Nearly 50,000 Ventura County college students will be able to ride public buses for free

The Ventura County Transportation Commission is launching a one-year pilot program in which nearly 50,000 students at five local colleges and universities will be eligible to ride public-transit buses for free.

At its monthly meeting last week, the commission approved $501,875 in funding for the “College Easy Ride” program, which will run from Aug. 20 through May 31, 2019, the traditional academic year.

The program will be open to students at the largest and most-attended colleges and universities in Ventura County: the entire Ventura County Community College District with campuses in Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura; CSU Channel Islands; and California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Their enrollments total 47,998, only a small fraction of which currently ride the buses, according to a commission staff report. The goal of the pilot program is to increase that ridership.

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Commission Executive Director Darren Kettle said Tuesday he expects every public bus agency in the county, including the commission, the Gold Coast Transit District — the largest bus operator in the county — and city bus agencies, to be part of the program.

If the program proves successful, it could be extended beyond one year, Kettle said.

Commission Chair Linda Parks, a Ventura County supervisor, has long been a proponent of free fares for college students.

“I’ve been pushing for free fares for students for years after seeing successful programs in other counties,” she said. “It will be wonderful to help out our struggling college students, and it’s a very positive step to see the cooperation among transit agencies.

“I’m also very appreciative that the colleges have agreed to get the word out to students,” she said.

Gold Coast Transit District General Manager Steve Brown said the district is “very supportive of the one-year college pass pilot program as a way to help boost ridership systemwide.

“However, the best way to generate ridership, in the long run, is to increase service frequency,” he said. “If this program is successful in generating demand for more transit, it would help us make a strong case to partner with the schools to make this program a self-sustaining program in the future, potentially freeing up future funding for adding service to the colleges.”

Kettle said the commission for years has received requests from local colleges for a free bus fare program.

Such programs are common in many “college towns,” including in neighboring Santa Barbara County where students at UC Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara City College ride Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District buses for free, according to Kettle and a commission staff report.

“We have also heard from students saying they don’t have a lot of financial resources and that with a free fare to get to school, it would be an incentive for them to use public transit that’s good for the environment and relieves congestion,” Kettle said. “But it never got off the ground.”

That’s because a funding source couldn’t be identified, he said.

“In a lot of places, that funding source comes from the various universities and the community colleges, and for various reasons, those resources weren’t available here in Ventura County,” he said.

But the commission finally identified a funding source — the state Low Carbon Transit Operations Program. The program was created to provide operating and capital assistance for transit agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve mobility, the report states.

Eligible projects for the funding include free or reduced transit fare incentive programs, according to the report.

Kettle said a factor that could work against the pilot program being successful is that most or all of the universities and community colleges that will be part of it have adequate parking, as opposed to the “parking crunch” at UC Santa Barbara. Even so, students at the Ventura County schools have to pay to park there, a factor that could work in favor of the program, Kettle said.

“In our case, we will see, with a free fare, if that is enough of an incentive for students to choose not to take advantage of that ample parking,” he said.

“We’ve heard from students that they will” use the free fares despite the adequate parking, he said. “This pilot program will allow us to test that. We’re curious as to whether this program will have the same level of success that you would see at Santa Barbara City College or UCSB or other college towns throughout the country.”

Several students waiting for a VCTC bus Wednesday morning at CSU Channel Islands said they thought the free fares would increase student ridership.

“I think so,” said Jasmine Romero, 18, of Camarillo, who takes the bus twice a week to and from Oxnard College, where she is a freshman. “I mean if it’s free, why not?”

Currently, she said, she pays $1.25 in bus fare one way, four times a week. Under the pilot program, she’ll save that $5 a week.

“I think that would be great,” she said.

Daniel Lopez, 25, also of Camarillo, takes the bus two to three days a week to Oxnard College. The free fares would probably result in him taking the bus more often to school, he said.

“Maybe go to school to study more times a week, get involved in some activities,” he said, adding that he’s “all for” the pilot program.

Jonathan Feeney, 22, of Reseda in Los Angeles, is a senior at CSU Channel Islands who takes the bus to and from school five days a week. He pays the school $25 a semester for a bus pass.

“It’s either that or I pay some stupid, triple-digit number for parking, and I ain’t doing that,” he said.

Ray Porras, the school’s director of transportation and parking services, said it costs $195 per semester for a parking pass.

Feeney welcomes the pilot program.

“It’s good. Next semester, I won’t have to pay 25 bucks,” he said with a laugh.

Will it encourage other students to take the bus?

“Maybe,” he said. “But to be honest with you, I think if they’re trying to save money, they’re already taking the bus ’cause as I said, it’s triple digits for a pass.”

D’Naja Lynch-Mosher, 18, a freshman who lives on campus, takes the bus a “couple times a day” to go shopping off-campus.

While she said the pilot program sounds good, “I mean honestly, our school, if you live on campus and don’t have a car, gives you a free bus pass anyway.”

Porras said that only applies to students who live on campus and commit to not bringing a car there, not commuters like Feeney.

Lynch-Mosher said she believes the program will encourage other students to start riding the bus.

“They don’t want to pay gas,” she said. “Like one of my friends who lives on campus, too, is always complaining about how expensive his truck gas is. Like $50 for half a tank. And so, he’s like, ‘I’m trying to save money here, not spend it all on gas.’”

Kettle said that if the pilot program proves “tremendously successful ... we might have to either augment it after the first year (with more funding) or go back to the colleges and say, ‘This was more successful than we could ever have imagined and we’re going to need a little bit of financial help from the schools’ because they are the substantial beneficiaries of the program.

“But we believe that the funding we’ve set aside should be sufficient to get us through the first year,” he said.