By Jenny Blake
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
[email protected]
With BruinGo! funding only guaranteed for next year, reports
released last month drastically differ on who should bear the
financial burden of keeping the program longer.
An in-house report done by UCLA Transportation Services found
minimal reductions in traffic and parking demand, and that the
program has little savings in terms of parking and operating
costs.
Another report, done by BruinGo! advocates for the UCLA Academic
Senate, says that the program is far less costly and would save
numerous parking spaces, amidst other qualitative benefits. The
UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies report says the success of
the program should not be determined in terms of benefit to
Transportation Services but rather, in increases in transit
ridership.
The numbers in the reports are stark ““ Transportation
Services says BruinGo! reduced demand for parking by 221 spaces,
whereas the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies reports 1,380
spaces saved.
Transportation Services currently pays for the program but is
seeking alternate sources of funding because it doesn’t feel
that BruinGo! makes enough money to support itself. ITS says the
program not only pays for itself, but saves Transportation Services
$3.6 million annually.
BruinGo! is a bus program which allows passengers to ride for
free with the swipe of a BruinCard.
To assess the program, both the ITS and Transportation Services
produced evaluations using surveys and data received from
swipes.
“We support the BruinGo! program for a number of
reasons,” said director of Transportation Services Mark
Stocki. “But claims about those savings are completely
erroneous ““ we are spending an additional $1 million a year
on the program.”
The estimated $300,000 in revenue generated by BruinGo! per year
is not enough to take care of its approximate $1.5 million cost,
according to the Transportation Services report, which was
conducted by independent consulting company Crain &
Associates.
Based on these numbers, the Crain report concluded that other
funding sources should be pursued.
“The hypothetical potential parking savings from this
program are insufficient to support any substantial portion of the
program,” the report said.
Urban Planning Chair Donald Shoup said numbers in the Crain
report indicate that ridership by faculty and staff commuting to
campus increased by 134 percent during the program’s first
year, even though the report does not discuss those numbers.
“It is an amazingly large increase in transit
ridership,” Shoup said. “For people who have been
studying this kind of stuff for years, these numbers are
astonishing.”
Even with ridership increases, parking demand and traffic on
campus have not declined, Stocki said.
“If Transportation Services was really saving $3.5 million
and 1,380 spaces per year then I would reduce parking fees,”
Stocki said. “But that is simply not true.”
Measuring parking spaces vacated by the BruinGo! program is
another point of contention.
“The empty spaces get filled up,” Shoup said.
“You can’t say that because the parking lots are still
full, that we haven’t satisfied a lot of travel
demands.”
A third report sponsored by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, to be released next week, also challenges
conclusions made in the Crain report.
“We want to inform Transportation Services and the
chancellor of the problems with relying on the Crain report,”
said graduate student researcher Alex Smith, who worked on the
upcoming report. “They are using the report to determine the
value of the program and that effects who should pay for
it.”
Chancellor Albert Carnesale approved the continuation of the
BruinGo! bus program in May, through parking fees, which will only
subsidize the program for one more year.
And despite inconsistencies between the reports, the groups
would like to find a fair way to fund the program.
“It is curious that the Crain report recommended to
discontinue BruinGo!, but there is no point in dwelling on that
because the chancellor has decided to continue the program,”
said ITS researcher Dr. Daniel Hess. “The important thing is
to decide how to fund it permanently.”
Two committees have been established to work through data
discrepancies and decide how to fund the BruinGo! program. One
committee is a joint working group with the Faculty Welfare
Committee and the Committee on Planning and Budget, and the other
is a sub-committee of the Transportation Services Advisory Board,
Shoup said.