Tuesday evening, the Santa Monica City Council will likely approve the proposed Brighter Blue five-year service plan for Big Blue Bus (BBB), the result of a comprehensive operational analysis of its system by BBB officials.
The first review of the program since 2015, BBB’s plan looks to restore bus service to pre-pandemic levels along with altering routes to meet the needs of riders both now and into the future.
Alterations to several key routes, such as Routes 1, 2, 3, 7 and Rapid 12, would operate every 10 minutes or better on weekdays under the Brighter Blue plan, and every 15 minutes or better on weekends. This would increase the percentage of customers with 10-minute or better service on weekdays from 40% to 70%.
City of Santa Monica Director of Transit Services Anuj Gupta said this planning effort has been engaged by the BBB for a "better part of two years," taking into account more than 1,000 community responses, as well as outside forces planned like the opening of the LAX/Metro Transit Center and the Metro Rail D Line extension to the Westside.
"It takes a lot of work, it’s been taking a lot of time, but that’s because it’s a really major and exciting effort," Gupta said. "We are really at an inflection point, we believe, for transit in Southern California, and for us here [at] Big Blue Bus and on the Westside and in Santa Monica specifically, this is an exciting time," Gupta said.
Along with the faster service, the Brighter Blue plan will expand service hours on the vast majority of routes, prioritizing extra hours earlier in the morning and later in the evening. Propositions for extended service time are adding a 5am morning hour and 9pm–11pm hours for Route 2 on Wilshire Blvd., as well as adding 8pm–10pm hours for Route 14 on Centinela Ave & Bundy Dr.
Several routes will join BBB’s weekend schedule as part of expanded service, including Route 5, Route 16 to Playa Del Rey via Wilshire Blvd. and Bundy Dr., a sticking point for many of the stakeholders who took part in the planning process.
"We want to continue [work] for all the nearly 8 million people who rode our system this past year and many more who we believe will run our system in the years to come," Gupta said. "We want to offer really outstanding services and continue to give people what they say they want out of a transit service."
Changes under the Brighter Blue plan would begin taking shape in December, as the Rapid 3 route on Lincoln Blvd. would be discontinued in order to "reinvest resources" to the normal Route 3, increasing peak frequency of the route from 13 minutes per bus to 10. The majority of route changes, including a similar closure of the Rapid 7 on Pico Blvd. to reinvest into the normal Route 7, would be implemented in August 2025.
Implementing these changes would mean continuing to build up a bus driver base that dissipated during the COVID-19 pandemic, a rebuild process Gupta noted has shown "great momentum over the last year."
"Obviously, there will continue to be attrition and turnover, as there naturally is, but we continue to attract and retain, do everything we can to retain our operators, and having that level of staffing is what enables us to expand service," Gupta said.
Both the new workforce and the BBB ridership will need to feel safe with changes coming, with BBB’s Transit Safety Officer program implemented this year responding to what Gupta calls "challenges overall" with public safety in Southern California. The program will continue to expand in the coming months, as BBB will be introducing a road patrol on certain evening hours to be an "additional backup" for certain lines where bus drivers report troubling incidents.
"Feedback since the program has been in place has been very positive overall … those riders who have been on a [bus] with the transit safety officer have felt … that it has enhanced their safety, made them more comfortable," Gupta added.
