BruinGo! involves various costs, not proven success

Stocki is the director of Parking and Transportation
Services.

By Mark Stocki

Recent articles in the Daily Bruin Viewpoint section express
strong support for continuation of the BruinGo! pilot program. UCLA
is deeply committed to facilitating a broad range of transportation
alternatives to address the complex needs of its constituents. For
over a decade, Transportation Services has been aggressive in
promoting programs like BruinGo!, which aim to reduce growth in
parking demand and traffic on our campus.

Since the early 1990s, UCLA’s Transportation Demand
Management Program, which promotes ridesharing, vanpooling,
carpooling, shuttles, cycling and other alternatives to solo
driving, has produced best-in-class results, including a more than
20 percent reduction in auto use. The campus implemented the
BruinGo! pilot with the hope that it also would also produce
significant beneficial results.

Launched in fall 2000 and initially funded with UCLA parking
revenues, the BruinGo! program was designed to maximize its chances
of success. To make it convenient and available to the entire
campus community, no restrictions were placed on access to services
provided by the Big Blue Bus. With a valid BruinCard you can go
anywhere, anytime — UCLA-bound, or not; night or day, weekend or
holiday. The intent was to enable as many members of the UCLA
community as possible to try BBB’s services in the hope they
would make it a permanent new mode of getting to and from UCLA.

The Transportation Services Advisory Board, which has student,
faculty and staff representation, defined “success” of
the pilot program as cost-effective, measurable reduction in the
demand for on-campus parking and campus traffic. Following a
successful application for MTA grant funding and a subsequent
recommendation by TSAB, agreement was reached to extend the pilot
program beyond the first year in order to gather five quarters of
usage data and to hire an independent transportation consulting
firm to analyze the impacts of BruinGo! At this point, we still do
not have sufficient data to precisely gauge how successful the
program is. The results of the consultant’s analysis will be
shared with TSAB and the campus community early in the 2002 Spring
Quarter, when we expect the report to be completed.

Before BruinGo!, the Big Blue Bus already was serving a UCLA
population of about 4,000 students, faculty and staff at a cost of
50 cents per ride. (It should be noted that BBB fares are likely to
increase by 50 percent, from 50 cents to 75 cents per boarding in
July 2002.) When it was decided to temporarily fund the BruinGo!
pilot with parking revenues, we recognized that before any benefit
of reduced parking demand or traffic accrued to UCLA, the
pre-existing 4,000 users (who were paying around $20 in fares
monthly) had to be subsidized first. Thus, any gains for the UCLA
campus would have to be measured by applying the entire annual
program cost of $1 – $1.5 million only to new users above the
pre-existing 4,000 riders. It is also important to note that all
parking and transportation programs at UCLA are supported entirely
by revenues from parking fees. The campus neither gains income
from, nor provides subsidies for, these programs.

The question this raises is whether everyone who parks at UCLA
should subsidize a population who would ride the BBB anyway. It
does not seem to be a rational choice for BBB users to abandon the
most inexpensive commuting option available, and instead incur the
substantially higher costs of parking and car ownership. Moreover,
unlike participants in the vanpool program, who live significantly
farther from the campus and would revert to solo driving if
vanpools were discontinued, BruinGo! users are unlikely to abandon
the BBB if they again have to pay $20-$30 monthly for bus fares,
given the significantly higher costs of parking and car ownership.
We know from widely publicized and accepted information that cost
usually is not the deciding factor in choosing transit as a
commuting option. Rather, such factors as levels and quality of
service, distance of bus stops from one’s residence, and
safety take precedence.

Continuing to fund BruinGo! exclusively from parking revenues
would require an additional hike in permit fees, on top of the
already proposed $4/month increase for 2002-03. The one-year MTA
grant only partially funded this year’s operation of
BruinGo!, requiring us to explore other funding options and to
continue analyzing the pilot’s true cost-effectiveness. To
determine the extent of the campus community’s support for
BruinGo!, Transportation Services conducted an online and telephone
survey in February 2002. Preliminary results indicate that about 44
percent of students are willing to support an additional student
fee of up to $30 each academic year to continue BruinGo! Given the
apparent popularity of the program, notwithstanding usage results,
students may wish to fund BruinGo! for an indefinite period of
time. This approach is used at many other campuses to fund similar
bus programs. In conjunction with student funding, a variety of
other funding options, including application for grants, could be
explored.

Another important question being raised is whether it is better
to build new parking structures or to spend money on the BruinGo!
program. Building the additional on-campus parking that UCLA sorely
needs and funding the BruinGo! program are not mutually exclusive
options. To respond to the complex UCLA environment, we have to
develop and maintain a multifaceted set of transportation programs.
Transportation Services provides an array of such programs ““
including several alternatives to solo driving — that respond to
the varied needs of the UCLA community, and our TDM program is
recognized as one of the best and most successful in the nation.
But an equally essential part of the transportation mix is the
provision of an adequate parking inventory, without which the
campus cannot operate effectively. UCLA’s plans for any
future construction of parking facilities are based on campus
planning priorities and in no way impact the continuation of the
BruinGo! program.

The independent consultant’s analysis of the BruinGo!
pilot will be available in the 2002 Spring Quarter, and it will be
presented to the Transportation Services Advisory Board for
comment. In the meantime Transportation Services will continue to
work diligently to analyze, identify and promote a variety of
alternative transportation programs, including BruinGo!