Memo of Transmittal

To: Public Works Department of the City of San Luis Obispo

From: Christian Stevenson
Date: 27 November 2016
Subject: Alternatives to Improve the San Luis Obispo Transit System
Attached is the recommendation report regarding the current transit system in San Luis Obispo.
The purpose of this report is to improve the bus system to benefit all Cal Poly students.
Recommendations
Two solutions are evaluated in the report. The two recommendations being considered are as
follows:

Create and alter routes so that there are less stops on the original routes
Move all route bus times five minutes so that any possibility of late busses will be
mitigated

Methods
In order to evaluate the transit system, multiple sources were used. My primary sources are the
following:

Interview with transit assistant Megan Cutler

Online survey of Cal Poly students

My secondary sources are:

The website for the City of San Luis Obispo

Mustang News article
SLO Short Range Transit Plan 2016-2021

Details
Information gathered from my research methods are organized in the Results section. These
findings are then analyzed in the Conclusions section.
Recommendations
Based on thorough research and examination, I recommend that the Public Works department of
San Luis Obispo alter and create routes that will be more direct to Cal Poly SLO, with less side
routes along the way.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this report. I appreciate the opportunity and please
feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.

Alternatives to Improve the San Luis Obispo Transit System

Prepared for:
The Public Works Department of the City of San Luis Obispo

Prepared by:
Christian Stevenson

Created on November 27, 2016

Table of Contents
Introduction..1
Purpose.1
Background......1
Solutions..1
Methods2-3
Primary Sources2-3
Secondary Sources...3
Results......3-6
Primary Sources....3-5
Secondary Sources....5-6
Conclusions..6
Recommendations....6
References........7
Figures Cited7
Table of Figure
Figure 1: Map of San Luis Obispo Transit Map..1
Figure 2: Proposed change to Route 6A..2
Figure 3: Bus Survey usage responses.5
Figure 4: Lateness due to bus system responses..5

Introduction
Purpose
For most students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo taking the bus is part of college life. If it is taking
it downtown to shop, to grab something to eat, or commute to campus; taking the bus is an
efficient way to get around SLO. Taking the bus is the cheapest and most comfortable way to get
around for someone living off-campus. Rather than drive or bike to campus, many students rely
on the bus to go to class daily. Unfortunately, a problem that many students face is the
unreliability the transit system has with getting to campus on time [1]. The tardiness causes
students to be late for classes, which creates a stressful run from the bus stop for students. I plan
on analyzing the problems surrounding bus tardiness and solutions that could improve the bus
system overall.
As a fellow Mustang at Cal Poly, I take the bus every day to and from class. When buses are late
to their stops, I am running to class to be on time and generally stressed out. Many of my classes
have attendance grades and tardiness can affect them significantly. This reoccurring problem can
be fixed, and will benefit all people who use the bus to get to campus. My client is the staff
working in the Public Works department of the city of San Luis Obispo. I highly advocate they
take this report into consideration as this is a problem that many students face.
Background
The SLO transit system is free for all students, and a
small fee for everyone else [3]. According to Figure 1
the SLO Transit currently has eight routes, five of which
use Cal Poly SLO as a central location for rides. The
bus systems operating times vary depending on the day
of the week and month of the year, but most routes start
around 6:30AM and stop around 11:00PM [2].
Focusing on the routes that arrive and depart from
campus, they mainly operate on a two-bus system with
on bus departing from campus at 10 minutes after the
hour and the second bus departing 40 minutes after the
hour. Many students are forced to take the bus home 10
minutes after the hour, causing extremely filled buses.
Likewise, many students take the bus at 40 minutes after
the hour to get to their classes, which also cause
crowded busses.
With so many students taking the bus at similar time
creates problems such as increased wait times at stops,
little to no space or comfort, and a less efficient system
overall.
Figure 1: An overview of all
routes the SLO transit uses

Solutions
After conducting research from primary and secondary sources, I formulated two
recommendations to improve busses getting to campus on time. The two recommendations that I
created were:

Create and alter routes so that there are less stops on the original routes
o By altering the routes such as 6A, the average loop times can be decreased. Using
6A as an example, by cutting off a small section of the route I believe that the
route time can decrease by five minutes. These five minutes are crucial and will
help students get to their classes on time. Refer to Figure 2 for a proposed change
of route 6A.

