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ChineseBay Area Diaries — Part IV: Sonoma County
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Technical difficulties prevented the diaries from being released in the original scheduled order. Part IV: Sonoma County runs today. Part V: Golden Gate Ferry, appeared yesterday. Thank you for your patience and your continued patronage of MetroRiderLA.
Charles Schulz thought he could live in Santa Rosa and complete his “Peanuts” comics in peace. He became the town’s most famous resident, and soon enough the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center is founded and several “Peanuts” statues are placed throughout the city.
Sonoma County figuratively has one foot in the Bay Area and the other in the North Coast, but it also stands proudly and confidently on its own. Sonoma’s viticulture is its gift to the world, and its wineries are a major economic force. The vineyards and other agricultural industries are still very prominent, but the county is dotted with several cities that maintain a quaint, small-town charm.
The county’s location and its land use give it an unconventional transportation characteristic as well. Sonoma County has a transportation tapas bar; the portions are small but the options are many.
Santa Rosa is the county seat and primary transportation hub. Most of the connections in the city — a “small town” with a population of over 150,000 — are on or very close to its downtown. Santa Rosa has done very well to give it a great sense of place. The downtown is compact and pleasant for walking. The downtown is full of low-rise office buildings, but ground-level activity has many shops and restaurants that draw people late into the evening. California Planning & Development Report editor Paul Shigley said Santa Rosa has the fifth best mid-size city downtown in California:
Maybe the biggest surprise on our list, downtown Santa Rosa is big and strong with many different features: shopping, offices, some fabulous public spaces, a smattering of housing, a touch of the arts, and an overall flavor that says “Sonoma County.” The enclosed shopping mall could be problematic, but it relates pretty well to downtown. The 101 freeway is something of a dividing line; however, as Railroad Square continues to develop, the freeway will likely become little more than a minor annoyance. This is a downtown that’s only going to get better.
Railroad Square could still be considered part of downtown, but physically it is cut off by US-101 and the back of Santa Rosa Plaza. Santa Rosa once had a busy railroad terminal, now used as a California Welcome Center, and the four square block neighborhood has the same narrow streets and all-hours life with antique stores, restaurants and the landmark Hotel La Rose. Getting to Railroad Square to downtown involved an unpleasant walk along Third Street under the dark freeway overpass. By bus it’s the first stop for several local services outside of downtown.
The way locals go … or don’t
A Santa Rosa CityBus lays over at the Transit Mall in downtown.
Santa Rosa CityBus — which has the same last name as Culver CityBus, but the two are in fact unrelated — is affectionately known by locals as “Santa Rosa Shitty Bus” and overserves the city with a 17-route system. Yes, Santa Rosa is overserved.
Now, weekday service at 30 minutes is not frequent enough to travel without consulting a schedule for every trip, but it’s very generous considering how empty the CityBuses are. In fairness, this wasn’t exhaustive examination of the system, but short rides and street observations showed buses to have not more than 10 passengers aboard at a time. Most of the city’s fleet is 40-foot New Flyer D40LFs and Gillig low-floors, with a few 30-foot Gilligs and Thomas Dennises that are more suitable for demand.
Santa Rosa is able to provide this service by getting a lot out of very little. The town is compact, and buses only need about 10 to 15 minutes to get to the city limits from downtown. A big drawback to using CityBus is that the routes were planned to offer maximum coverage by running single-direction loops. Most passengers must take circuitous routes to get to their destinations.
Click on this thumbnail of the Santa Rosa CityBus system map to see a full-size PDF of the map and bus schedules.
Santa Rosa’s urban form disregards transit ridership. The rest of the city looks nothing like downtown. Not all parts of the city with bus routes have sidewalks, and commercial activity is mostly confined to corner strip malls rather than along streets. In many cases, the same streets often have the backs of houses facing the streets, snuffing chances of pedestrian activity. And even in downtown, the city maintains several public parking garages, and the district is compact and pedestrian-friendly enough to explore the whole area by walking and not buses.
Bus riders come from the city’s low-income residents, senior citizens and riders transferring from the other bus services.
Support services
Despite the infrequent service, Sonoma County Transit buses are often full.
Buses crossing Santa Rosa’s city limits don’t go begging for riders. Golden Gate Transit connects Sonoma County to Marin County and San Francisco. Sonoma County maintains a countywide bus system, with its primary transit node also on the Second Street Mall.
Paradoxically, Sonoma County has worse levels of service and yet its buses were often full! Most of Sonoma County’s buses were 40-foot Orion high- and low-floors, but it has smaller El Dorado-National EZ Riders and cutaways as well. Sonoma County Transit is more challenging to use. It has a zone fare system, and the county maintains rural headways even though demand exists to provide smooth clock headways. Hourly would be a good start. The schedules were aggravating, as headways on a single line can be 45 minutes between one trip and over two hours the next. Many of the routes travel along narrow highways, and the scenery can be quite nice.
The small-timers
Santa Rosa also has public transit service from neighboring counties, but these are back-country levels that are infrequent to be pointless to run them. One is from VINE, the Napa Valley bus system. Line 11 runs from Santa Rosa to Calistoga and St. Helena, two trips a day four days a week. The others are from MTA. No, not ours. Mendocino Transit Authority runs one trip daily into Santa Rosa: Line 65 from Mendocino and Ukiah and Line 95 along the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts.
Last, but not least
This humble bus stop in front of the Courtyard by Marriott sees service from Santa Rosa CityBus, Sonoma County Transit, Amtrak Thurway and Mendocino Transit Authority buses.
These aren’t public transit agencies, but Santa Rosa is also served by bona fide intercity carriers. Greyhound reamed Santa Rosa when it restructured its service; it only runs one round trip in the area. Its bus stop is outside of downtown. Amtrak, on the other hand maintains a larger presence with its Thruway bus service. Buses run between the city’s stop at the Courtyard by Marriott outside of Railroad Square and and the Martinez train station. Martinez has four Amtrak lines — Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin, Coast Starlight and California Zephyr — as well as being the transit tapas bar for the north and east bays. Martinez, like Santa Rosa, has several local transit systems providing infrequent service to the station. Martinez’s namesake BART station is nowhere close to the train station.
Finally, there’s also Sonoma County Airport Express. It offers regularly scheduled and reasonably frequent motorcoach service from the Sonoma County Airport and a Days Inn south of downtown to San Francisco or Oakland airports. It’s the priciest service at $28, but its schedules promise a 2-hour trip directly to terminals.
To garage
Horticulturist Luther Burbank’s home and garden in downtown Santa Rosa is well preserved and gives a rich description on the plants he grew while living here.
Sonoma County, serving as the demilitarized zone of the Bay Area’s northern exurb and the gateway to rugged, rural Northern California, has also grew, cultivated and aged its own identity to become a destination in its own right. Sonoma County encourages weary travelers to get off the 101 and take time to smell the roses — or, for that matter, other flora at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens — and sip the fruit of the vine. For the sippers, there’s a variety of options to park the car and take in the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the area. Just have an open mind and an open schedule.
Previously:
 Photo by neutralSurface via Flickr (Creative Commons license) |
BART Board for upcoming arrivals:
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Discussion
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In Summer 2002, I rode GGT and Sonoma County Transit all the way up to Cloverdale. Not much to do up there, but there is (or was) a pretty good Mexican restaurant about a block or so north of the bus stop….
The Mendocino routes are fun too, but they’re strictly one bus in, one bus out per day, so you’ll need to do some planning (and a place to stay at the other end).