Although most of the service changes slated for implementation in December were suspended, two were implemented without much fanfare this month.
The first is a new shuttle between East L.A. College and the Metro Gold Line Indiana Station along Atlantic Boulevard and 1st Street which began January 11th. This new line is in response to concerns expressed by eastside residents that I wrote about previously. John McCready in comments on The Source asks "Of ALL changes that have ever been made to MTA bus lines, how many were ever made by ACTUAL RIDERS that GOT IMPLEMENTED?" (capitalization in the original). Well, Mr. McCready here is an example of rider input resulting in new service.
Meanwhile it was political influence that led line 201 to be re-extended to serve Glenoaks Park as of January 9th. The whole history can be viewed on the Kymbereligh Richards' Transit Insider website. The ridership to Glenoaks Park was and continues to be pitiful. Richards notes the 201 when it served the Park through 2006 had a ridership of "9 per day to/from the final Glenoaks Park stop."
Glendale Beeline started a replacement service (Route 13) when Metro cut back the 201 in Dec. 2006. By the following August, Beeline had reduced this to two round trips in morning and afternoon peak hours and one round trip at the noon hour, weekdays only. Ridership continued to be so poor they sought to discontinue the route.
Maybe the 9 Glenoaks Park riders threw a snit to their local electeds. Nothing else explains why political pressure was applied to have the 201 re-extension occur, even though by every measure the segment has virtually no ridership demand. Metro's service change hold forced the Beeline to continue operating its route 13 after they had announced it was cancelled and replaced with the 201. But now that Metro has extended the route 201 Beeline have not only discontinued Route 13 but posted a link to the 201 schedule on their website as the explicit replacement.
All in all a sorry state of affairs.
Did no one speak up against this, you wonder? Well, actually Kymberleigh Richards did at the November meeting of the Westside/Central Service Council.
S*I*G*H
