SGV Connect 131: AMA With Foothill Transit’s Felicia Friesema

DN: Okay, welcome to the SGV Connect end of the year podcast. We're doing it a little differently this year than the podcast we usually do with me and Joe and Chris and Melanie, where we talk about what we did this year and what we want to do next year, we're going to actually do it in January, looking forward instead of looking back. So a special treat for us today is we have the director of communications for Foothill Transit, Felicia Friesema, and we are excited because all of the questions today were provided by Streetsblog readers, so we have a more diverse set of questions, and I didn't have to do any research to prepare for this podcast. So hooray. I'm Damien Newton. Chris is going to be doing all of the audio editing and that for this particular podcast, and I don't think we'll hear his voice at all unless he surprises me. So anyway, welcome to the holiday season and welcome to SGV Connect.

FF: I have to say, I have never been called a special treat before, so thank you. I'm looking forward to this.

DN: What a way to start. Yeah, before I get to the ad copy, I will say, usually, when we talk with someone from Foothill Transit, we do a disclaimer that we did not share the questions with the person ahead of time and followed all sort of your general journalistic you know, good thing to do list, you know, professionalism and all of that sort of stuff. However, in this particular one, we did share the questions ahead of time. Since it is an AMA, we wanted to make sure that all of the information was readily available so we were getting the best possible answers to you all. So usually I say that, then I read the ad text, and this time I'm saying, No, we really did give the questions ahead of time, but full disclosure there. So let me remind everyone, though, if you don't know that SGV Connect is sponsored by Foothill Transit, offering car free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the Gold Line stations across the foothills and commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown LA to plan your trip. Visit Foothill Transit at Foothill transit.org, Foothill Transit, going good places. Do we need to change that text now, because it's not called the gold line anymore, right?

FF: Needs to be the A line.

DN: So anyway, all right, there's something people can look forward to. In the new year we're going to have new ad text. Okay, so our editor of Streetsblog LA, Joe Linton, divided the questions up for us so that they're going to get progressively harder until we get to a non sequitur question at the end.

FF: So exciting.

DN: So we'll start out with, I think this is the easiest one, and so did he. So the question is, with the new Foothill Gold Line, now a line extension opening to Pomona in mid 2025 what service changes is Foothill Transit planning. And be sure to touch on the new line 295 connecting the A line to Mount San Antonio College and Cal Poly Pomona. Sure from a student.

FF: Yeah. So let's start with the bottomless -- let's start with a line 295 and I'll go back to some other changes. So line 295 is a line that, as you noted, is going to connect the A line stops to Mount San Antonio College and Cal Poly Pomona. We already know that line 295 is going to start at the San Dimas station. What we don't know yet is what the southern terminus is going to be. That hasn't been determined yet. We also haven't determined what the frequency of that line is going to be, as Streetsblog reported before we received a 16.8 9 million TIRCP grant to invest in that line. That line is specifically for the purchase of buses, not necessarily for the operations of that line. So we're still working out where resources can be allocated to fund the operation of that service. So that's line, the new line 295, it's coming. It still has a lot of details, though we need to massage and figure it out. As to other changes... the line 291, already stops at the Pomona North Station location. So what we're going to be doing is just watching ridership very closely on that line to see if any service schedule changes need to be made to accommodate the ridership there. And we're looking to adjust line 492, to stop either at La Verne and or at San Dimas. It's either going to be one or both. It's very close. It stops very close to both. So rerouting it to serve both of those stations may make some sense there. And at this time, those are the changes we're looking at. We looked a lot at the changes that happened with the last extension of the A line as it was going across the Foothill corridor. And a lot of the changes that we expected to happen in ridership along that corridor actually didn't really manifest that much. So we're going to probably do what we just said here and then watch it very closely and see if there are other changes that would make sense to the community.

DN: As a sort of a quick follow up: Do you think the timeline for those changes will be just sort of, I know you guys do service adjustments a couple times a year, that'll just be with that. Or do you think there will have to be some sort of special adjustment that's made?

