GET orders study to figure out how to best serve future bus riders
| Friday, Jun 26 2009 06:16 PM
Last Updated Friday, Jun 26 2009 06:23 PM
Images
Casey Christie / The Californian Golden Empire Transit (GET) CEO, Karen King, left, and Chairwoman, Patricia Norris, pose for a photo at the downtown GET station on Chester Avenue. GET is rethinking the future of public transit in Kern County.
Casey Christie / The Californian Lots of afternoon activity at the Chester Avenue GET station downtown as GET rethinks the future of public transit in Kern County.
Casey Christie / The Californian Bus riders mull around the Chester Avenue bus terminal as they wait to jump on a bus, while Golden Empire Transit rethinks its future.
Bakersfield's public transit system simply cannot serve everybody, so it's not going to try any longer.
"We just can't do that cost-effectively," the CEO of Golden Empire Transit, Karen King, conceded Thursday in an interview at the agency's bustling downtown hub.
Don't get her wrong: King's not giving up, just refocusing on what GET can and should do best.
So, in an effort to reinforce its relevance while also influencing public policy-makers on issues as far-reaching as housing density and air pollution, GET is teaming up with the Kern Council of Governments to order a study of local public transit.
The $300,000 study is about to go out to bid, and could take up to two years to produce. It is expected to contain recommendations for immediate action, as well as suggestions for measures to be taken in five-year increments over the next 25 years.
Much of the idea is to determine how GET can best serve the people it considers most likely to use the service in the foreseeable future: commuters, students, environmentally minded travelers and people with limited access to cars.
Plans for the study come at a time of optimism at GET.
The agency recently received $8.2 million as part of the federal economic stimulus. And its year-over-year ridership numbers are up 29 percent through May, thanks partly to commuting patterns that still reflect, to some degree, last year's fast increase in fuel prices.
Also, GET is riding high from a successful public-private partnership that created a commuter route between Bakersfield and the IKEA facility at the foot of The Grapevine. King said she hopes to see more projects like it.
Gaining influence
Beyond that, GET's clout among other public agencies may be on the rise. A new anti-sprawl law gives public transit agencies a seat at regional planning discussions, while a separate law aimed at curbing global climate change requires widespread shifts that may encourage the use of public transit.
In the past, public transit has not been a focus of local government, GET Chairwoman Patricia Norris said.
But now, as city and county officials take a fresh look at metropolitan Bakersfield's master plan, King said GET aims to play a more influential role -- especially on the topic of growth, which she said cannot be stopped but can be planned for wisely.
"Part of what we're hoping is that (the study) will capture the attention and the imagination of policy-makers in the Bakersfield area," she said.
One likely outcome of the study, King said, is a reordering of GET's bus routes, which have not been overhauled since the mid-1980s. She hopes that any such change will result in faster service, and that it will reflect population growth trends.
GET's funding partner for the study, the council of governments, has essentially the same goal: greater efficiency and higher speed.
"The problem is, it takes (commuters) three hours under the current routing system" to get to their destination, the council's administrative analyst, Robert Phipps, said. "That's a disincentive."
Agency Vice Chairman Howard Silver said he anticipates that the study will lead not only to more cooperation with businesses in the area, but also better service for GET riders.
"I hope to be able to see in the not-too-distant future ... a system double the size that we have now that can really make a difference to the citizens we see in the community," Silver said.
