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Humboldt Transit Authority’s plan to increase local service in the Garberville-Redway area and to offer commuter service from Garberville to Eureka, which will require replacement of the current Quail bus service for seniors and disabled residents, has sparked controversy and outright opposition from local senior advocates.
Nel Fregoso, general manager of HTA, spoke with the Redwood Times in Eureka on Tuesday in the interest of providing more detailed and accurate information about the proposed plan.
The schedule for the proposed new service in Southern Humboldt, which is expected to begin in January 2010, will include two interconnected bus routes.
First, the familiar Quail bus will provide service to the general public as well as seniors.
It will make eight to ten round trips per day, Monday through Friday, between Garberville and Miranda. Originating at the south end of Garberville, the bus will make two stops on Locust Street and then proceed to Redway.
In Redway, the bus will stop at Redwoods Rural Health Center and then make six stops in the main part of town, including a stop near Shop Smart and a stop at the Healy Senior Center.
Leaving Redway, the bus will head for the Avenue of the Giants, making a stop in Phillipsville and one near South Fork High School in Miranda. It will turn around at the former Miranda Junior High after letting off and picking up residents of the nearby senior care home, and make the same stops on the way back to Garberville.
Along this local route the bus will provide door-to-door service to any senior or disabled person within three-quarter miles of the route. Fregoso explained that she Googled the addresses of everyone currently riding the Quail, then designed the route to make sure all of them could be served within the three-quarter-mile limit.
The second proposed service, three to five round trips each week day from Garberville to Fortuna and Eureka, will be provided in a somewhat larger bus of the same type as the Quail bus, which will hold 30 passengers.
This commute-type service will begin at the departure area at the south end of Garberville. Stops will be made at the freeway entrance near Miranda, freeway-entrance stops at Myers Flat and Weott, the Redwood Village Shopping Center in Fortuna. The run will terminate at the Bayshore Mall in Eureka, where passengers can connect with any of three different bus routes within Eureka.
Limiting stops on this run will reduce travel time between Garberville and Eureka to a realistic and convenient schedule that people can use daily for work, school, shopping, doctor visits, jury duty, and other business that must be conducted in the urban hub.
Fregoso believes that the previous bus service between Southern Humboldt and Eureka failed because the bus made so many stops that a round trip could take as much as five hours, making it unfeasible for most people.
According to the proposed schedule, a commuter bus should leave Garberville each morning early enough for workers to reach their jobs in time, followed by a midmorning, midday, mid afternoon, and evening bus. A second bus will follow a corresponding schedule starting in Eureka and ending in Garberville, thus providing five daily round trips in each direction.
Timing of the local runs will be coordinated with the commute service so that residents can get to Garberville in time for the bus to Eureka and get back from Eureka in time to catch a local bus to their destination.
”This is an opportunity for the people who live in Southern Humboldt to live in a rural area and not have to use your personal vehicle,” Fregoso said.
Fregoso added that she is particularly concerned about the needs of seniors and disabled persons. “I’m listening and trying to incorporate every suggestion,” she said, adding, “Seniors and disabled persons are a huge part of our ridership in our existing systems.”
In the Garberville-Redway area, current Quail riders will have the same service they have now, she continued, only it will be available many times a day, five days a week. They will ride the same bus, have door-to-door service from home to destination, and will have driver assistance as needed.
Additionally, the schedule will allow more flexibility. Fregoso pointed out that seniors going to the lunches at the Healy Center now have to leave right after their meal, but with the new schedule, they can also choose to stay for cards, bingo, and other parts of the program and catch a later bus home.
One of the most problematic concerns for current Quail riders is the loss of door-to-door service in Eureka. After arriving at the Bayshore Mall on the bus from Garberville, able-bodied riders can take the Eureka buses, which will deliver them to the hospital, medical office complexes, social service offices, and shopping centers. Other destinations may require some walking.
Eureka buses follow several different interconnecting routes. Riders can purchase a day pass on their first Eureka bus, which will allow them to ride the system all day without transfers. Additionally, all Eureka buses have low floors and are easy to board. “Many of our seniors ride them daily,” Fregoso said.
