As he patiently waited for the bus at the Bradley Road stop in front of Allan Hancock College, Darryl Rojas recalled his service in the Navy. The 77-year-old man barely missed both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.
“I was aboard the USS Wasp participating in the blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Rojas said.
The graying, albeit genial, 77-year-old Navy veteran rolled up his sleeve to look at his watch.
“It should be here at five after and it’s 15 after,” Rojas said. “They’re professionals. They do this for a living. They should be able to handle traffic and everything else.”
Living on Social Security, Rojas depends on the bus at least eight times each week. He says it’s not that big of a deal when they’re late. After all, he believes letting the small things get to you is bad for your health.
He wasn’t too surprised when he learned that the Santa Maria Area Transit (SMAT) is proposing a fare increase and eliminating some routes. To some riders it might not sound like good news, but there is an upside.
Among the changes, SMAT is also proposing better evening service and expanded service on a limited capacity for some holidays like Martin Luther King Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Christmas Eve, the day after Christmas, and the day before and day after Thanksgiving.
These were among the talking points for a series of public meetings for the proposed transit changes held throughout the city that concluded on Nov. 11.
These changes were essentially plucked from the Short Range Transit Plan Update Summary Report published on the city of Santa Maria’s website on June 2015.
The 69-page report had two goals: to evaluate the efficiency of evening routes 7N, 61, and 62; and to develop a plan to improve fare box revenue.
The report found that with increasing population, dependence on the bus system will also increase. It recommended that routes 61 and 62 should be eliminated due to extremely low ridership.
The proposed “modest” fare hike would increase by $.25. The increased fares would affect the regular SMAT lines, SMAT’s ADA paratransit service, and the Breeze line that runs from Santa Maria to Lompoc and from Santa Maria to Buellton-Solvang-Los Alamos. The increase, should it be adopted, means riders will pay $1.50 and $2.25, and $2.25, respectively to ride.
It would be the first fare hike increase in more than a decade and might not be well received, officials speculate. Santa Maria Public Information Officer Mark van de Kamp said the public heavily scrutinized the last fare hike in 2004 when the City Council raised the fare from $1 to $1.25.
Attempts by the Sun to reach Santa Maria Transit Services Manager Austin O’Dell before press time were not successful. However, according to van de Kamp, revenue in the fare boxes has been steadily declining over the years, going from more than 30 percent at one time, to dropping to close to 20 percent.
That’s bad, van de Kamp said, because it jeopardizes Santa Maria’s chances of receiving federal and state funding for public transportation. The fare box must generate enough revenue to pay for 20 percent of the overall costs of the system, van de Kamp said.
Revenue from the fare box is just one way a transit system makes money. Van de Kamp drew a comparison to a newspaper—only a portion of revenue comes from subscription sales.
A transit system like Santa Maria’s can get expensive. Jim Talbott can attest to this. He’s the executive director for the Santa Maria Organization of Transportation Helpers (SMOOTH), which operates a small fleet of buses providing rides for people who are unable to ride the SMAT system.
Talbott also has some insight into the SMAT system. Before 2003, SMOOTH was contracted with the city to operate its bus system.
In addition to the nearly $500,000 cost for a bus, Talbott said, adding more routes can be an expensive endeavor. There are costs for maintenance, insurance, personnel, and fuel—the transit buses get less than 10 miles per gallon, according to Talbott.
Talbot understands why people might be a little upset over a fare increase, but there’s a whole lot the public doesn’t know.
“Buses are not on the tip of everybody’s minds until they want to get across town,” Talbott said.
Local citizen Kevin O’Connor had recently begun attempting to ride the bus system. He has a car, but didn’t want to add to what he feels is a city that’s heavily congested with cars (the report also found that Santa Maria is a “primarily automobile-oriented” city).
The Sun met with O’Connor, who pointed out several details of the transit system that he wants to see fixed. Some of them include the lack of bus schedules posted at any of the stops, except for a few faded schedules behind scratched-up Plexiglas. And O’Connor said the ones printed online are hard to read.
Other issues include: lack of covered benches at many stops and limited window hours at the transit center.
To be fair, the Sun explored some of O’Connor’s complaints and found them to be true, although there were a handful of schedules bolted to the signposts at some stops. But overall the system seemed to work.
Other passengers agreed, but pointed to basic issues such as driver tardiness at some stops.
O’Connor believes it can be a great system if it were improved a little bit.
“It’s like a great feast that nobody has access to,” he said. “Santa Maria is such a car city to the degree other modes of transportation are third status.”
O’Connor compared it to the bus system in San Luis Obispo, which he thinks is better. But Talbott thinks that’s a bit unfair. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, he said, because the demographics and mentalities of the city are different.
“Even though Santa Maria is the largest city in the area,” Talbott said, “[San Luis Obispo] ridership is off the charts compared to ours.”
The proposed changes still have yet to be approved by the City Council. If they are, they won’t take effect until spring 2016, van de Kamp said.
Meanwhile, the number 7 SMAT bus arrived to its location in front of Hancock College where Rojas awaited. Just before he boarded, Rojas gave his take on the fare hike.
“I’m a senior citizen and on Social Security,” Rojas said. “I’m against anything that’s going to make my cost of living more expensive.”
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 3, 2015.
