Ski Bus Changes for this year.

Image via WikipediaUTA is making some major changes to the ski bus service this year.

2008-2009 Ski Bus Changes

The 2009-2009 winter season marks some very important changes to the UTA Ski bus service. These changes allow UTA to provide more capacity to the resorts during peak ski service times, provide direct buses to Snowbird and Alta, service the University of Utah and extend the local service of route 220 to the 9400 South Park ‘n’ Ride lot and route 72 to the 6200 South and Wasatch Blvd Park ‘n’ Ride lot.

UTA has also collaborated with UDOT on installing new parking information signs at the Wasatch Blvd, Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood canyon Park ‘n’ Ride lots. These electronic signs show the available stalls at each lots. This information is also available in real time on the UTA website.

The ski service has been divided into 4 main groups:

Canyon Shuttle Service

Feeder Service

Worker Service

Local Service

Canyon Shuttle Service

Route 972 to Alta (services Cliff Lodge) from 9400 S PnR

Route 982 to Snowbird from 9400 S PnR

Route 993 to Snowbird and Alta from 6200 PnR (resort to resort transportation)

Route 961 to Solitude and Brighton from 6200 S PnR

The Canyon Shuttle Service will utilize the Park ‘n’ Ride lots at 6200 South Wasatch and as the Ski Service Hubs. These lots have more parking capacity than those at the mouths of the Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. Originating the Canyon Shuttle Service from the Park ‘n’ Ride lots to the resorts allows UTA to provide more rider capacity during peak travel times utilizing fewer buses. Although this change adds capacity, it also forces riders to make a transfer at the Park ‘n’ Ride lots if their trip does not begin at the lot.

Feeder Service

Route 952 to 6200 S PnR from DWNTWN via U of U

Route 953 to 6200 S PnR from 3900 S TRAX

Route 955 to 9400 S PnR and 6200 S PnR from 10600 S

The Feeder Service provides access to the ski buses from downtown, 3900 South and 10600 South. These primarily stop at the hotels for guests to use the service. The major change in this service is routing the Downtown bus to 400 South to the University and then along Foothill to the 6200 South Park ‘n’ Ride lot rather than I-15 to 7200 South and up the canyon. This will provide new access to University students.

Worker Service

Route 973 to Alta from 7200 S TRAX

Route 983 to Snowbird from 7200 S TRAX only

Route 991 to Snowbird and Alta from 3900 S TRAX

Route 962 to Solitude and Brighton from 7200 S TRAX

The Worker Service trips run earlier in the morning and later in the evening and cater to resort employees.

Local Service

Route 72 to 6200 S PnR from 7200 S TRAX

Route 220 to 9400 S PnR from Intermodal Hub (Salt Lake Central)

UTA is able extend route 220 into Sandy to the 9400 South 2000 East Park ‘n’ Ride lot and route 72 to the 6200 South Park ‘n’ Ride lot. These changes will be year round. These routes also complement the Feeder service and provide additional access to the Canyon Shuttle Service. They provide ski access to hotels and residences that formally had access to ski buses. These routes are an essential part of the ski service.

EFC (Electronic Fare Collection)

Electronic Fare Collection will continue to be an integral part of the Ski Service. Updated EFC equipment is being installed on the ski bus fleet. Contactless credit and debit cards will be accepted not only on ski service, but fleet wide.

Ski Bus service article

Snow boom packs UTA ski buses

Apparently the people riding the ski buses don't like the buses being packed although at 70,000 per month you are still only talking 2300 per day.

Their complaints about the service point to some of the reasons why the service is such a waste of resources. Since the ski buses have a large number of seats removed to have ski racks inside the bus (this is true of the old buses also), there is very limited seating inside the buses. So the buses may be cramped even though the load would only be a full seated load on a standard transit bus.

I have no problem with operating a ski bus service per say. However, when you have valuable pieces of capital resources sitting 8 months out of the year, you have an severe imbalance of human resource needs, added to the fact that you are not currently providing excellent bus service to the riders who ride with you 12 months out of the year, clearly something needs to be done.

Fares going up...

UTA bus 05003
Originally uploaded by jmdspk

Don' t forget that UTA fares will be going up on New Years Day. Oh wait fares will be going up for everyone but ski bus riders on Wednesday since there is not service on Tuesday except the ski buses.

Base fare will go from $1.60 to $1.75.

Happy New Year!!

UTA and new ski buses...

Ski Bus stop downtown SLC
Originally uploaded by wfrankl2

UTA adds new ski buses to fleet

This article mentions the new buses now being utilized on the ski bus service. In years passed I have railed against the ski bus service as it is now set due to its high cost and great waste of capital resources.

This article allows a perfect examination of what a waste of capital resources it is to run the service.

My big problem with the ski bus service is the buses run only 4 months a year then sit for the other 8 except for an occasional trip. This greatly wastes precious capital resources on a very special limited service. While Justin Jones may say UTA is not a social service agency, the ski bus service proves him wrong.

Now lets take the cost of one of these new buses at 3.6 million. That means that the capital cost per revenue day on a ski bus is $2600 while the revenue cost of the same bus being used in regular service is only $1050. Instead of wasting valuable capital resources on the ski bus service they should instead use those resources on regular routes. While some people may not like what they hear, if we are to continue running the ski bus service like it has for the last 31 years then UTA should be using buses on these routes that its about to retire. Since UTA usually has buses sitting around waiting to head to auction, it should use these buses for the ski bus service every year and leave the newer buses to other roles. That way a vital capital resource is not being wasted.

