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ChineseRide Report: Foothill Transit Silver Streak - with special guest
[tags]foothill transit, silver streak, bus, los angeles, san gabriel valley[/tags]
Note: Photos and incessant linkage to come later.
Foothill Transit became the latest agency on board the bus rapid transit bandwagon, as it converted its longest, busiest and most important route into Silver Streak. Service began Sunday, but this trip was taken on Monday, second day of service and first day of weekday service. Rides are free throughout March.
For this trip, a special guest joined MetroRiderLA: Siel, the Green L.A. Girl. She brought along her laptop and was able to hook into the bus’s wi-fi and liveblog. Yes, the wi-fi works, and this is the first bus service in Los Angeles County to offer wireless access.
The internet connection is one of the few positive aspects of this “new” bus service.
Overall, though, Silver Streak gets a thumbs down as far as making a great first impression.
The wi-fi is nice, but the NABI 60-BRT articulated buses — the same ones Metro uses — have very bumpy suspensions that make using computers hard, even on smooth road surfaces. And on the freeway, when the bus goes over 45 mph, riders bounce in their seats. At least Silver Streak will provide laptop repair and data recovery business a steady stream of income.
Silver Streak is also very much like the old Line 480. Foothill gimmicked the bus by promoting it as making only a handful of stops. Heck, it still kept most of 480’s stops, including the bus pads on the 10 freeway (Azusa Avenue, for example). The map shows it stopping only at the busway stations, West Covina, Pomona and Montclair.
The biggest problem, though, was running hot. At quite a few stops, the bus ran too fast and had to wait to get back onto its schedule. Worse, it waited at busway stations, where buses cannot pass.
Ironically, Foothill is waiving fares for two weeks and buses have been empty. On the eastbound trip, leaving downtown L.A. around 1:30 p.m., there were only 25 passengers. This is the busiest bus line in the San Gabriel Valley and typically has at least a full sitting load. The westbound return trip was even more desolate!
Yet, Silver Streak does a lot of good, too. Even with more stops than Foothill admits on maps and schedules, it is much faster over its predecessor. The eastbound trip from Olive Avenue and Olympic Boulevard to Pomona took a little over an hour, even with all the waiting at stops. And shaving 30 minutes off a route over 2 hours long is a tremendous improvement.
The artics are gorgeous. Silver Streak does not have suburban-style seats, but they have softer cushions than regular seats. The aisles are wide, and the interior is bright even with tinted windows.
Some cool things to look for when riding: the interior LED clock boards display the date and time along with the bus driver’s badge number. The buses still have the drivers’ placards with their names. And on that note, a big thank you and job well done to the Silver Streak drivers in this review, Luigi (eastbound) and Antonio (westbound). Another thing: the artics have names along with numbers. Like the Blue Line cars with tributes to cities, each artic is dedicated to a San Gabriel Valley city. The eastbound bus was “Spirit of Diamond Bar,” and the westbound was “Spirit of Pomona.”
More Silver Streaky webness:
- Green L.A. Girl’s post-ride write-up
- Silver Streak, the blog. Not a lot of love lost here.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
The one thing I noticed is that while one full-load, standing room only westbound coach would arrive during morning rush hour, three nearly empty eastbound coached would come and go. Maybe they could take one or two of those eastbounds and do short runs between downtown and El Monte during the rush hours. I.e, turn around at El Monte instead of doing the whole eastbound route with a nearly empty bus. The suits that were there at the station were kind of amazed that very few people exited at the El Monte station…but regular riders knew that would be the case. Almost everybody aboard the Silver Streak would be heading downtown while the locals would still be on the 486’s, 492’s, etc.
sounds like a new “preventive maintenance” gold mine, escalator stylez. and the mega tinted windows on those boiz is great to see, albeit hilarious.
The whole point of the Silver Streak was to enhance service while being as revenue-neutral (read cheap) as possible. I did the math and about 50% of the westbound seats between Downtown and El Monte are lost. While the El Monte Busway service was never packed, removing 50% of capacity, AND making it free, gets you the condition you have today.
The site looks great ! Thanks for all your help ( past, present and future !)
Thanks for the info. I’m traveling through LA in another 2 weeks and I’d like to use this (since the eastbound San B Metrolink doesn’t run between 6 and 9 AM). I’m wondering if anyone can tell me - where is the Union Station stop for this bus? Is it in the elevated bus loop that the flyaway buses use? Or is it on the other side of the station?
Jess, the Union Station bus stop is on the pad at Alameda Street near the MWD building.
If you are taking the subway, it’s better to catch the Silver Streak at the Civic Center station, since it’s a shorter walk.