Luckily for me, I’m a UCB student and employee, so my fare is a flat rate I pay every semester. To decouple the deal made between AC transit and UCB would devastate me (I don’t remember how much the fare costs for an adult, but to pay that amount 40 times a week is something I cannot do – since there are no BART along the paths I travel, it would be necessary for me to drive).

Secondly, while I haven’t read all the comments in excruciating detail, it appears that the discussion has become more and more complex, with more and more variables considered, including how AC transit calculates costs and the most efficient ways of running a public bus system. While this is interesting, if conjectural, I think our brainpower is better spent not on assisting AC Transit calculate what is undoubtedly a complex formula for efficiency, but to focus on how to improve the Revised Service Adjustment Plan in the interest of all parties and to provide AC Transit with “on the ground” observations which we, the passengers, likely know more about than AC Transit. For instance, I think John Seal’s suggestion of not disturbing the line in the short term until a truly better medium to long term plan can be determined is pragmatic and sensible. By contrast, the issue surrounding Cal students is a medium/long term issue since these are signed contracts bet Cal and AC Transit and any changes would have to await the next round. In a word, the Cal student issue adds a layer of complexity that can’t be resolved so easily in the time frame of change on the 51, so why muddy the waters unnecessarily? The Cal issue isn’t just a 51 issue; it is much broader and more complex than just the 51, involving many more variables and interests. Are there other more modest and pragmatic proposals like the former which might be more pragmatic than trying to speculate on the abstruse cost-efficiency-service calculations which few of us are likely able to enlighten the public about? As the dialogue unfolds, perhaps John or others could periodically try to summarize the debates on this discussion board so discussion is more fruitful and focused, rather than haphazard and random. Finally, by way of improving “outreach” is there any way AC Transit could devote a spokesperson to lend commentary on this discussion board, correct public misinformation and misunderstandings, and even raise issues which AC Transit might want public input on? For instance, am I right in saying that there might be information that passengers have which AC Transit lacks, or do they really know exactly how many people get on and off, where and when via the various paying machines? What sort of information might we provide AC? Some dialogue directly with AC Transit would be nice. While a couple of “one-shot” open public forums is nice to vent individual interests, I think an on-going and online dialogue over time is much more fruitful.

Not necessarily. In a public/private partnership it isn’t a foregone conclusion that we have to be laissez faire about routes. We could require that private operators either meet certain access guarantees or pay a tax.

Also, making a (cross-vendor) demand-driven system could conceivably wind up being a better solution for unpopular routes because you don’t have to run empty vehicles on a route if vehicles only appear in response to calls for them. (Demand-driven solutions seem to have proved out in some jurisdictions for the limited purposes of things like senior and disabled access – I wonder if the concept can’t be further developed for more general purpose use.)

Here’s some old numbers that are hard to make perfect sense of (comparing apples and oranges) but AC Transit doesn’t come out looking so hot:

http://www.publicpurpose.com/greenberg.htm

I wouldn’t think it all that crazy to plan as if we knew they were mostly going to wind up going out of business.

That was the experience when local bus services were privatized in the UK.

Can you say more about the methodology of the AC studies? It seems to me that the labor costs relative to trips has to be a function of utilization and that AC runs a heck of a lot of mostly empty buses. It seems like that shouldn’t be hard to beat with more convenient routes and schedules, intra-city – perhaps with some demand-driven scheduling.

I’m also a bit skeptical of anything AC has to say about fleet costs: their regulatory constraints, heavyweight purchase procedures, and N-year-planning cycles would seem, like any large-scale civil engineering project, to really raise their cost structures through the roof compared to what a competitive field of more nimble, smaller players might do. For example, their cost estimates must be based on the assumption of having to provide certain specific target levels of capacity and availability of service – they have to *guarantee* those targets as a condition of funding. Where the planning fails to correctly anticipate need and demand, that means (mostly) that AC will be over-built, running mostly empty buses on mostly un-used routes. It also means that they can’t respond effectively to dynamically changing demand. I think that means that each paid-for passenger trip (plus taxes, etc.) winds up subsidizing a huge amount of waste.

A small intra-city fleet run by ACT would, I have no trouble believing, be less efficient than what ACT is offering – but I’m suggesting a competitive fleet in private-public partnership, exploiting technology that the ACT bureaucracy could not possibly develop, acquire, and deploy nimbly.

AC Transit did a lot of outreach and study on how people use bus lines as part of the service changes, and their planners would be happy to explain the reasoning behind some of their weirder routes. With the 51 line split, service will be more frequent and more reliable on both sides of the split while saving AC Transit some money. Ultimately, something has to be done about College Ave, and ACT can’t just keeping running more and more buses in response to increased car traffic, not passenger demand.

What’s really tragic (with 20/20 hindsight) is the dismantling of the Key system tracks. Check out this gem of a ride up Hearst St. in 1906, complete with fisticuffs and a fine lady to break them up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1L5WgCxvVA&feature=PlayList&p=9FBA551474EC2E0F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7