Santa Monica Big Blue Bus and Culver CityBus fares will increase from 35 cents to 50 cents beginning fall quarter 2011. This announcement comes just seven months after the cost-per-ride was changed from 25 to 35 cents.
The increase is a continued response to the universal fare increase that took effect last summer, said Dave Karwaski, manager of planning and policy for UCLA Transportation.
Last summer, the Big Blue Bus company increased student and adult fares from 75 cents to $1. UCLA Transportation initially responded by increasing student fares by 10 cents.
“We’re (now) trying to bring the BruinGo! program in line with other programs,” Karwaski said. “We cannot sustain the current level of subsidy anymore.”
UCLA Transportation subsidized 60 to 70 percent of BruinGo! bus fares with money generated from parking permit fees, but the other bus lines were only discounted by half.
The BruinGo! program began in 2000 with the goal of reducing fares to Santa Monica and Culver City. Initially, rides on these lines were free for students, staff and faculty until an increase to 25 cents in 2003.
Tierra Moore, the student representative to the Transportation Services Advisory Board, is working with UCLA Transportation to reach a compromise to keep the fare under 50 cents. But the increase in Big Blue Bus fares last year, in addition to campus-wide budget cuts, leaves UCLA Transportation with few alternatives, said Moore, a third-year global studies and political science student.
The increase will affect more than 1,800 students who use the BruinGo! program to commute to school, Karwaski said.
Xiomara Arias, a third-year mathematics for teaching student, takes the Palm line to and from campus every day. She said the fare increase would definitely affect her, but said she has no other option to commute.
She and her coworkers also use the Big Blue Bus to go to Westwood during their breaks, but she said they will probably stop this when fares increase.
UCLA Transportation also partners with four other bus systems.
Students and faculty can buy passes for these transit systems at roughly half the normal cost, but BruinGo! is the only program that allows students, staff and faculty to receive the discount on individual rides.
Matthew Kroneberger, president of Bruins for Transit, said he is planning on attending transportation board meetings and organizing with the Undergraduate Students Association Council to reverse the fee increase.
“Ideally, the goal is to make (the buses) free again,” said Kroneberger, a third-year political science student.
While most of the other University of California campuses completely subsidize at least one form of public transportation, Karwaski said UCLA’s location in a big city makes it impractical to fully subsidize just the BruinGo! program.
The Big Blue Bus and Culver CityBus lines only service West Los Angeles, but UCLA students and staff commute from all over the greater L.A. area.
Students have limited options to fill the budget gap, but one is to draft a referendum that would raise the money for fare subsidies.
The referendum would likely collect a small portion of student fees and use the collected endowment to fully subsidize bus fares. However, Kroneberger said this should be a last resort.
“We don’t want to have to pay any more for the same services,” he said.
Although there are no free bus lines into the city, UCLA operates BruinBus, a fleet of free shuttles that take students around campus and into Westwood, Monday through Friday.