Transportation officials seek to boost ridership on VINE

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

Would better seats and a wireless computer connection persuade you to ride the VINE bus?

What about better on-time performance? A marketing campaign in Spanish that explained to immigrants how the bus system works? Or special shuttles for Napa Valley College students and senior citizens?

These are some of Napa County Transportation and Planning Agency’s ideas for boosting lagging ridership.

In the city of Napa, ridership on the VINE is down about 5 percent. Community shuttles in Yountville, St. Helena and Calistoga also have lower patronage this year, a consultant reported this week.

The one exception is American Canyon Transit, where ridership is up slightly thanks to the opening of the Wal-Mart Supercenter, said Jim Leddy, NCTPA’s executive director.

As part of its Short Range Transit Plan, NCTPA plans to spend 2 percent of its budget on marketing the bus system. This will be about a third more than now, Leddy said.

Marketing money will be used to distribute a new Rider’s Guide in English and in Spanish. New efforts will be made to recruit volunteer ambassadors who are bilingual to show newcomers how the system works.

“We have about no outreach presence in the Latino community,” NCTPA manager Tracy Geraghty told the NCTPA board. Yet more than half of last year’s nearly 800,000 VINE riders were Latino, she said.

If buses were equipped with wireless Internet and better seats, it might be easier to attract riders who now use their personal vehicles, Geraghty said.

Most of today’s VINE riders are “transit dependent,” meaning they are the young, the old and the poor and do not have their own cars, Leddy said.

Urban areas have found ways to attract car owners to buses, but it’s tough in a suburban-rural area such as Napa County, Leddy said. Gas prices haven’t risen high enough to persuade people to give up their cars, he said.

Agency officials can’t explain why overall VINE ridership is down 5 percent. The agency raised fares last February, but the decline didn’t start until July, a month before some routes were realigned for better on-time performance.

The agency’s consultant, Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, said a 5 percent drop in ridership is considered good, Leddy said. Some cities are down as much as 30 percent, he said.

In Napa’s case, lower ridership could be the result of lower-income people moving to cheaper housing out of county, Leddy said. Higher unemployment and home foreclosures could also be contributing, he said.

If California’s economy enters a recession, bus ridership would be expected to drop further, Adriann Cardoso, a NCTPA manager, said last month.

When a member of the public asked NCTPA board members, all of whom belong to city councils or the Napa County Board of Supervisors, whether they ride the bus, only Calistoga Mayor Jack Gingles responded affirmatively.

Gingles said he sometimes rides Route 10 from Calistoga to the San Francisco ferry in Vallejo.

NCTPA hopes to begin express service on Route 10 during morning and evening rush hours later this year. A similar service between Napa and Fairfield will start when Napa and Solano counties can find the money to support it, Leddy said.

The VINE’s Route 5 in south Napa should be split so that riders headed for Napa Valley College have a more direct route, Geraghty said. Students currently share Route 5 with riders who are more interested in shopping at South Napa Marketplace, she said.

A college shuttle should be working before fall semester, Leddy said. A proposed senior shuttle connecting seniors with shopping and medical facilities requires more study and new funding, he said.

City buses are now on-time nearly 90 percent of the time. A year ago on-time performance was closer to 60 percent, officials said.

Nelson/Nygaard is recommending the 90 percent standard for buses in the city of Napa, but 80 percent for Route 10 between Calistoga and Vallejo.

St. Helena Mayor Del Britton questioned why the proposed lower standard for Route 10. Shouldn’t the agency be striving for 100 percent on-time performance, he asked.

St. Helena Councilman Joe Potter, who with Britton represents his city on the NCTPA, said it’s a question of money and frequency. It would take more money to buy more buses to stay on time during peak traffic. In the alternative, NCTPA could run the same number of buses less often to achieve on-time perfection, he said.

The consultant suggested that NCTPA kill Route 11, which runs from Calistoga to Santa Rosa four days a week. This route is carrying only 1.3 passengers per hour, while the goal was six.

Marketing efforts haven’t boosted ridership much. Even two-for-one coupons have failed, staff said.

The agency is expected to decide later this year whether to end the experiment with Route 11.

The board voted to modify the route of American Canyon Transit, extending its loops from 70 minutes to 90 minutes. The best solution is to buy a second bus when money is available, staff said.

If NCTPA wants to take a fresh look at its bus operation, Supervisor Bill Dodd asked, why it didn’t consider buying buses with fewer seats. When the public sees big buses running empty at off-peak periods, “it really makes us look like a bunch of morons,” he said.

Leddy said buses were sized to handle ridership at rush hours. He suspected it would cost more to run smaller buses that required putting additional vehicles in services at peak periods.

At the board’s request, staff will further study this issue and see what other communities do.

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