Alongside new bus routes and fare discounts, Santa Maria recently proposed adding an autonomous electric shuttle to its transit services.
The proposal is included in the city’s Short Range Transit Plan (SRTP), described as a general business plan to help shape the future of Santa Maria transit for the next five to seven years.
Gamaliel Anguiano, transit services manager for Santa Maria Area Transit (SMAT), said that while the shuttle project is years away from being finalized, the department is seeking early feedback on the concept.
“For now, an autonomous shuttle remains a conceptual strategy that could be merited in the next five years. Therefore it is identified in the SRTP,” Anguiano said in an email to the Sun. “We want to plan for things like this as early as possible, as it will help become the catalyst for moving this project forward, should it become merited.”
Anguiano will host two in-person meetings at the Santa Maria Public Library on Nov. 19 (at noon and 3 p.m.) to help inform the public on the shuttle concept and other proposals listed in the SRTP.
Guests can choose to join the meetings virtually as well, and the complete SRTP is currently available to view online at smatservicechange.com (where questions and comments can also be submitted in advance of each meeting).
A few of the plan’s items, including the shuttle, are proposed to directly benefit local high school and college students. Two additional bus routes in northern Santa Maria, for example, are expected to alleviate overcrowding on the current route that mainly serves Pioneer Valley High School students in the afternoon, while the shuttle service is aimed to serve Allan Hancock College (AHC) students.
“The idea would be to make use of the bike trail that connects the transit center to AHC, and make it a shuttle route because of its already limited mixed-use traffic, i.e. no other automobiles,” Anguiano said. “This would allow for a shuttle to go between the campus and the transit center every 10 to 15 minutes, providing for high frequency and attractive transit service.”
Anguiano said that students will be attracted to using the shuttle because it seems less time consuming than planning around a traditional bus route.
“Colleges, AHC included, do not hold what we refer to as typical ‘bell times,’ or in other words, there is no predefined start or end time for AHC students like there would be for typical work schedules or in primary schools,” Anguiano said. “School start and stop times vary greatly between students. So, if our schedules don’t happen to align with a student’s classes’ start or stop times, they may be less inclined to use public transit if they have to wait for the bus.”
Anguiano added that SMAT has had initial conversations with AHC officials to discuss whether or not the shuttle proposal is “an amenable idea for both groups,” and that “a lot still needs to happen before such a concept is ratified.”
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 4, 2021.
