We propose to drop the Pelton loop from this route and add it to the Route 7. We don't show a decrease in time because surveys have shown that this route exceeds its running time fairly often.
Study Main
Service to UC Santa Cruz is pretty good right now but there are some enhancements to be made such as express service from Metro and later running times. Obviously as UC continues to grow, so will the transportation needs of the students and faculty.
We have quite a bit of service running that is not listed in Headways. We are continually tweaking this service to meet the changing needs of the student population. We also believe that it is important that Metro run service clockwise on the campus to further meet those needs. Other ideas such as express service from Capitola Mall to the campus are further options we believe should be explored. But for now, here is our plan.
Route 1B Lower Bay
The 91 departs Watsonville on the hour under the UTU proposal. In the morning it will arrive at the Metro Center at :40 after the hour. It will then leave as a Route 1 Express, arriving on campus at approximately :48 after the hour, in time to get students to classes that start on the hour. The effect will be to have express service to the University from Watsonville in the morning. In the afternoon the concept is reversed with the Route 1 Express leaving Metro about :10 after the hour, sweeping the University and returning to the Metro in time for its 91 departure on the hour.
We believe there is currently a need to run at least one bus an hour to the campus throughout the night. This need will increase as UCSC grows.
With the increase in activity on Pacific Avenue late at night we have found the local night service provided by Santa Cruz Metro inadequate, especially the westside service. The weekend service needs some help as well. We have learned that a sure way to kill ridership on a route is to make it run every other hour. Customers have a hard time figuring that out, especially if that route runs hourly on the weekdays. As we have done recently with the Live Oak routes, we have expanded the running times of the peak hour runs to reflect the reality of peak hour traffic. The changes we propose are:
This is the current Route 2. Although we propose adding only 5 minutes to the running time of this route, we recognize it won't be enough during peak hours. This is one of the challenges we face on many of our routes.
This new route gives us service to Mission Street four times an hour, and service to the westside industrial area three times an hour. This frequency of service is needed on this busy corridor. It is also becomes our westside Owl service.
We propose to drop the Pelton loop from this route and add it to the Route 7. We don't show a decrease in time because surveys have shown that this route exceeds its running time fairly often.
Route 3B Natural Bridgess
This is another business district under-served by Metro. We need to have better than hourly service here.. Twice an hour may not even be enough.
One of the things we noticed when we looked at the system as a whole is that Metro does not currently serve any city halls in any city in the county. We kept that in mind as we created new routes in this plan. This new downtown route would serve the library and city hall hourly and run on weekdays only.
Routes 12 and the new Route 68 will serve most of the areas this route now serves. However, because Route 12 does not run on weekends it is necessary to run the Route 6 on weekends, albeit with slightly different routing.
Years ago this route used to serve the Pelton St. area. We think that is still a good idea, especially with the on-time performance problems the 3A is having. Obviously this route will need more running time to accommodate more miles.
As UCSC has grown we have seen more students move to the Live Oak area. We think they need direct service to UCSC. We also think Cabrillo students living in the area need direct service to Cabrillo without going through the Capitola Mall.