Before the 1989 earthquake there were 7 local Watsonville routes. After the earthquake and the subsequent financial problems facing the Transit District, those 7 routes were combined and cut to essentially 4. This plan will restore the number of local routes to 7. It is important to note that we believe that most new growth in Santa Cruz County will be in and around Watsonville. It is difficult to project just what it might look like in 2015 at this time. It is likely that more service will be needed than what we’ve outlined here to meet the needs of this growing community.
Since the damage to Browns Valley Rd., Metro has not been able to serve that area. Instead, the route uses Varni Rd. to get out to Corralitos. Since there are no stops on Varni, this has seemed to us to be a waste. It would be better to serve Corralitos Rd, with the Route 73 (more on this later) and reduce the amount of miles this route covers. (Currently, the 72 has difficulty staying on time.) We also have eliminated running through the Rolling Hills neighborhood (now done by the new route 74) in order to get the 72 up to Freedom Center faster and conversely, to the outlying areas it was designed to serve.
When we looked at Watsonville local service there were a couple of things that jumped out at us. First, although 3 different buses from Watsonville Transit Center serve Crestview, they all arrive within 10 minutes of each other. So we set out to spread the service to this important trip generator. This also enabled us to serve the Watsonville Senior Center inbound to WTC. Running time would be the same as today.
Part of the plan was to get some of the routes that served the outlying areas off this section of Watsonville to enable them to get to their destinations quicker. This route serves Rolling Hills outbound to Freedom Center and then inbound back to WTC.
There is a slight route deviation from current routing in that Holly St. is used instead of Shady Oaks. This route would run 7 days a week. This route would run between 6:30am and 8:30pm.
No changes are required; this is the one good local route in Watsonville.
Route 76 Bay Village
This is a new local downtown route. It will leave WTC and head up 5th St. to provide service to the Senior Center. It will then head up East Lake to Tuttle and provide direct service in and out of Bay Village, servicing Watsonville City Hall and Cabrillo College Annex inbound to WTC.
A resurrection of a pre-earthquake route, Union St. outbound to serve the Cabrillo College annex and City Hall, and then out to Pajaro. From Pajaro it will return directly to WTC, again using Union St. inbound.
Similar to the current route except that it won't serve Pajaro (covered by Route 77) and will serve Salsipuedes every trip. This route will no longer serve Martinelli out to Crestview. Martinelli has never had any ridership to speak of, and folks wanting to catch the 71 can do so at the WTC. Again, our intent is to make these routes more direct and therefore faster.
In 1993 the union brought a plan to the District to restructure the Route 69 to make them more economic. They are still arguably the most grueling in the system. To make them less so is primarily an internal issue and would not be reflected in the schedules. However, we are also advocating a peak hour adjustment (as we now have in the Live Oak routes). It is extremely difficult to make it to Capitola Mall in 23 minutes at 4:00pm and in fact it rarely happens. In the interest of having real travel times and predictable arrival times, we propose moving the departure times back beginning at 2:00pm. The 69 routes would then leave at :00, :15, :30, :45, allowing 30 minutes to reach Capitola Mall from Metro Center. In the spreadsheet we reflect an increase of eight hours for this change. It is an approximate number based on our experience in modifying routes for more realistic running times.
Currently there is not enough service between Watsonville and Capitola/Santa Cruz. With the amount of growth projected for Watsonville, we can only assume that the need will even be greater by 2015. It is important to note that although we show the 69A and 69W running twice an hour by the year 2015, we see these routes being phased into that level of frequency. Each would only run once an hour at the outset and be increased as the need becomes apparent.
Currently a weekend-only route, we propose to ultimately have this route run twice an hour seven days a week between the hours of 6:07am and 8:00pm. We also think this route should be re-routed to run along lower Freedom Blvd. and serve Crestview Center thereby giving this area direct service to Capitola Mall.
This route would also eventually run twice an hour seven days a week and extend to once an hour into the late evening. After midnight we would run Owl service once an hour. The partial runs are added on to the current 69s that end at Capitola Mall.
Metro used to have four 7s an hour before the massive service cuts of the early 1990s.We propose to restore this route to that frequency of service during peak hours and make necessary changes to maintain on-time performance during peak hours.
We also propose to add Owl Service, running once an hour in each direction through the night.
Route 81 Capitola Mall - Watsonville
Some might question the necessity of the 81 with the 69A running daily. But this route does two important things that the 69A does not. First of all, it serves Cabrillo College. We feel it will still be necessary to run twice an hour express service to Cabrillo.
We believe the growth of Cabrillo College will be a significant trip generator on the Highway 1 corridor and are intent on keeping up with the demand. Secondly, this route would be an express with no stops between the Capitola Mall and Santa Cruz Metro.
Currently, the four 69s per hour are often standing room only so there is a need for more service along this route. We think an express is the way to go. And finally, this gives us yet another route to the industrial district near Airport Blvd. The hours of this route would be extended to run uninterrupted the entire day.
This route would be expanded to run all day with non-peak hour departure times on the hour from both Watsonville and Santa Cruz. This service also needs to be expanded to weekends.
We call this one "The Bullet". It is direct peak hour service from Watsonville Transit Center to Santa Cruz Metro Center with only two stops: Green Valley/Main and Ocean/Water.