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Contact: Yvonne Morrow
Title: WestCAT Marketing Director
Office: (510) 724-3331 ext. 17
Email: yvonne@westcat.org
For Immediate Release
Posted 13 March 2009
New WestCAT Bus Schedules, New Hercules Transit Center – Spring 2009
Pinole, March 13, 2009– During their regularly scheduled meeting in February the WestCAT Board of Directors approved a 1st tier of service cuts to coincide with the opening of the new Hercules Transit this Spring. There are no plans to raise fares with this new schedule.
WestCAT’s financial crisis continues to be the driving factor behind the planned service cuts. Staff has worked to reduce service by an amount that best matches projected revenues available to WestCAT for the remainder of this year, as well as FY2010. The goal of the changes is to keep as much service on the street as possible while achieving a sustainable level of service. The planned changes as detailed below reduce annual revenue service operating hours from around 100,000 to just below 95,000.
Weekday Routes 10, 11, and 15 will operate 40-minute headways all day (they currently operate 30-minutes peak and 60 minutes off peak), a savings of 1,460 annual operating hours. Route 12 will operate the same, but will also be re-routed slightly off Sheppard Street in Hercules to a portion of Redwood Road not currently served by WestCAT to address concerns from Sheppard Street residents. Changes to this route reduce the service by 225 annual operating hours. Weekday service on the Route 19 is to be eliminated, but Saturday service will remain intact. The route has been slated for elimination because most of the area it currently serves can be accessed utilizing several other of WestCAT’s routes (Route 16, 18, and JPX) and the elimination equates to an annual savings of 4,000 operating hours. In addition, the last two runs of the Route C3 (Contra Costa College) will be eliminated, equating to a reduction of 385 annual operating hours.
The late night J (after 8pm) will operate on a 40- minute headway (currently operates at 30-minute intervals). This change equates to a reduction of 700 annual operating hours. On Saturday evening the J service will operate on a 40-minute headway (it currently operates at 30-minute intervals), equating to a reduction of 250 annual operating hours. Lastly, the Sunday J will operate on a 40-minute headway all day (it currently operates at 30-minute intervals), a reduction of 250 annual operating hours.
WestCAT staff member Robert Thompson was able to utilize new Trapeze scheduling software for the first time in producing the schedule and the software has enabled a number of efficiencies to be incorporated into the schedule. Savings have been made to both deadhead time (14% reduction in M-F deadhead time & a 45% reduction in weekend deadhead hours) and lay over time (40% reduction in M-F layover time & a 45% reduction in weekend layover time) thus reducing operational costs. These savings are in addition to those outlined above and will be of benefit to the WestCAT budget.
In terms of implementation of the above schedule changes, weather has caused some minor delays on the construction and opening of the Hercules Transit Center. We are currently anticipating being able to begin operation of the new schedule around mid April. More information regarding the relocation of the Hercules Transit Center is located on the City of Hercules’s website at www.ci.hercules.ca.us as well as at www.westcat.org. .
The WestCAT staff will monitor the operational costs over the coming months, will engage in all discussions relating to funding, and if necessary will bring a further level of cuts to the Board if levels of funding do not reach current expectations, or if we again experience major increases in expenses, such as the cost of diesel fuel.
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