FF: Remains to be seen. It'll probably be, if we do it with an overall service adjustment. That service adjustment will be geared towards the opening of the stations. So we would do other service changes at that time as well. It would just all be lumped together. There is a public information and outreach process for all of that, so we hopefully will get the openings of those stations ahead of time, with enough advance notice that we can actually go through a public process to make those changes happen.

DN: All right, on to our second question, then recent SGV Council of government studies call for a couple of SGV bus rapid transit lines. Do you see Foothill Transit running future premium BRT service someday?

FF: Oh gosh, we would love to. We would love to. So there's a big step that you have to take between fact finding and research to actually creating a plan of implementation. And we haven't gotten to that next step yet. We still have yet to identify resources, specifically financial ones, for that. There's no launch plan in place from the COG. We're looking at this years down the line, as opposed to, say, next year. So we're right now just sort of waiting for that next step. The research is good, that fact finding has been very helpful for us, and we're just waiting for next steps.

DN: So we've talked about this on and offline, but it comes up with every transit agency. So how has Foothill's, long term service been impacted by the COVID 19 crisis? Some agencies have returned fully to normal service, or close to it. And the questioner says that Foothill seems to be a little slower in returning than some other agencies.

FF: You know, that's interesting, because when I read that, I was like, "Wait, we never stopped doing normal service."

DN: You know, that's what I thought, too. But sometimes our readers know details I don't.

FF: There have been subtle changes, but let me, let me kind of dig into the nuance a little bit. So when the COVID crisis hit, our local service, our Silver Streak service, all stayed the same. What changed was the commuter express service. And the commuter express service is that Monday through Friday service that heads west into downtown LA in the morning and heads east back home to their various park and rides in the San Gabriel Valley in the evening. It's a one way in the morning and a one way in the evening. And because nobody was really commuting into downtown Los Angeles, running that service just really didn't make a whole lot of sense, so we paused it for a short period of time. The there is one area where we had a bit of a service hiccup, and that was around September 2022 we started seeing -- and this was nationwide, this wasn't just unique to Foothill Transit -- we started seeing disruptions in service due to lack of available bus operators and mechanics to actually run the service, and we at that point, changed our schedules, reducing service so that the schedules were actually more reliable. We built in some things with that cut to our contractor saying, You know what, if you've got the staff, go ahead and run those trips that we've taken offline, because then if the bus just shows up, it's great, you know? But for the most part, that ended about a six month period of time where we had reduced service due to lack of staffing, the staffing just wasn't there for it. But we're pretty much running our full service, with the exception of commuter express service. I can tell you that, and this is you've probably seen this with other agencies, but we're running at about 90% agency wide, pre-pandemic levels, that's really great. We're just 10% shy of what we were doing before the pandemic hit. Where the exception, though, is with commuter express service. We're running at a slightly reduced level of service on commuter express just because of lack of demand. But our commuter express service is only running about 35 to 40% of pre pandemic levels, so we're asking some really hard questions about that service and whether or not it still meets the needs of the community. Obviously, commute patterns have changed. They may change yet again. There was a news report that just came out this morning about WMATA in DC having all of their staff come back to the office full time. That's an anticipation of the induction of the Trump administration, who is looking to change federal worker hybrid schedules back to in the office full time. So we may see a different trend happening with either people being asked to return to the office or people who are fully at home being adopted into hybrid work schedules. But for the time being, commuter express service is really suffering and in terms of ridership, and we're taking a very, very close look at it, but yes, to answer the core question, we've returned basically to normal service. We never really left it.

DN: Like this is probably a commuter express rider, I'm going to guess that sent that question in.

FF: It probably was, and they would be right in that there was some reduction there. But yeah, we're taking a very close look at that service.
DN: So I guess this one is probably connected. This person is asking questions about specific types of vehicles, which is outside of my expertise. So if anyone thought, you know, I was just stuffing these with my own questions, this should dispel that. So the question is, how will the rollout of double decker Silver Streak buses continue since the deployment of the two 3000 & 3001 vehicles currently in operation.

