Santa Monica buses will no longer serve stops along Gayley Avenue and Hilgard Avenue and will move to more central locations on campus starting Sunday.

The Big Blue Bus will no longer stop at Hilgard Terminal, the previous terminus for Routes 1, 2 and 8, located on Hilgard Avenue and Strathmore Drive. Instead, Routes 1 and 2 – which travel from UCLA to Venice and Santa Monica, respectively – will begin and end at Parking Structure 2 on Charles E. Young Drive.

Route 8, which travels between UCLA and downtown Santa Monica, will begin and end at UCLA Gateway Plaza. Routes 1, 2 and 8 already stop at Parking Structure 2 after 8 p.m. on weekdays and on weekends.

Consolidating the bus routes along Charles E. Young Drive will make schedules consistent and less confusing, said Alfredo Torales, the transit planning and performance manager for Big Blue Bus.

He added that the changes aim to ensure a bus comes every six to 10 minutes. Buses currently arrive every 10-20 minutes, according to Big Blue Bus schedules.

“It’ll incentivize me to go on the bus more because, along that corridor, it’s a lot more guaranteed that I’m going to get where I’m going and not miss the bus,” said Dominic McGuire, an active transportation planner for UCLA Transportation.

Several buses will run 10 minutes to one hour earlier in the morning and later in the evening on weekdays starting Sunday, according to the Big Blue Bus website. Routes 1 and 8 will operate between 5:10 a.m. and 11:06 p.m., Route 2 will operate between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. and Route 18 will operate between 6:20 a.m. and 7:55 p.m.

The changes are part of the Santa Monica Department of Transportation’s 2024 Brighter Blue plan, which aims to address post-pandemic drops in ridership and make improvements ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

Vivian Yang, a postdoctoral microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics researcher, said she looks forward to having extended bus times because she often leaves work past 10 p.m. She added that she often has to walk or take a rideshare option to her apartment.

“If it gets too late, it does not feel safe, but it’s my only option,” Yang said.

Routes 1, 2, 8 and 18 will now stop directly in front of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center instead of before Le Conte Avenue. The new stop will benefit seniors and people with disabilities who have medical appointments, Torales said.

Route 18, which travels between UCLA and Marina del Rey, will operate on Westwood Boulevard instead of Gayley Avenue.

Buses will no longer go to the stop at Gayley Avenue and Strathmore Place, which many students living on or near the Hill use to get to Santa Monica, said Justin Xu, the internal vice president of the Institute of Transportation Engineers at UCLA, a student organization that educates students about transportation.

Torales said consolidating Route 18 onto Westwood Boulevard will allow riders to benefit from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s plan for a new bus lane on Westwood Boulevard in Westwood Village. The new lane is part of the Westwood Boulevard Safety and Mobility Project, which will be implemented in 2027, according to an LADOT fact sheet.

Xu said the change would benefit commuters from West LA and Santa Monica.

“If you’re commuting from the heart of Santa Monica, it’s because you’re going to UCLA campus and not the Hill or the apartments,” Xu said.

The North Westwood Neighborhood Council wrote a May 1, 2024 letter to the City of Los Angeles opposing the elimination of service to Hilgard Terminal and the Route 18 stop at Gayley/Strathmore. The council said Parking Structure 2 lacks access to bathrooms and buildings on North Campus, and out-of-service buses could reduce visibility at intersections.

Riley Harrison – co-director of the Transportation Equity and Access committee under the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s facilities commission – said he believes Big Blue Bus should continue stopping at Hilgard Terminal because it offers shade and seating infrastructure that Parking Structure 2 does not.

Kavya Gadamsetti, co-director of the committee and a rising third-year public health student, said she is concerned that increased bus traffic could create safety issues around Parking Structure 2 due to overcrowding.

“I just wish that they had listened to some of the student voices and general Westwood resident voices, … that had been speaking out in opposition of these changes for years,” said Harrison, a rising third-year history and public affairs student.

However, McGuire, a rising fifth-year materials engineering student, said he believes increased bus activity will not endanger cyclists or scooter riders like himself because the bus routes are predictable and operators are trained to check their blind spots.

Torales noted that there is no accessible path from Hilgard Terminal to campus for people with mobility issues, creating difficulties for people with disabilities. He added that Big Blue Bus’ ridership data showed most people got on and off the bus before the terminal.

Route 8’s new terminus at Gateway Plaza and additional stops along Route 17 will shorten travel times from UCLA to the Metro Rail E Line stations at Westwood Boulevard/Rancho Park and Exposition/Sepulveda Boulevard, according to the Big Blue Bus website. Torales said the updated routes will ease heavy demand on Route 12 from UCLA to the Westwood/Rancho Park E Line station – which connects East Los Angeles and Santa Monica – and eventually serve the UCLA Research Park on Pico Boulevard, a 9.2-acre property set to open in 2028.

Students can expect more changes to Westwood public transit in preparation for the opening of Metro D Line stations in Westwood, Torales said. The D Line – which currently connects Union Station to Wilshire/La Cienega – will connect Westwood to downtown LA starting in 2027 as part of the D Line Subway Extension Project.

[Related: LA Metro connects downtown to Beverly Hills with new D Line subway extension – Daily Bruin]

“All of these changes are meant to create a society that is more easily accessible by everyone, and to be able to get you from where you are to where you want to go, hassle-free, delay-free, better,” Xu said. “It’s really exciting to see all these changes coming to Westwood, and how you get around LA is going to be radically different in 2028 than it is now.”