Despite some overwhelming obstacles, including recruiting shortages and pre-pandemic level service restoration, Santa Monica-based Big Blue Bus saw steady gains in ridership, according to the fiscal year 2022-23 performance year-end report.
The findings of the report state that despite ongoing challenges in recruiting and retaining Motor Coach Operators (MCOs) and post-COVID recovery, the city-owned public transportation service had success in retaining contactless fare passengers and initiated several exciting projects over the past fiscal year. Additionally, the report notes the increase in ridership on MODE (Mobility On Demand Every Day), the City’s demand response service for seniors and people with disabilities.
“Staff put forth significant efforts to recruit and retain MCOs during the fiscal year, including participation in job fairs, new MCO training classes, enhanced training pay rates, targeted recruitment advertising and various staff well-being initiatives,” the report says adding, “Despite these endeavors, the number of MCOs did not substantially increase during the fiscal year, hindering increases in service levels and necessitating the continued suspension of certain routes.”
This ultimately resulted in the continued suspension of Routes 42, 44 and Express 7 and a service reduction of Rapid 3. Only Route 14 saw a major increase in service levels resulting from its full extension to Inglewood when the Metro K Line opened in October 2022. However, MCO counts (280) are still at their highest levels in two years, allowing for the extension of Route 16 to Playa Del Rey in August 2023.
In spite of these challenges, Big Blue Bus carried 7,741,258 passengers in FY 22-23, an increase of 23% compared to the previous fiscal year. Big Blue Bus also succeeded in keeping cash transactions at a relatively low level (17% compared to the pre-pandemic average of 33%), which leads to reduced travel times. Tap payments made up 74% of fare transactions, with mobile payments making up 5% and free fares, or refusals to pay at 3%.
Fares have not risen since July of last year and according to Anuj Gupta, Director of the Department of Transportation for the City of Santa Monica, no imminent fare changes are scheduled. “We’re currently discussing, along with other transit agencies, possible future alignment on a regional fare capping policy. Metro recently switched to a pilot fare capping scheme and we, along with other transit agencies, are considering a similar model, but we don’t have any concrete plans to adopt or announce at this time,” Gupta said.
Metro launched the pilot program in July of last year. Customers can use their TAP card to pay per ride until they hit a daily fare cap of $5 or a seven-day fare cap of $18. Once the one-day and seven-day caps are reached, Metro riders are able to use the system for free for the remainder of the one-day or seven-day period.
Complaints were also down, according to statistics presented, with 11.3 per 100k passengers reported during the last financial year, compared to 16 during FY 21-22. An opposite but equally positive result was that compliments were up, by 50% to 2.4 per 100k passengers.
Moreover, Big Blue Bus is soon about to follow in the footsteps of Metro in the hiring of transit security officers. “We will be rolling out a new transit safety officer program early this year where we’ll have unarmed security guards on many of our buses and at our bus stops to ensure a positive customer experience,” Gupta said.
According to Gupta, a recommendation will be brought to City Council during the next meeting, on January 23. He says that a competitive procurement was undertaken, the budget has been approved and that the service will be provided by “a security vendor who is familiar to us in the city.”
“They won’t be staffed to have a guard in every bus, but they will be on key routes and at key times and will provide additional assurance to our customers and support to our operators, so that we can offer the safest and most pleasant customer experience that we can,” said Gupta.
In addition, as part of a new communication system, real time arrivals will have digital screens on all of the buses.
Big Blue Bus also achieved a major milestone in its efforts to transition to a 100% zero emission fleet by 2030 when it was awarded a Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program grant in April 2023. The $22.9 million award will be used to install vehicle charging infrastructure and upgrade utilities to support the charging of up to 103 battery electric buses (BEBs). Big Blue Bus also purchased an additional 15 BEBs this year, which will increase the zero-emissions fleet size to 34 buses when received.
Gupta says there is a major hiring event, January 29 and 30th at the Main Library in Santa Monica. “In essence, it’s a bus driver job fair … And we have already 140 prospective candidates who RSVP’d and we think that that can be another way to continue to increase our pipeline of future motorcoach operators,” he said.