Move all route bus times five minutes so that any possibility of late busses will be
mitigated
o Most routes to campus have arriving times of on the hour or 30 minutes after the
hour, or sometime near there by a few minutes. If the transit system pushed
forward five minutes, routes could be arriving earlier or right on time for students
to have plenty of time to gather themselves and walk to class.

Figure 2: Proposed route change for 6A, elimination of the small loop and busses following the
red line
Methods
The purpose of my sources is to analyze the problem and formulate solutions from my research.
By using both primary and secondary sources, I am able to gather a variety of information to aid
in my report.

Primary Sources
Interview
I contacted the Public Works department of San Luis Obispo and received a reply from Megan
Cutler, who answered the questions I had for my research.
Megan Cutler
Transit Assistant, Public Works Department of SLO
Online Survey
52 Cal Poly students answered the following questions on an online survey:

How often do you use the SLO transit system?

Have you ever been late to something due to the bus system?

I created the survey to be short on purpose, as many students will not fill-out surveys that are
long and tedious. The survey is simple, and just serves as a baseline to see what percentage of
students use the bus and have been late to something due to it.
Secondary Sources
Website
I visited slocity.org and used this source primarily as a means for background information of the
transit system. The website contains a lot of crucial information for my report such as the routes,
hours of operations, and the staff directory.
Newspaper Article
An article written by Brooke Sperbeck of the Mustang News offers information about the overall
means of transport for Cal Poly students.
Transportation Demystified by Brooke Sperbeck
Document
The SLO Short Range Transit Plan 2016-2021 gives a thorough examination of the SLO transit
system and how it will operate in the future.
Results
Primary Sources
Interview
I asked Megan Cutler the following questions in the email I sent to her:
1. What percentage of students use the bus as a means of transportation?
During Fiscal Year 2016 (7/1/15 6/30/16), Cal Poly ridership reached 757,980 riders,
representing 66.2% of our total ridership. This ridership total is comprised of repeat rides
by repeat passengers. We do not track individual riders, so are unable to report on the
percentage of the Cal Poly student population who ride the bus.

2. What steps is the transit system taking to ensure that buses arrive and depart on time?
Our system has a 98% on time performance rate. Buses are considered on time if they
depart a time point within 10 minutes of the published time within the schedule. When a
bus is running behind schedule due to high ridership or roadway congestion, a chase bus
will be dispatched to ensure buses are running on time. SLO Transit has introduced new
service in an effort to ensure buses are running on time e.g. the Kennedy Library Tripper
(KLT) is a new service option introduced to the general public in February 2016. The
KLT addresses the high ridership demand on weekday mornings in the Foothill and
Ramona Drive neighborhoods. By using alternative routes, such as the KLT, students can
plan their morning trips accordingly to ensure they get to campus on time.
3. Does the bus system have any future plans to mitigate the number of times buses are late to
their destination?
The SLO Transit 2016-2021 Short Range Transit Plan, adopted in September 2016,
proposes route improvements system wide. The implementation of new routes and
schedules are intended to improve the safety, reliability, accessibility, efficiency, and
consistency of the SLO Transit system.
4. How likely is it that routes or arrival/depart times could be altered to help the lateness of bus
times if the solution is proposed?
SLO Transit is planning to introduce new routes and schedules in Summer 2017. We are
in the process of revising our current routes and schedules, so now an optimal time to
propose solutions.
5. I noticed the introduction of Route 6X, can you please go into detail on the purpose of this
route and why it was introduced?
Route 6X is a Thursday evening express route that provides the public with service from
Downtown to the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center. This route was introduced in
response to the high ridership demand on Thursday evenings during the fall.
6. Are there any other plans or statistics regarding the transit system that you could share with
me?
Yes! The SLO Transit 2016-2021 Short Range Transit Plan was prepared by a third-party
consultant and adopted by SLO City Council in September 2016.
Online Survey
Of the 52 responses to the survey, 29 of them said that they use the bus daily. The other 23 either
use the bus only occasionally or rarely at all. When asked if they have ever been late to
something because of the bus, 34 said yes. That is 65.4% of the survey that have been late
before.

