Addressing an RTA bus complaint published in the media

[nickv]

A Westminster man rode an RTA bus which ran late and missed its connection to Metrolink. A letter of complaint was sent to Riverside's Press Enterprise and published in Monday's newspaper:

Public Transportation Poor

I am writing this letter waiting for a train at a station in Corona. I am waiting because my bus was more than 10 minutes late. Like so many other people, I’m at the mercy of the Riverside Transit Agency’s arbitrary, nonsensical bus scheduling and inefficient routes.

The bus routes don’t even appear to try to coincide with train departures or arrivals. And, for those buses that do, the inefficiencies built into picking up passengers invites disaster when a single wheelchair needs to be loaded onto a bus.

Public transportation is supposed to encourage folks to set aside their daily driving, save the environment and conserve fuel. How can you convince somebody to use something that simply does not work? You can’t.

Therefore, the next day will find me behind the wheel of a 400 horsepower, 10-miles-per-gallon vehicle to get to work in. But at least I won’t miss an important date with my wife.

Ted Green
Westminster

There's some lessons to be taken. Analyzing to the complaint: Is Riverside Public Transportation really poor?

[ieko]

Nov 20, 2013 13:18:34 GMT -8 nickv said:

A Westminster man rode an RTA bus which ran late and missed its connection to Metrolink. A letter of complaint was sent to Riverside's Press Enterprise and published in Monday's newspaper:

Public Transportation Poor

I am writing this letter waiting for a train at a station in Corona. I am waiting because my bus was more than 10 minutes late. Like so many other people, I’m at the mercy of the Riverside Transit Agency’s arbitrary, nonsensical bus scheduling and inefficient routes.

The bus routes don’t even appear to try to coincide with train departures or arrivals. And, for those buses that do, the inefficiencies built into picking up passengers invites disaster when a single wheelchair needs to be loaded onto a bus.

Public transportation is supposed to encourage folks to set aside their daily driving, save the environment and conserve fuel. How can you convince somebody to use something that simply does not work? You can’t.

Therefore, the next day will find me behind the wheel of a 400 horsepower, 10-miles-per-gallon vehicle to get to work in. But at least I won’t miss an important date with my wife.

Ted Green
Westminster

There's some lessons to be taken. Analyzing to the complaint: Is Riverside Public Transportation really poor?

I don't think this is really a fair complaint, Metrolink is inherently difficult to schedule connections to because they have very low frequency and inconsistent schedules. When scheduling bus service for connections, you need something that's fairly consistent because the goal is to run service at regular intervals, if a Metrolink trains comes at 2pm, 3:15, and then 3:55 there is absolutely no way to schedule for this. It's especially problematic where Metrolink runs service generally because Metrolink serves low density suburbs, this means it is very difficult for transit agencies to run high frequency bus service which would eliminate the problem of missed connections.

If you want high frequency transit service, you must build cities to support high service levels.

[nickv]

It's very hard to make a judgement on this complaint since there are no specific factors included such as times or bus route numbers. One valid concern is the wheelchair loading delay which was brought up in the blog post linked above.

Boarding wheelchairs has been a very serious performance problem for some of RTA's contracted routes that use lifts; some contract employed bus drivers are undertrained to operate the lifts in order to board and strap wheelchair passengers quickly. Some lines do experience an 8-10 minute delay per wheelchair, well above what can be considered acceptable. Ted Green may have a valid point there.

Regarding density, not a whole lot goes on in the West Corona Station area. That's a suburban business park. However, the downtown Corona Circle area where the North Main Corona Station and Corona Transit Center are located has plenty of activity. The Route 1 RTA service operates about every 15-20 minutes between there and Downtown Riverside via Magnolia Avenue.