Bus Line Cuts Affect the 'Common Man'

For Armando Rubrica, the proposed reductions to the Santa Cruz County bus system would be devastating.

The 35-year-old Watsonville resident explained—during a public hearing about the Metro cuts Thursday at the Watsonville Public Library—that the line 71 bus route is essential to his employment. He rides the route to get to various places in North County most days of the week, because he relies on short-term work to get by.

“By, maybe 7, or 7:30 [I’m] on the bus,” said Rubrica, while carefully examining information packets and taking notes. “For me, No. 71 is No. 1.”

Rubrica was one of more than three-dozen Watsonville residents who turned out Thursday afternoon to discuss the proposed cuts to the Santa Cruz County bus system. The 42 attendees made up more attendance than the last two meetings combined, according to Erich Friedrick of the Santa Cruz County Metro Transit District.

The bus line reduction plan includes:

• Eliminating the 91x express between Watsonville and Santa Cruz by Sept. 15, the start of the fiscal year for the Metro District.
• Combining the 69W and 69A routes into a new 69C, but it will only run once an hour as the A and Ws each spanned the county in that same time frame.
• Losing 10 of the 84 routes-per-week on the 71 route.

The cuts are in response to reduced budgets, a result of dwindling state sales tax revenues during what many have begun calling the Great Recession. The agency has lost $4.7 million in revenue since 2007, according to Metro documents.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s May revised budget even includes putting more responsibility for funding on local agencies, to make the state budget easier to balance. Hagan said this makes it impossible for the SCMTD to fund all the transportation they would like to.

“We just, we have to make cuts; we can’t keep it running,” said Metro board member Donald Hagan. “If I had one prayer, it would be to be somehow that state and federal funding would return for buses, because this is the common man’s way of getting around.”

Thursday's meeting abounded with translators who helped express the ideas of residents, friends and relatives. Watsonville Mayor Daniel Dodge helped to lift the tension in the room by translating for the “monolingual English speakers” in the room at one point. The laughs he received were welcome sounds during a discussion about the possible loss of critical transportation.

Hagan gave a heartfelt testimonial for why public transportation is important to maintaining an inclusive and healthy society, but also said that the situation is not in the control of one person, or even one agency.

“These people have to get to work, and I don’t know how I can look at them in the morning and say, sorry,” said Hagan. “You have to take another bus.”