April tidbits

July service changes

VTA's Transit Planning & Operations Committee will decide tomorrow on proposed bus changes for July.

VTA staff has originally proposed to change lines 11, 34, and 45 because of low ridership. After a series of public meetings last month, staff kept their recommendations for 11 and 34, and withdrew the proposal for line 45.

Unlike most public meetings in the past, VTA Vice Chair Margaret Abe-Koga (Mountain View) attended meetings in Mountain View on line 34 and in San Jose on line 11.

The proposal for line 11 is to eliminate the segment to the Market Center on Coleman and only provide service between Downtown and Taylor & 17th with a new route. The new route would have mostly two way service every 30 minutes (currently hourly) in that area and would offer better access to the City Hall and San Jose State.

For line 34, the plan is to reroute it to serve the senior center on Escuela Avenue. This proposal received support in the community.

Staff first planned to reroute line 45 down McKee between Alum Rock (in the foothills) and Capitol Avenue, and boost frequency from hourly to 45 minutes. VTA eventually withdrew that plan after receiving opposition from riders. The riders told the staff that the proposed 45 minute frequency wouldn't be as convenient because the schedule would be harder to remember.

Besides these three lines, VTA will also eliminate line 76 and the River Oaks Shuttle after receiving approval from the board last year. VTA delayed the elimination of line 76 until the end of the school year in June. The River Oaks Shuttle will run until July 9 when funding agreement expires.

Light Rail McDonald's wrap

McDonald's food isn't exactly healthy, but the fast food chain is supporting VTA service by wrapping light rail cars to promote french fries. Unlike the buses, the light rail cars have been ad free until a few years ago. At first, VTA place its own advertisements (like "New VTA") and was later expanded to other businesses.

Pictures below are taken by a VTA Watch blog reader.

VTA probably followed Caltrain's lead, which began wrapping its trains in 2004. Caltrain wrappings are rare because of the high cost.

VTA iPhone/iPod Touch app update

The author of the iVTA app recently released a new version of the software with improved functions. This application is particularly useful if you don't like to carry a lot of stuff and want to know what time the bus or the light rail will come.

VTA April updates and more

Finally Suzanne Gifford, VTA's General Counsel, is retiring. The VTA board is scheduled at its meeting next Thursday to appoint one of her deputies, Kevin Allmand, to become the acting General Counsel until a permenant replacement is hired.

Gifford's record at VTA wasn't spectacular. One of her biggest failures at VTA is losing a $2.1 million lawsuit filed by a scooter-bound VTA rider who got injured inside the bus. Even Dave Cortese, a VTA board member, thought that Gifford should've settled early on. Because of that lawsuit, VTA instituted a policy in 2007 to require wheelchair passengers to be secured inside the bus. Although its intent is to improve passenger safety, some disabled riders argued against the policy because it would increase the time needed to board and exit wheelchair passengers.

VTA working with groups to address the Hotel 22 problem

About 30 volunteers from Victory Outreach Church and Tzu Chi Foundation will ride the Hotel 22 tonight to provide homeless riders with information on community resources and housing. A small gift bag will be given to interested homeless riders.

VTA to restore some 68 peak hour service in the South County

On April 7, VTA will restore 3 peak hour trips each way (northbound in the morning and southbound in the afternoon) on line 68 between Santa Teresa light rail and Gilroy. As part of the January service change, VTA eliminated 15-minute service on line 68 south of Santa Teresa, which led to numerous compliants about overcrowding on buses.

A minor community bus problem



In the photo above, there's a yellow strip located right under the window frame. That's the stop request strip designed to be used by wheelchair passengers. Apparently, a lot of regular passengers who sat in the front accidentially triggered stop request by simply leaning their bodies on to the strip. Some drivers tell these passengers to keep away from the strip. Some drivers decided not to bother the passengers and instead reset the visual messaging board that shows the stop request.