As I have mentioned before in the past, either UTA needs to contract this service out to a company that would provide the buses or it needs to find a use of the buses the rest of the year. While Zions Park already has it's own buses, that is a perfect example of what should be done with the ski buses instead of sitting in the garage. It is travesty to be wasting a 3.6 million dollar piece of equipment when it sits more than 66% of the time.

Danger with the Bus Riders Union

I have mentioned it before but after the complaint session this past week about the service cuts and the calls for a bus riders union, I think it's time for me to go over again the problems I have with it and the problems it can cause especially since I saw some of the rhetoric coming out at the protest.

The biggest thing I see happing is a direct attack on the rail programs. By demonizing the rail programs they create an us versus them attitude which will only lead to failure on both sides. First and foremost the voters want rail and have voted for it twice. Rail construction is not taking away from bus service.

In fact by making blatant attacks on TRAX and FrontRunner they are actually doing more harm than good. If you look at what financial numbers the UTA presents (which are not that great but they are all we have to work with), there are some things that are clear:
1. That revenues have gone up over the last 10 years.
2. That revenues went up substantially when both TRAX lines opened
3. That bus ridership has gone down over the last 10 years (and it started before TRAX).
4. That TRAX gets 14 million riders per year and the bus system gets only 21 million
TOTAL and that includes they entire system.

So what the numbers say is that the two TRAX lines are carrying 2/3rds as many riders as the entire bus system.

What this says is the problem is not TRAX but the bus system and how UTA is running it. Also you have to look at our cities as a whole and why they are not attracting bus riders.

Instead of looking at TRAX as the big evil one take a look at some issues that UTA has:
1. Poor equipment utilization: Ski Buses and Fast Buses are an example.
2. Almost no bus shelters in the system: Considering are weather extremes shelters are needed. Denver is doing a much better job providing shelters. Blame UTA and the cities.
3. UTA is falling into the same transit mentality planning which says duplication is bad (only in the way UTA does it: 307 and 320 on top of each other, the old 11 and 7 on top of each other, the list goes on).
4. UTA by trying to avoid duplication actually worsens it's market penetration possibilities and decreases ridership potential.
5. The UTA has gone to a grid systems. Grid systems have proven they only work if bus service is more frequent than every 20-minutes. While that is good for their new frequent routes, all the other routes are hurting because of the grid design.
6. Where UTA has made people transfer, like on Redwood, State, crosstown routes at TRAX, they did not create time transfers. In fact in some cases the if you are traveling westbound and need to transfer to a route beyond TRAX, the bus you needs leaves 2 minutes before you get there. UTA needs to work on timed transfers.
7. The way the buses like 4500 South/4700 South, 3900 South/4100 South were cut at TRAX also shows that UTA doesn't understand marketing dynamics. Life doesn't end at the TRAX stations it is only a stopping point.

UTA has problems but attacking the rail program is not the solution but attacking the direct issues with the bus system is.

Bus Assignments Need Work

Many years ago I had a close family friend who drove for the Southern California Rapid Transit District. It was not uncommon for the RTD to put a 30-foot bus on a route that should have nothing but a 40-foot bus and would have 40-foot buses on a route that should have only 30 foot buses.

The problem at the time was that the RTD had such a diverse fleet, many different types of buses, from many different sources so it was difficult for them to insure the right bus was on the right line. Of course this was in the days before they high tech computers of today.

Today UTA has a much more standardized fleet than the RTD back in the late 70's early 80's, but seems to have the same trouble with assigning buses even with the advent of computers.

A perfect example of this is route 22. This route is one of the busier routes the UTA has, yet many times it is assigned 35-foot low floor buses. It is bad enough that the low floor buses reduces seating capacity, then you add the fact that you are using a smaller bus often leads to standing room only on the route north of 3300 South. I can see running low floors on this route but they should only have 40-foot buses on this route.

There is no reason why this cannot be done. In fact if you ride the same route every day you will find that often you will ride the same bus number every day. When I road the route 24, I road the same Orion V buses on the regular basis. The other bus I rode was usually assigned bus 9222. So why can't they make sure the routes that need the 40-footers have them?

The situation is gets more ridiculous when there is special events going on. When the American Public Transit Association had there national meeting in Salt Lake, a rodeo was held for bus drivers across the country. Many of the newest Gillig Advantages was pulled from revenue service carrying their customers and used them instead for the rodeo. During this time I rode another very bus route line 37 which runs to Magna. This is another route that runs with standing loads on many runs. Because they wasted buses on the rodeo, they had to assign 35-foot ski buses to this tripper. Not only is the bus smaller but several sets of seats are removed for ski's.

Why? They wanted to show off for APTA and showed how they could care less about their customers that ride with them every day. Why couldn't the rodeo use the ski buses which are sitting anyway? It would make much more sense to use the ski buses on the rodeo and keep the other buses on their regular assignments for their PAYING customers.

The sad thing is that UTA is one of the better transit agencies when treating the customer. However, it is clear that there still needs to be changes at UTA to make it more customer friendly. If it is going to attract the option riders, UTA needs to reinvent is service.