FF: Oh, this person will be very happy to hear that we're going to get another 24 of those. Very, very soon. Well, very, very soon in bus production terms, we're looking at anywhere between ... 2027 is when those will be delivered.

DN: Oh, very soon!

FF: Hahahaha. Right?

So it's, it's really, and this is another issue of bus manufacturing in the United States, we don't have nearly as many bus manufacturers as we probably need to supply the demand that's for refurbishing bus slates in this country. A lot of buses are purchased through federal funds, which are operated under the Buy America mandate, which means that there's only a few companies that we can actually use to purchase our buses from. And if that's the case, and there are hundreds of transit agencies in the United States, you can imagine that their production schedules are pretty full. So getting on their calendars is really, really important. And for this particular procurement, 2027 is the sweet spot. So you'll be seeing 24 more double deck battery electric buses then.

DN: So we are transitioning to our harder questions now, all of which are about electric buses, all three of which, one of which was the person who kind of wrote an editorial, and there wasn't a there wasn't a question in it. I think you were supposed to just respond to it, but I am going to add questions just to try and make it a little easier and more clear as to what I was at least I was looking for. So I'm going to read it. "Foothill Transit has largely turned away from electric buses in favor of hydrogen buses. Electric buses are common in some places, London, for example, but seen as not quite mature enough technology in Southern California. They" -- I assume electric buses here -- "have a reputation for not being not quite dependable, which is of job one, of course, but generally a bit better for the environment, including noise pollution, than other alternatives. Can you touch on what problems Foothill Transit had and continues to have with electric bus operations generally. Can you speak to how various fuels compare?" Diesel, compressed natural gas, hydrogen fuel cell and electric all like maybe what the pros and cons of those are?

FF: Oh, honestly, we could have a whole podcast just on that statement in question alone. And I'm going to try and keep this brief. I'm going to take issue with that first sentence, though, "Foothill Transit has largely turned away from electric buses in favor of hydrogen buses." I just mentioned the purchase of 24 double decker Silver Streak buses. Those are all battery electric. And for clarity, for people who may not be as as tightly aware of the different technologies that are available, I'm going to be speaking about three in particular, it's going to be CNG compressed natural gas, battery electric busses, like those double ducks and our former Proterra fleet, and hydrogen fuel cell technically hydrogen fuel cell busses are electric busses. It's just that they're fueling or recharging point is different from the battery electric buses. So that's just to kind of round out people's knowledge in general. I don't know that it's not that it's not quite mature enough technology, though, there's a service profile that we're always looking for there. And there's a couple of different things that we're going to talk about. I think one of them is going to be, I'm going to get into the carb innovative clean transit regulations, which are kind of pushing some of this direction towards a zero emissions fleet. That's a mandate that we have. But there's also this other side to it, where you try to incorporate vehicles to your fleet, and they do talk about dependability, that is important, but it's also kind of fit, sort of your service profile. The battery electric bus takes hours to recharge, and that's hours of time that it's not allowed to be in service. It has a certain range, and then once it's done, it's got to be taken out of service for hours in order to refuel. That requires a bit of a ballet exercise, rotating these busses in and out of service as they're able to actually conduct the service they're designed for. So you've got this fueling profile that fits best with how we operate our service, on top of the fact that the hydrogen fuel cell has a very similar range as the regular CNG busses. So and that doesn't really deviate that much. I think that one of the challenges with the battery electric busses early on, and we adopted these, we were the first in the nation.

DN: Yeah, I remember doing all those stories. They were very triumphant.

FF: Right. And it was a big step for us. It was in 2010 when we first launched those first battery --

DN: Big step for everyone. Because you would think that it's something like that, a first in the nation, like New York Transit or LA or metro, or someone like that would want it just for the, you know, the merit badge they could put on their uniform.

