Bus to Nowhere: New Shuttle Service Falls Flat
Ocean Campus has a new parking lot and shuttle, but they've gone mostly unnoticed.
City College launched a new service to address the parking problem at Ocean Campus, but it doesn’t seem like anyone knows about it or cares.
In an attempt to mitigate the glaring issue of parking on campus, City College has established a satellite lot at Ocean and San Jose avenues. An accompanying shuttle bus takes students and faculty from their parked cars to campus and vice versa, leaving the lot every 30 minutes. The shuttle makes three stops around campus before returning to the lot.
Unfortunately, it seems as though students and faculty are unaware that the lot and shuttle even exist. Across the first nine days of its existence, the shuttle had a total of nine passengers, a paltry amount for the 60 stalls that the lot holds, as well as the bus used to run the shuttle, which seats 23.
City College’s Police Department was chosen to head the operation of the shuttle.
Chief of Police Mario Vasquez said he’s not sure why the shuttle hasn’t seen too many people. “I just advertise on the emails district-wide,” Vasquez said, “I don’t know if I need to put posters up on campus.”
In fact, the ridership number should actually be nine.
The Guardsman tried to take the college’s new form of transit on March 16 and then again on March 18 to no avail. While the shuttle’s listed hours are 9 a.m.-3:45 p.m., this reporter arrived at the Daring Faith Church at 2 p.m. on both days to find the gates locked and no shuttle in sight.
This is all the more alarming when you consider the price tag of the lot and shuttle. With funds from the Diego Rivera Performing Arts Center Bond Project, the college is paying $33,750 to Daring Faith Church for the use of the parking lot and $35,200 to EPIC Limousine for the operation of the shuttle from March 9 to May 21 of this year.
Per the parking lot agreement, the college can renew the contract after each semester from now until after Spring 2029, although the all-but-confirmed parking garage would certainly put an end to any continuation of the shuttle. Vasquez said that while they will review ridership and other factors, the shuttle bus and satellite parking lot will likely be back next semester.
“Many students, they don’t know about it,” said the driver of the shuttle, James Widjaja. “That information is important. [People] ask ‘Does this go to Bart?’ and I have to explain [that] I can only go to the church [parking lot] and the stops.”
Widjaja, who is employed by EPIC Limousine, and Vasquez both said that there was little to no ridership, with Widjaja mentioning that he’s had a total of zero pick-ups or drop-offs at the stop located behind the Harry Britt Building, in the Student “Q” Lot.
