the reader can insert or delete their own ideas as to what the needs might be. Transportation is obviously an interactive process and we look forward to the input from those responsible for implementing the transportation strategies for the county and from the general public as well.
name: mtis1.html
created: December 14, 1999
modified: Friday, 07-Jan-2000 21:13:23 PST
loaded: 142 since Jan 4, 2000