FF: Well, sure. And also, you know that is not without its lessons and challenges too, which is what we got from that as well. And the other challenge that we now have to face is Proterra went bankrupt. The manufacturer of our battery electric buses. So getting parts for those vehicles right now is very, very difficult, if not impossible. So it's not that we have stepped away from battery electric in favor of hydrogen. I think there's space for both of them in our service profile. We need to make sure that we're testing all of these technologies in order to meet what I mentioned before, the CARB innovative clean transit regulation, which requires that all bus fleets must be converted to 100% zero emissions by 2040 we're on track for that. It's really good. There's a lot of stepping stones in between. In 2023 we had to have 25% of all of our new bus purchases must be zero emissions. We've met that. 50% of those purchases must be zero emissions. By 2026 that's coming up real quick. And then by 2029 100% of all new bus purchases need to be zero emissions. So we're still driving towards that - pun unintended and intended. But the last statement generally, can you speak to how various fuels compare diesel, compressed natural gas, hydrogen, fuel cell and electric? I think we've kind of touched on that a bit in terms of the service profile. I will say one of the things that I love about the hydrogen fuel cell, and I'm just putting it in there, because it's one of my favorite things about it, is that it has water vapor and heat as its emissions. And in the winter, when it's cold, that heat from the fuel cell process gets piped back into the vehicles for heating the cabin, right?

DN: You don't have to, you don't have to worry about the side effects of that.

FF: Right? It's so toasty in the winter time, it's lovely. It doesn't help us at all in the summer, but it's great in the winter time, if you get on a hydrogen fuel cell bus right now, you'll be very, very comfortable.

DN: All right, so question, two of the hardball questions, also on electric busses, is, what do you see as the future of Southern California Electric busses, and what role do you see Foothill Transit playing as it goes forward, not just in terms of the agency, but I guess as a leader on this? Are there? Do you think that? And we touched on this a lot in the last one. So if you want to skip the second part, we can but are there? Do you think that there are buses that are more conducive to certain types of service, such as shorter lines and other buses, and how does that impact how you guys decide to build your fleet?

FF: Oh, well, I have to say that, like I just mentioned, the CARB innovative clean transit regulations, and that's really driving a lot of us towards those zero emission vehicles. So yes, electric buses will definitely continue to play a role in how we deliver service. It's funny that the question is, are they perhaps more conducive to certain types of service, such as shorter lines; those 24 double deck silver streak buses, that's our longest running line, end to end, and ... I'm finding that this ends up becoming a bit of a demographic question too. So we just got a news alert that the city of Monrovia is going to be closing two middle schools in their city, largely due to lack of enrollment, we're seeing families move farther afield where housing is more affordable, and that is nothing new here. We've been seeing that for some time, and it's starting to have some very real impacts on local services and school districts. That obviously changes how we operate service. So in some cases, shorter lines make sense, like the new line, 295, right? We're talking about getting people from a light rail station to their campus, which may not necessarily have a station directly on the campus. So those shorter lines there, yeah, sure, that would make sense. But overall, on our service profile, people are looking for us to serve longer commutes if they're commuting into downtown LA or into other areas. So it's something that we're taking a very close look at. I think the pandemic taught us a lot of lessons about that. I think that we're listening very, very hard to what our communities need, and making sure that we're being responsive to that. So that kind of got a little bit bigger than the initial part of that question with electric busses, but it fits with the whole service program.

DN: Yeah, I think it fits in. And it's funny because it leads perfectly into our last question, which kind of made me laugh a little bit, which was, why does Foothill run some of its older and slower buses on the Silver Streak?

FF: I laughed at that too, because it was like, slower?

DN: Well, it does say, presumably slower.

FF: Right? And it's, it's, I think, you know, let's, let's take ageism out of it. An older bus is not slower.

DN: And let's, let's also, for those people that know that I'm a distance runner, I'm faster now than I was when I was younger. So yeah, maybe those buses too.

FF: Yes, love that for you. But yeah, um, so let's talk, since they call it the Silver Streak specifically, let's talk about that, because the Silver Streak is is one of our longest lines, and it does have something that not many other bus lines have in our service area, and that's a little number called Kellogg Hill. And Kellogg Hill is a monster. It slows every vehicle down, and it's one of those geographic parts of our service area that we actually have to build in schedule time for it, because it does slow us down a bit. It's not the older buses. So that's the name of an actual Hill. Yes, it's right next to Cal Poly Pomona.

