Long Beach Transit is a municipal transit company providing fixed and flexible bus transit services in Long Beach, California, United States, other communities in South and Southeast Los Angeles County and Northwestern Orange Counties. Long Beach Transit also operates the Passport shuttle, Aquabus, and Aqualink. The service, while operated on behalf of the City of Long Beach, is not operated directly by the city (such as is done with the bus service operated by the City of Santa Monica), but by a separate corporation ("Long Beach Public Transportation Company") operated for that purpose.

Long Beach Transit receives its operating revenue from farebox receipts and state tax revenue distributed by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Free bus routes

Long Beach has several free Passport bus routes, which use mini-buses to shuttle passengers within the downtown area. The Passport "C" route between the downtown, The Aquarium, The Pine Ave. Circle, Shorline Village, and the Queen Mary, and Passport "A" and "D" buses go East-West along Ocean Boulevard, linking the Catalina Landing in the west with Alamitos Bay or Los Altos via Belmont Shore in the east. A 90-cent fare is required when traveling east of Alamitos Avenue. Another free route, Passport "B" in the East Village, visits museums and other points of interest.

Water taxis

Long Beach Transit also operates the 49-passenger AquaBus water taxi, which stops at the RMS Queen Mary, West Coast Hotel of Long Beach, Catalina Landing, Aquarium of the Pacific, the Pine Av. Circle, and Shorline Village (The Shorline Village Dock is Under Repairs); and the 75-passenger AquaLink water taxi, which travels between the Queen Mary, the Aquarium, and Alamitos Bay Landing next to the Long Beach Marina.

History

Long Beach Transit began operation in 1963 at the time the Pacific Electric Railway was discontinuing service. The primary area of service for Long Beach Transit has been the City of Long Beach and to a limited extent, the enclave city of Signal Hill, but it has also provided service to surrounding communities in Los Angeles County including Lakewood, Cerritos, Norwalk, and Seal Beach, California in neighboring Orange County.

The company has operated various types of bus services. During the 1970s and 1980s, it also ran small shuttle buses in the downtown area, called the DASH, for "Downtown Area Short Hops," and because the routes were shorter, the fare was lower than on the regular buses.

Originally, bus transfers could be obtained upon payment of 10c. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Instead of using a common transfer with the route number punched on the transfer, each route had its own transfer with the route number printed on them. For transfers to other bus lines, Long Beach transit used the consolidated Los Angeles County interagency transfer, which every bus company in Los Angeles County except RTD used (its regular transfers worked for both RTD buses and as an Interagency transfer.) The interagency transfer even had a check box naming each of the twelve bus companies in the county, and the particular driver would punch the box for the particular agency that issued the transfer.

During the mid 1970s (sometime between 1972 and 1976), for a period of six months, a special subsidy was available. All bus trips in Los Angeles County were reduced from approximately 80c to $1.25, to 25c on weekdays and Saturdays, and 10c on Sunday (bus trips outside the county were subject to the regular rate). As a result, the issuance of transfers was discontinued for all trips within Los Angeles County. When the subsidy ended, the old price returned and bus companies resumed issuing transfers.

In the early 1980s, the company changed its transfer system. Instead of using books of transfers, every bus has a ticket printer, which issues the three types of transfers: regular transfers, which allow the user to transfer to a different route; "emergency" transfers (typically used if the customer becomes sick and has to get off the bus) which allow the user to get back on the same route; and "interagency" transfers, which allow the user to transfer to a different bus company (and gave the user an additional 1 hour of time before it expired) such as Orange County Transit, MTA, Norwalk Transit and Cerritos Transit buses. In case of machine failure, however, operators would still carry one book of each kind of transfers.

Renumbering

Originally, Long Beach Transit operated its bus lines as a consecutive set of route numbers, from 1 to 16. The numbers had no significance, except that Route 1 ran along State Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. (This is the same number which is currently used by the Orange County Transit Authority for its route that runs on Route 1.) Some routes had more than one routing, for example, the number 9 route ran from Downtown along 7th Street to California State University, Long Beach. All of the route 9 buses would continue along Bellflower Blvd., whereupon one would terminate at Bellflower and Stearns St.; one would turn at Willow Street, and continue along Woodruff Ave.; another would continue on Bellflower all the way to Alondra Blvd; and another would also continue to Alondra Blvd, but would take a slight detour to service the Lakewood Center shopping mall.

Possibly due to the successful renumbering which RTD had done in 1983, Long Beach Transit also decided to renumber its routes. In the late 1980s, the company changed all of its route numbers, by keeping the original 1- or 2-digit number, then adding a single digit after the number, according to which of the routes it was. The route 9, as indicated above, was renumbered into the 91, the 92, the 93 and the 94. The Route 15, which only had one route, became the 151. Additional routes have since been added, generally staying with the same system, e.g. if a route extends part of an existing route, it takes the first one (or two) digits of the major route number, then adds a new additional digit on the end. This is why there is now a route 96 which did not exist at the time of the original route 9.

Fleet Information

Long Beach Transit is the first transit agency in the world to introduce production-model hybrid gasoline-electric buses into passenger service, with features similar to those on a Toyota Prius. The E-Power Bus (GE40LF), built by New Flyer will be used on all of Long Beach Transit's routes as they are brought into service.^[1]

Buses have 4-digit numbers, of which the first two digits of the number represent either the year the bus was placed into service or the number of passengers the bus has capacity for. Buses numbered in the 9000 series were placed into service during the 1990s, buses in the 2000-2900 series were/will be placed into service during the 2000s, and buses in the 4300-4900 series seat 43 to 49 passengers, respectively.

Long Beach Transit operates thirteen 60-foot New Flyer buses, and had options for ten more, but due to new regulations that restricted the purchase of new diesel buses (and the absence of any non-diesel articulated from New Flyer) the buses ended up with Golden Gate Transit in Northern California as assignable options and delivered in 2007.

Bus Roster

References

External links

• Long Beach Transit Web Site
• Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority

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