Phoenix City Council voted to bring back early-morning bus services after almost six months, giving more time for commuters and for public transportation employees to work.
City council members unanimously voted 9-0 on partially restoring Valley Metro bus services in this week’s meeting.
Beginning on Oct. 26, an extra hour will be tacked back on to buses’ morning schedules. Valley Metro bus services cut back certain hours of service on May 4, 2020, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Public Transit Department.
Eric Everts, information specialist for the Phoenix Public Transit Department, said in an email to the Downtown Devil that the extra hour reverts the bus schedule back to its previous morning start time which is at approximately 4 a.m. on weekdays and 5 a.m. on weekends.
Valley Metro will still keep all health and safety procedures and protocols in place, such as requiring masks on board and clearly marking rows of seats as unavailable to ensure social distancing. The number of passengers will still be limited depending on the size of the bus.
Everts said in the email that bus ridership has increased from approximately 80,000 passengers to the low-to-mid 90,000 during weekdays in late September.
“Restoring the early morning hour of service throughout the week helps to disperse the ridership throughout the morning commute hours and provides earlier and additional departure times for passengers,” he said. “Additional hours of service provide more opportunity for the overall ridership to be spread amongst the entire service day.”
Dejuan Goodman is a bus operator and has been working for Valley Metro for four years. He said not being able to communicate with his passengers has been difficult.
“Now, without the fare box being in play, it’s less contact with the people and we’re public transit so that’s what you do, talk to people,” he said. “It plays a lot in our job so now they’re coming in through the back and we don’t get to see them or talk to them. So, it takes a strain on us.”
Goodman also said adding the extra hour back benefits passengers who depend on bus services.
“People gotta get to work. We have places to go and we’ve got to work. It helps out the community. It helps out the public. It’s what we need, anything to get back to normal,” Goodman said.
Alysia Collins, who took the bus to her early-morning shift before the coronavirus pandemic, had to change her shift when she could no longer get to work on time.
“The morning shift works best for me so I can take care of my son in the afternoon when my fiancé goes to work,” Collins said. “We only have one car and it’s technically his company’s car so I take the bus.”
Collins said she used to live within walking distance of the McDonald’s she’s worked at for almost three and a half years but moved in with her fiancé about a year ago. She now rides two different busses for about 50 minutes to get to work.
“I thought about transferring to work at a closer one but I really like my co-workers and the bus drops me off pretty close,” Collins said. “Plus we’re already awake early because our son just turned one and he wakes us up.”
Collins said she is excited to switch back to a schedule that works better for her and her family.
“Right now my sister watches him while we are both at work,” Collins said. “It’ll be easier for everyone if I can work the morning shift again.”
Elsa Trujillo is also a bus operator for Valley Metro who is used to working until two or three o’clock in the morning. She said the pandemic changed that for her along with her routes and for people that work until the early morning hours.
“I had to adjust my schedule to work during the day, mid-day and afternoons,” she said. ”(The busses) don’t run all night. So, it affected the public, a lot.”
The Public Transit Department plans to continue working with Valley Metro on other aspects of bus services such as late-night buses, and front-door bus boarding and fare collection but these services will still be unavailable.
The overall cost to restore this hour in the morning is estimated to be around $7.7 million on an annual basis, with funding available in the Public Transit Department’s operating budget T2050 funds. The fiscal year’s budget was developed with the presumption that bus service would return to normal, pre-pandemic levels of service, according to the Public Transit Department.
Adding this hour back to bus services comes after the city council announced public parks, playgrounds, volleyball and basketball courts, and picnic tables would be allowed to re-open in a meeting earlier this month.
Contact the reporters at dlpayne3@asu.edu and pmuse@asu.edu.
