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Planning for a Longer DASH
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| The Downtown DASH, which operates 66 buses and six lines, could be retooled to include longer hours and an expanded service area. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
Transit Officials Get Rolling on Study for Expanding Downtown Bus Line
by Kathryn Maese
Need a quick ride to the new Ralphs grocery store next year? Maybe a lift down Figueroa to L.A. Live in 2009? With the Downtown population expected to swell to more than 54,000 people by 2009 and new retail and entertainment venues cropping up, transit officials are rethinking their approach to the community's popular DASH bus service.
The omnipresent blue and white vehicles that ferry workers, jurists, residents and tourists from one end of the Central City to the other is getting primed for a revamp of its routes and hours. The fare will remain 25 cents.
The city's Department of Transportation (DOT), which operates the 66-bus fleet, has launched a yearlong study that will target the habits of current riders, quiz business owners and developers about new projects, and call upon the area's 25,000 residents to divulge where they spend their time. The goal is to create a roadmap for the 34-year-old bus service in the coming years, eliminating some lines and tweaking others to better reflect travel patterns that haven't been reviewed since 1996.
"We're working on DASH all the time but this is a watershed to look at it comprehensively," said Phil Aker, a DOT transit planner who helped devise the system. "We want to serve residents who are using their cars to make intra-Downtown trips outside the hours we operate DASH."
Project officials plan to examine two areas. The first will address Downtown's "activity centers" during the day, namely popular restaurants, shopping destinations and new work hubs such as the coming police headquarters at First and Main or government offices moving to the Transamerica Building. Aker said the effort will take six months.
The second part, community outreach to residents and other Downtown stakeholders, is expected to take about a year, with surveys, roundtables and meetings. Planners say they hope to gain information on new destinations such as Pitfire Pizza on Second and Main, which stays open until 10 p.m. to serve the after-hours population, and the Roy's restaurant on Eighth and Figueroa that has lines out the door almost nightly.
"The geography is so much different from [the last DASH study] because of all the projects that have come online since then," said Eric Richardson, a member of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Transportation and Public Works Committee. "I don't think it's a major blowup of the whole system and that we have to start over, but instead we should look at how to take the resources we have and adjust them to serve the current population."
Still, the DOT is moving cautiously on the residential front, since many of the 19,535 condos and apartments planned or under construction won't open for two to five years. What's more, fluctuations in the economy and real estate market could present a different reality down the road.
DASH planners found that out the hard way in the early 1990s, when they mistakenly thought Downtown's new office hub would develop just west of the 110 Freeway. They invested most of their resources in running lines there for a boom that never materialized.
"We want to satisfy a need but given that we're in an era of scarce resources the thing we don't want to do is launch [expanded service] and have no one fill the seats," said Aker.
More Riders Than Ever
It's a tricky undertaking to retool a bus service in an increasingly tight budgetary climate. Despite a 35% ridership boost in the last five years, the Downtown DASH - and overall community DASH system - operates with a deficit. Though the bulk of its funding comes from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), it relies on the city to pitch in the shortfall.
There are no plans to raise the 25-cent, one-way fare either, Aker said, since the average ride tends to be only a few blocks and the price is one of the system's prime selling points. The DOT is looking into securing regional funding for the expansion plan, as well as having the MTA reimburse DASH for passengers who use a bus pass to connect to other Metro services. They make up one-third of the riders.
The Downtown DASH transports roughly 8 million people a year on six lines labeled "A" through "F." The propane-fueled buses, which seat 24 people, pick up passengers every five to 10 minutes. The weekend Downtown Discovery route takes riders to popular destinations such as Chinatown, Little Tokyo, the Jewelry District and the Historic Core. The study will determine if there is demand to make the route round-trip.
The busiest line is "E," which carries riders from Bixel to Seventh to Los Angeles streets past the Jewelry District, Macy's, Seventh Metro, the 7+Fig shopping mall and the Fashion District. Second busiest is route "F," which heads south on Figueroa and then west on Exposition and north on Vermont to Jefferson. The line mainly carries USC students and residents of the dense communities south of Downtown who work in the area.
The least used route is "C," which heads into South Park near Staples Center - a hotbed of housing and commercial development that includes the coming L.A. Live entertainment district. "I honestly don't know why it does as poorly as it does," Aker said. "That's one of the cautions about residents and the new Downtown. But we're crossing our fingers it will get better."
The DASH continues to evolve from its early days when late Downtown Councilman Gilbert Lindsey envisioned a transit service based on Disneyland's long, open-air tram, one that people could hop onto San Francisco-style as it ambled down the streets. Concerns over safety eventually won out, and the Central City got a more practical urban bus system that has nonetheless become an icon of sorts.
Few if any major metropolitan cities have their own transit providers; most rely on regional service.