Proposed VTA Board reform rejected by the CAC

On its March 12 Citizen's Advisory Committee meeting, VTA staff presented the board reform proposal for the committee to consider. Although many members believed the proposed reform is a good first step, it is not enough to address VTA's governance problems. Moreover, many believed that additional public input is needed on this matter. At the end, the CAC voted not to recommend the proposal and requested the board to "take a holistic and strategic approach on the whole issue of governance and begin an interactive process with all appropriate community stakeholders."

South County shuttle conversion to impact college students

The South County Community Bus program, approved by the VTA Board last week, almost got unanimous support from the community. The issue involves the proposed line 18, which will replace line 68 between the Downtown Gilroy Transit Center (Caltrain station) and Gavilan College. Some Gavilan students and staff who can take a direct bus from as far north as Downtown San Jose will require an extra transfer, and perhaps an extra fare, for the trip to the college.

Currently not every trip on line 68 goes to Gavilan. Many of the trips during the peak hours, and most night and weekend trips, end at the Gilroy Transit Center.

With the approval of the plan, there's still an opportunity to provide timed transfer between line 18, 68 and all other buses in Gilroy to mitigate the inconvenience.

VTA's unequal treatment

As usual, when a new light rail line opens, there's will be changes to bus routes as well. Mostly likely it would involve shortening long trunk bus routes coming from downtowns to the nearest new light rail stations, and the rest filled by short feeder bus routes between the new light rail stations and the neighborhoods.

When the Tasman East/Capitol light rail opened last year in Milpitas, lines 70 and 71, long mainline bus routes connecting East San Jose and Milpitas, were both shortened at the north end at the Great Mall light rail station. Services in Milpitas were then replaced by short feeder bus routes 46 and 47. The replacement services are less frequent and with shorter operating hours than 70 and 71.

For a trip that took only one bus trip between these two neighborhoods now takes two, in addition to the transfer penalty, it also increased the fares for riders without monthly passes. Passengers now either have to pay twice on the one way fares or buy day passes.

On the other hand, similar proposals were presented to Los Gatos for the opening of the Vasona extension scheduled in August, but the wealthy folks in Los Gatos would get a much sweeter deal.

Under the current service plan for July 2005, lines 60 and 62, both long mainline bus routes, would be shortened at the south end at the Winchester light rail station and Good Samaritan Hospital respectively. Services to the south would replaced by new feeder routes 48 and 49 from the Winchester light rail station.

Unlike the services in Milpitas, both routes 48 and 49 would be as frequent and would have a similar operating hours as the mainline bus routes (all night services to and from Los Gatos end at about 9:00pm currently). The best of all, however, is that these feeder services would be FREE for everyone!

Can't you see what's wrong? People of color and lower income in Milpitas and East San Jose faced de facto service deterioration with feeder services that are less frequent, have shorter service span, and are more expensive than the previous mainline services. Meanwhile primarily white residents in million dollar homes would receive free feeder services to Light Rail that would be as frequent as the mainline services.

While VTA would try to justify free and more frequent service in Los Gatos because of the smaller buses that would be operated by private firms, VTA is nonetheless providing unequal treatment. Milpitas and East San Jose has a much larger minority and lower income population than in Los Gatos.

Where do the Milpitas and San Jose politicians stand on this? It seems that they are okay about the unequal treatment as long as they get the stupid BART extension through in the next 20 to 30 years. For them, an expensive rail system that is even more expensive for their constituents to ride would sure make things right!

VTA's new buses and more

Appeared on the March 30 agenda is a recommendation to approve the purchase of smaller buses. VTA plans to initially purchase 5 28-foot buses through the state's contract.

Also on the agenda is a resolution to oppose the closure of College Park Caltrain station, as well as a decision on the San Jose Grand Prix. The map of the new race course is included in the packet.

The two last minute resolutions on the College Park and the Grand Prix were submitted in the same "SJ Council/VTA board members' memo to the board" manner, essentially locking in five votes on the board.