How often bus is used (per week)

29%

56%
15%

Figure 3: Bus survey usage

responses
Daily (7 or more times)
Sometimes (3 to 7 times a week)
Almost Never (Less than 3 times)

Have you ever been late due to

bus system?

35%

65%

Figure 4: Lateness due to bus system

responses according to students
Yes

No

Secondary Sources
Website
The website slocity.org gives general information on the routes of the transit system. There are
currently 8 main routes, and five of them connect to campus. They typically run from around
7am-11pm on the weekdays and weekends vary from route to route. Also currently introduced is
the 6X route which is being introduced on Thursday nights to help mitigate the crowded bus
routes.
Newspaper Article
Brooke Sperbeck, author of the article, discusses the limitations of students that do not have a car
in SLO. According to her, the bus system is one of the easiest ways to get around SLO. The other
options such as taxis, SLO Safe Ride, and Zipcar are available to students but arent as easily
accessible. The bus system gives the best variety for students to travel around SLO without any
economical cost to them.

Document
The SLO Short Range Transit Plan was adopted by the city in September 2016. The document
discusses the future of the transit system, as well as the current policies and regulations the city
has adopted for it. There are a lot of statistics in the report, as well as detailed notes on the transit
system. The main points I found useful in the article are:

57% of annual ridership is used by Cal Poly IDs

Cost of rides is free for Cal Poly students,
An onboard passenger survey found that 64% of riders were going to school
In a survey regarding the service characteristics of SLO transit, the lowest scoring
category was On-Time Performance among other categories such as Driver Courtesy
and Values for Fares

Conclusions
I believe that the improvement of the bus system in SLO is a topic that should be taking
seriously. A large number of students living off campus, including myself, rely on the system to
get to school on time for their classes. For many this is often the case as the bus can be anywhere
from five to fifteen minutes late. Solutions to this problem will benefit the community and
relieve many students of unnecessary stress of being late to their classes. After analyzing my
sources and methods I came to two solutions that would help lessen the amount of late busses to
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
The first solution would be to change the bus times to arrive/depart five minutes earlier than their
usual time. Doing this would create a larger room for error in case a bus was running late, and
would allow students more time to gather themselves and stroll to their classes. Disadvantages to
this include that students getting out of class would have a harder time making it to the departing
busses, as they are on a faster schedule than before.
The other solution would be to create and alter routes to be more direct and faster to campus.
This would allow for students to get to class faster and avoid having to sit on the busses that take
indirect side routes to campus. While this may cost more money for the city if more routes are
introduced, it would drastically affect all routes in a beneficial way. Disadvantages for this
include that students that live in far areas away for the main routes would have to walk to closer
bus stops. For example, referring back to Figure 2, students that live in the area where the route
would change would have to walk to Foothill Blvd. to get to the bus stops.
I hope that the public works department will take my report into consideration and use this as a
catalyst to improve the system. Minor adjustments that can be exploited can drastically change
our public transit and help the hundreds of students who use the bus system daily.
Recommendations
Based on thorough research and examination, I recommend that the Public Works department of
San Luis Obispo alter and create routes that will be more direct to Cal Poly SLO, with less side
routes along the way.
Looking forward, I suggest to start planning changes to routes and the effects they will have on
the community

References
[1] C. Stevenson, SLO Transit Research, Survey. 10 November 2016.
[2] "City of San Luis Obispo, CA: Home". Slocity.org. N.p., 2016. Web. 13 November 2016.
[3] LSC Transportation Consultants, AECOM. SLO Transit Short Range Transit Plan. 14
November 2016.
[4] M. Cutler, Transit Manager, Public Works Department of City of SLO. Interview. San Luis
Obispo, CA. 12 November 2016.
[5] Sperbeck, Brooke. "Transportation Demystified - Mustang News". Mustang News. N.p.,
2016. Web. 14 November 2016.
Figures Cited
[2] Figure 1. An overview of all routes the SLO transit uses,
[3] Figure 2. Proposed route change for 6A,
[1] Figure 3. Bus Survey usage responses,
[1] Figure 4. Lateness due to bus system responses,