"To have your own bus system with service every five minutes is rare," Aker said. "Downtown has a very distinctive edge with its own transit network, with freeways, Metro and the DASH. The test will be getting more butts in seats."
Contact Kathryn Maese at kathryn@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 11/07/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
The omnipresent blue and white vehicles that ferry workers, jurists, residents and tourists from one end of the Central City to the other is getting primed for a revamp of its routes and hours. The fare will remain 25 cents.
The city's Department of Transportation (DOT), which operates the 66-bus fleet, has launched a yearlong study that will target the habits of current riders, quiz business owners and developers about new projects, and call upon the area's 25,000 residents to divulge where they spend their time. The goal is to create a roadmap for the 34-year-old bus service in the coming years, eliminating some lines and tweaking others to better reflect travel patterns that haven't been reviewed since 1996.
"We're working on DASH all the time but this is a watershed to look at it comprehensively," said Phil Aker, a DOT transit planner who helped devise the system. "We want to serve residents who are using their cars to make intra-Downtown trips outside the hours we operate DASH."
Project officials plan to examine two areas. The first will address Downtown's "activity centers" during the day, namely popular restaurants, shopping destinations and new work hubs such as the coming police headquarters at First and Main or government offices moving to the Transamerica Building. Aker said the effort will take six months.
The second part, community outreach to residents and other Downtown stakeholders, is expected to take about a year, with surveys, roundtables and meetings. Planners say they hope to gain information on new destinations such as Pitfire Pizza on Second and Main, which stays open until 10 p.m. to serve the after-hours population, and the Roy's restaurant on Eighth and Figueroa that has lines out the door almost nightly.
"The geography is so much different from [the last DASH study] because of all the projects that have come online since then," said Eric Richardson, a member of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Transportation and Public Works Committee. "I don't think it's a major blowup of the whole system and that we have to start over, but instead we should look at how to take the resources we have and adjust them to serve the current population."
Still, the DOT is moving cautiously on the residential front, since many of the 19,535 condos and apartments planned or under construction won't open for two to five years. What's more, fluctuations in the economy and real estate market could present a different reality down the road.
DASH planners found that out the hard way in the early 1990s, when they mistakenly thought Downtown's new office hub would develop just west of the 110 Freeway. They invested most of their resources in running lines there for a boom that never materialized.
"We want to satisfy a need but given that we're in an era of scarce resources the thing we don't want to do is launch [expanded service] and have no one fill the seats," said Aker.
It's a tricky undertaking to retool a bus service in an increasingly tight budgetary climate. Despite a 35% ridership boost in the last five years, the Downtown DASH - and overall community DASH system - operates with a deficit. Though the bulk of its funding comes from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), it relies on the city to pitch in the shortfall.
There are no plans to raise the 25-cent, one-way fare either, Aker said, since the average ride tends to be only a few blocks and the price is one of the system's prime selling points. The DOT is looking into securing regional funding for the expansion plan, as well as having the MTA reimburse DASH for passengers who use a bus pass to connect to other Metro services. They make up one-third of the riders.
The Downtown DASH transports roughly 8 million people a year on six lines labeled "A" through "F." The propane-fueled buses, which seat 24 people, pick up passengers every five to 10 minutes. The weekend Downtown Discovery route takes riders to popular destinations such as Chinatown, Little Tokyo, the Jewelry District and the Historic Core. The study will determine if there is demand to make the route round-trip.
The busiest line is "E," which carries riders from Bixel to Seventh to Los Angeles streets past the Jewelry District, Macy's, Seventh Metro, the 7+Fig shopping mall and the Fashion District. Second busiest is route "F," which heads south on Figueroa and then west on Exposition and north on Vermont to Jefferson. The line mainly carries USC students and residents of the dense communities south of Downtown who work in the area.
The least used route is "C," which heads into South Park near Staples Center - a hotbed of housing and commercial development that includes the coming L.A. Live entertainment district. "I honestly don't know why it does as poorly as it does," Aker said. "That's one of the cautions about residents and the new Downtown. But we're crossing our fingers it will get better."
The DASH continues to evolve from its early days when late Downtown Councilman Gilbert Lindsey envisioned a transit service based on Disneyland's long, open-air tram, one that people could hop onto San Francisco-style as it ambled down the streets. Concerns over safety eventually won out, and the Central City got a more practical urban bus system that has nonetheless become an icon of sorts.
Few if any major metropolitan cities have their own transit providers; most rely on regional service.
"To have your own bus system with service every five minutes is rare," Aker said. "Downtown has a very distinctive edge with its own transit network, with freeways, Metro and the DASH. The test will be getting more butts in seats."
Contact Kathryn Maese at kathryn@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 11/07/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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