Sacramento, CA

The recent approval of the new state budget eliminated $14 million in public transit funding. To complicate matters, the number of riders has been in decline the past couple of years and local sales tax revenue is down $2.6 million. As a result, Sacramento Regional Transit decided to eliminate four different bus routes and also to cut the number and frequency of stops on some of the other routes. Changes are scheduled to go into effect on January 6th, 2008. The four routes eliminated were routes 64, 91, 105, and 76. Route 64 serves downtown and Sacramento City College, running from Meadowview to 24th Street. Bus 91 is a Citrus Heights route that runs from the Sunrise Mall on Sunrise Blvd to Louis and Orlando. Route 105 serves the Madison area and runs from the Sunrise Mall to Watt Avenue and I-80. Number 76 mainly serves students traveling to and from Sacramento State and runs from American River and La Riviera to the light rail station at University and 65th. I can see this elimination to be particularly irritating to Sacramento State students as many of them live on La Riviera specifically because the bus runs past their apartments. They will still have the Hornet Express, but it is a much longer route and it will take them longer to get to school than it does on route 76.

If tihis wasn’t enough to irritate bus riders in Sacramento, they have also made significant cuts on other routes. For instance, they will no longer be providing Sunday service on 6, 28, 36, 61, or 62. This makes no sense whatsoever for route 6 in particular as it provides service to the Land Park area of town. Land Park is where Fairytale Town, the Sacramento Zoo, Funderland, and Tower Theater are all located. Considering that these are all big tourist spots, I think it’s ridiculous to cut service to them on the weekend when there are likely to be more tourists than there are during the week. It makes me wonder if any of those businesses are aware of this decision yet since they would have surely been against it! (Especially since route 61 to South Land Park was also cut on Sundays!) In addition, it is also one of the only routes that goes to the Pocket/ Greenhaven area of town. Do they not realize that people who live in these areas often need to work on Sundays too? On that note, I wonder if they bothered to inform Mather Airport or any of the businesses at Mather Field that they would be cutting Sunday service for route 28. How about students who pick up route 36 on Folsom to get to Sacramento State? How about all of the people who rely on the Freeport route 62 to get to work downtown on Sundays?

They are also cutting Saturday service on routes 9, 10, 18, and 36. Route 9 and route 10 both service the Carmichael area–apparently the city has decided that people in Carmichael don’t need to get to and from work on Saturdays. What are they supposed to do? Say, “Sorry Boss but I’m no longer able to come to work on Saturdays because it isn’t financially feasible to the city of Sacramento”?! Do they not realize that there are classes scheduled on Saturday mornings at American River College? I’m glad I don’t ride route 10 since my chemistry class is on Saturday mornings! It makes me wonder if they’re trying to get rid of all of the poor college students who rely on free transportation to get them to class. If you look at the cuts on route 18, you’ll see that this trend continues further throughout the bus cuts as well. Bus 18 serves people in Del Paso Heights–people who just so happen to be extremely poor. Many of them can barely pay their rent and now they’re expected to buy cars since they can’t rely on public transportation anymore?! The whole idea is completely ridiculous!

In addition, there will be further cuts as follows:

~ Route 50E will not come as frequently and thye have yet to announce how much they will be reducing it.
~ Freeport route 62 will only be running hourly.
~ Route 63 will now be servicing both 16th Street to the Meadowview light rail station and Sacramento City College to the Power Inn Road light rail station.
~ Route 83 will now only run from 14th Avenue to the Power Inn Road light rail station.
~ Route 21 will be causing mass confusion by having its route extended only at “certain times” whatever that’s supposed to mean…
~ Route 140 will only operate during peak times. They have defined this as every fifteen minutes for three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. However, they have not bothered to tell us specifically when these three hour blocks will be.
~ Finally, route 143 will now only run on the weekends. Tourists want to be especially aware of this since it is currently the most convenient route for both Old Sacramento and the Convention Center.

I’m not trying to say the cuts weren’t needed–because it’s obvious that $16 million makes a huge difference. I just think that the public should have at least had a partial say in which routes to cut back on. They could have held a public hearing or something–maybe allowed us the option to increase the fare rates a little bit in exchange for getting to keep our bus routes to and from work.

The other thing that bothers me is that they are playing it off as being the sole fault of Governor Schwarzenegger. This is disgusting to me because it indicates one of two things. Perhaps the public transit officials are complete imbeciles with no working knowledge of the government–after all, they would have to be in order to say that the Governor is solely responsible for making all budget decisions. The alternative is even more sinister–they are simply trying to defame the Governor and the Republican Party in any way that they can. I’m not at all implying that everything the Republican Party does is good or right. However, I do know that it IS wrong to pass all of the blame to them when they are not the only ones in charge of running California! Furthermore, it is extremely evil to do so. After all, there are people in this country who have not had the requisite education to make their own informed decisions and opinions. They lack the ability to formulate their own educated thoughts and thus rely on others to do so for them. All too often, this means that they are brainwashed into believing whatever is popular instead of being given the means to decide for themselves–turned into little more than mindless voting zombies for whoever and wahtever the sun currently shines on. It is foul and underhanded in a way that makes me shudder to imagine what it means for our country in the long run…

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