Dial-A-Ride is the option for the less-able bodied seniors and disabled persons, Fregoso added. It does require an application and 24-hour notice, but is used successfully by many people. HTA and the Healy Center can be communications “clearing houses” so that passengers need to make only one phone call to set up Dial-A-Ride appointments.
In response to a question about seniors who want to do several different things in Eureka in one day, such as a doctor’s visit in the morning, followed by lunch and shopping, Fregoso pointed out that because the operator’s driving hours are limited by law, the current Quail driver must leave Eureka by 3:30 p.m. If the Quail arrives in Eureka at 11:30 a.m. and each rider must be delivered and picked up at a different destination, that leaves little time for an individual to do more than one thing.
Likewise, if a passenger has a doctor’s appointment at 2 p.m., for example, but the visit is delayed so that she misses the Quail’s 3:30 p.m. deadline, she is stuck in Eureka. By using a city bus, or by prudently scheduling a late pickup with Dial-A-Ride, the patient can get to Bayshore Mall in time for a later bus back to Garberville.
Fregoso emphasizes that this service will be available five days a week, affording more flexibility for riders planning for appointments and activities in Eureka. In Eureka, riders can also transfer to Redwood Transit Service buses for trips to Arcata, McKinleyville, the airport, Trinidad, Willow Creek, Humboldt State University, Ferndale, and Loleta. Day passes are also available on RTS.
For students, Fregoso is proposing that one of the morning buses from Garberville will arrive in Fortuna in time for transfer to the bus going to College of the Redwoods. From Fortuna riders can also connect to RTS buses going to Redwood Memorial Hospital, nearby medical centers, Riverlodge, and several other destinations as far south as Scotia.
Regarding the controversial issue of the Quail’s current fare box return, Fregoso explained that the Quail had always been required to raise at least 10% of its operating costs from fares but has never actually done so. She said the Healy Senior Center had been told that many times.
For years HTA essentially looked the other way as the fare box return was met with fundraising and donations rather than actual ridership, she said, but Caltrans, which makes the rules for all public transit in California, will no longer allow that.
The majority of funds for HTA and other public transit in California comes from sales tax, at a rate of one-quarter of one percent of all sales tax collected within the jurisdiction; Humboldt County, in this case. The state wants to make certain that this revenue is serving a substantial number of persons, and fare box return is a measure of that.
The proposed new routes have three years to prove their fare box return. Operating costs for each system are estimated at $200,000 per year, so to make the required 10% fare box return, both the local and the commuter systems will have to show fare box returns of $20,000 in one year. Fregoso said that the fare box return requirement for the general public has recently dropped from 25% of cost to 10%, consistent with the requirement for “para-transit” (assisted transit for seniors and disabled persons).
Fares for the Southern Humboldt local route on the Quail bus will be $1.50 for the general public, $1 for seniors and disabled persons. Fares for the commuter bus will be $4 for the general public, and $3 for seniors and disabled persons. Fares are per ride from any point of departure to any destination on the route. Monthly passes will be available on the commuter route, but rates are not established yet.
Fares on Eureka Transit Service are currently $1.40 for the general public, $1.10 for seniors, disabled, and children. Day passes, allowing unlimited rides on all routes that day, are $3.20 and $2.70. On Redwood Transit Services, fares are $2.50 and $2.25, with a $1.50 “in town” fare if you are traveling from point-to-point within a city. Day passes on RTS are $4 for unlimited rides all day on any RTS route or combination of routes.
Fregoso reminded us that HTA is still taking comments on the proposed service, and it is on the agenda of the HTA board’s monthly meetings, which occur at 9 a.m. on the third Wednesday of each month at the HTA office at 133 V Street in Eureka. Any member of the public may attend the board meetings and comment in person at the appropriate time. HTA will also welcomes written comments. Emailed comments should be sent to nel@hta.org.
Humboldt Transit Authority is an independent governmental agency based on a joint powers agreement between Humboldt County and five cities. It is governed by a board of directors comprised of one representative from each city and two from Humboldt County, including Second District Supervisor Clif Clendenen.
Additionally, regulations from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and several other state and federal agencies affect the operations of the HTA.
California state regulations for public transit are compiled in the Transportation Development Act. Fregoso suggests that persons who want to know more about these regulations, which restrict what HTA can do, including fare box return requirements, should check them online at www.dot.ca.gov/hg/MassTrans/.
