SMC employees, students to ride for free on BBB
SMC Beginning this fall, Santa Monica College students and employees with I.D. will be able to ride any Big Blue Bus line any time for free.
In an historic move designed to improve access to the college and to reduce traffic, noise and air pollution, the SMC Board of Trustees voted unanimously Monday night to approve the “Any Line, Any Time” program with the BBB. The program will go into effect in late August when the fall semester begins.
“This is an extraordinary commitment on the part of the Board of Trustees and the Associated Students to support my vision of creating a reliable way for students and employees to get to campus without having to pay the high price of gas, battle traffic and waste time looking for parking spaces,” said SMC President Chui Tsang.
“Only a very few public colleges in California have attempted to provide no-charge transit passes.”
The new program will require an SMC financial commitment of $1.2 million in 2008-09, of which approximately one-third will come from the Associated Students, one-third from the SMC general fund, and the remainder from new revenues generated by increased parking and Associated Students fees.
The action is a major expansion of SMC’s transportation initiative, launched in 2007 in partnership with the BBB, when free access to three bus routes — two of them newly established — was first made available to the college’s students and employees. The routes are the Line 6 to Mar Vista, the Crosstown Ride to midtown Santa Monica, and the Sunset Ride connecting SMC’s satellite campuses and new parking lot.
“We are incredibly impressed with the initiative of the SMC student body and administration toward advocating public transit use,” said Stephanie Negriff, BBB director of transit services. “We are confident that this partnership will significantly reduce the number of cars on local streets.
“With the support of the college, we also hope to address regional traffic issues by introducing Rapid 7 service along the Pico Boulevard corridor to more efficiently transport SMC students and staff from campus to the Rimpau Transit Center in mid-city Los Angeles, and possibly all the way to the Metro Purple Line station at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue.”
The proposed new route, which is expected to be approved and launched by the beginning of the fall semester, would also be free for SMC students and employees.
BBB officials have estimated that the new and expanded transit services implemented in 2007 have reduced vehicle trips to campus by 6,000 a day.
In an analysis done last fall, the BBB found that new and expanded service on Line 6, Crosstown Ride and Sunset Ride have collectively resulted in more than 2,300 boardings every weekday. The Sunset Ride now ranks eighth among the 19 Big Blue Bus lines in terms of service productivity, and the Crosstown Ride has experienced a 133 percent increase in ridership from fall 2006 to fall 2007.
In addition, bus officials estimate that the new “Any Line, Any Time” program will result in more than 5,000 new boardings of SMC students and employees system-wide, over and above the current program.
The Associated Students initiated the “Any Line, Any Time” program, voting in March to raise the optional Associated Students fee from the current amount of $10 to a new amount of $19, and to support the administrative raise of the optional I.D. fee from $8 to $13 to pay for the expanded service. Students felt it was important to provide free service to all students on every BBB line.
The increases will result in an estimated $620,000, according to an SMC staff report. Fees were last adjusted in 1996. Additionally, staff intends to increase parking by $10 per semester, beginning in the fall, resulting in new net revenue of $150,000.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said SMC student Shelley Kaye just before she boarded a bus on Stewart Street. “Some may complain [about the increase in cost,] but in the end it is going to pay for something that is of benefit to everyone. I think it’s money well spent.”
Rob Rader, president of the Board of Trustees, said there are some concerns about over expanding, but SMC and BBB will closely monitor ridership to see if any adjustments need to be made. Rader praised the student body for its commitment to being good neighbors and to protecting the environment by getting more cars off the streets.
“What I am most proud of with regards to this is not what Santa Monica College as an organization has done, but what the students have done, saying this didn’t go far enough initially and they wanted to make sure the funds were available to not only subsidize students, but faculty and administrators,”Rader said.“The students are paying the extra amount for everybody because they feel it is the right thing to do, and I am humbled by their civic duty, their commitment to principals.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 16, 2008. Read the original PDF.