DN: Yeah. In my head, on. Like, is that some sort of fuel standard? Why does --

FF: No, it's on the 10 freeway! Um, so if you take the 10 freeway East out towards Cal Poly Pomona, there's a nice little hill.

DN: I actually know the hill. I just didn't know it's name.

FF: Yeah, it's called Kellogg Hill, and it is the bane of our schedule, because it does slow you down, especially if you're in a larger vehicle. I think it's true for semis and long haul vehicles, as well as our buses. But let's talk about our older buses. I want to give them the credit that they're due. As I mentioned before, buses are generally purchased with federal funding, and that federal funding comes with rules and guidelines. And one of those rules and guidelines is that that dictates what the usable lifetime of a bus is, and that is 12 years or 500,000 miles, whichever comes first. And the reason for that guideline is because those that's taxpayer dollars, and if we're going to be spending anywhere from 850,000-ish dollars for a CNG bus, up to 1.2 million for an HFC bus, you want to make sure you get as much out of that public asset as you can, and so that's why the Federal Transit Administration puts these guidelines on those purchases. So because of the type of service profiles that we run, we generally hit that 500,000 marker before the 12 year timeline hits. And we do replace those buses pretty quickly with new vehicles. We have a rolling procurement cycle where we are getting new buses pretty much every year or every other year. So those older buses. Number one, we don't put anything into service that can't run the service or that isn't safe, and those buses are very well taken care of up until their end of life, and we're ready to retire them. But, yeah, they're not, they're not slower.

DN: They're presumably slower.

FF: I don't, yeah, I mean, it's, I guess we run, we run some of our older buses, because we're trying to be really good stewards of those public tax dollars. You know, of course, we all love a new vehicle. You know, we always love it when we get in a new bus on our route. There's something really special about that. I loved it when the HFCs first came into service. They were shiny. They were new. They had different lighting, they had different flooring. The seats were great, but you always want the new bus when you get them into service, I get that there's an appeal there. But we really do take care of the older ones very carefully, and we love them just as much.

DN: So now we have fun questions, and this one surprised both of us, which was, what detective fiction do you recommend, especially fiction set in Southern California?

FF: Well, the funny thing is, it's like I had an immediate answer. I did not have to research anything. I am an avid book nerd, and I've been lucky in my life to be friends with lots of authors, and the one author I definitely have to recommend is Naomi Hirahara. She writes a ton of mysteries. She lives and she was born in and lives in Pasadena, and a lot of her mysteries are set in the San Gabriel Valley or in Chinatown or in Japantown. I was introduced to her books with she has a series called The Ellie Rush series, who was a bicycle cop, and she takes the Gold Line, aka the A line. Now, she's very transit positive in her writing. Her mysteries are really fantastic. She has another series called the MAS Arai series. She recently came out with some new books that directly deal with the incarceration of Japanese Americans at Manzanar that have won a lot of awards. She's just very astute. She's very clear. She's historically accurate. And I love the little call outs to places that I've grown up around all my life. So Naomi Hirahara, all of her books, all of them, you will love them.

DN: And I am not familiar with this author, but I've pulled up some of her stuff, and so we will have links to her pages so you can buy her books if you're interested in the text that accompanies this podcast. And that wraps us up. And we're at 28:31 and we've tried to aim for 30 minutes, so we're right on, right on here.

FF: Oh, I love it. We're a little ahead of schedule.

DN: Now. We have to sit there and wait for like two minutes.

FF: Right, right, right. We need to, we need to sit at our stop for a minute.

DN: So anyway, thank you so much. Obviously, you know the podcast has been greatly influenced by Foothill Transit support, and we know you've been part of that. So you know my personal thank yous as well as thank you for you know this particular interview, and we'll, we'll catch up in 2025 we'll talk to you then.

FF: I am so looking forward to it. Thanks for all the work that you guys do.