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For nearly 20 years, County Connection has enjoyed a very positive and productive private-public partnership with Sunset Development, the owners of Bishop Ranch Business Park in San Ramon. As a result of this partnership, County Connection provides over 13,000 annual service hours in direct shuttle service between Bishop Ranch and both the Walnut Creek BART station and the Dublin BART station.

Sunset Development invests over $500,000 per year in fare and operational subsidies that help County Connection meet the BART trains at both stations during peak travel times.  This financial support enables County Connection to provide over 200,000 passenger trips on our Bishop Ranch shuttles annually. That translates to a lot less cars on I-680 during commute hours. Employees of companies located at Bishop Ranch have a great commute alternative that allows them the option to not drive to work, but rather relax or work as they let County Connection do the driving. Bishop Ranch workers ride free, because Sunset Development covers the fare for them.

The benefit of the private-public partnership, however, goes beyond the Bishop Ranch employees. Anyone can ride the Bishop Ranch shuttles. Open to the public, riders not associated with a Bishop Ranch employer simply pays the fare. With Sunset Development helping with the cost of operating the service itself, County Connection is able to run more buses in the I-680 corridor, providing the general public with additional service.

=In short, we offer a public service that is significantly supported by a private partner that benefits the entire public, not just those employed by the organizations that make up Sunset Development. This is an important distinction because this model is in contrast to what is happening in San Francisco. In the Bay Area, privately sponsored buses – not open to the public and not financially supporting public transit – are proving to be a potential competitor to public transit and are often controversial as a result. A recent guest editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle Why we protest the ‘Google’ buses by Michael Barnes discusses this trend. The County Connection partnership with Sunset Development is exactly what the author is advocating.

Sunset Development has been working with us since 1996! No one has ever tried to protest a County Connection bus heading to Bishop Ranch.

Another benefit of this partnership is that County Connection can identify the buses used for service to Bishop Ranch, as Bishop Ranch branded buses. This helps create the sense that users are riding a service tailored to employees of Bishop Ranch businesses. We also work closely with Sunset Development on the scheduling of the buses serving Bishop Ranch Business Park to help us provide the most convenient service possible.

County Connection is very proud and thankful for our long and successful private-public partnership with Sunset Development. It allows us to provide a better service to the public whether one works at Bishop Ranch or not. And, it enables the employers of Bishop Ranch to offer their employees an effective alternative to the daily congestion of I-680.

We believe that this serves as a model private-public partnership in giving the public high-quality mobility options that are cost effective and contribute to congestion management.

Now and then I am asked, “Why does County Connection run empty buses?” One way to answer that is the comparison to highways and roads: sometimes they are wide open to the driver and seem ‘empty’ but other times bursting to capacity. But, that is an overly simplistic response. Here’s a more detailed explanation.

Route Design
Buses are driven on routes that go from point A to point B via prescribed routing and timetables that serve all the stops along a given route. Route design takes into account many factors, such as travel patterns, street patterns, and the location of various places. Most riders do not need to travel end to end. Rather, somewhere along the route the rider gets off before the route terminates, except in the case where the route ends at a BART station. As a bus traverses its route from end to end, the number of people on the bus at any single point along the way can vary greatly. Further, that variation changes throughout the day.

Recently, for example, a County Connection Route 10 (BART Concord/Clayton) trip departed the Concord BART Station heading eastbound along Clayton Road with 21 passengers on board. This particular bus can seat 38 and much more standing. As the bus made its way east on Clayton Road, the number of passengers on board dropped to three, as a result of people exiting the bus along the way. If you were to have observed this bus at that moment, you might think you are seeing an “empty bus”. Further along the route, however, more people got on this bus raising the passenger count to 14. By the time the bus reached its end point in downtown Clayton, the rider count on the bus was down to five people. This up and down pattern of passengers is very typical on County Connection buses.

On another typical Route 10 trip returning to Concord BART via Clayton Road, the bus departed downtown Clayton with four people on board. Somewhere along the way, the number of people increased to 23 on board. By the time this same bus pulled into the Concord BART Station, it had four people on board.

Let’s run through another example. County Connection runs Route 92X – an express service – between the Altamont Commuter Train (ACE) Pleasanton train station and the Mitchell Park ‘N’ Ride lot at Shadelands Business Park in Walnut Creek. This Route makes stops at Bishop Ranch in San Ramon, the Danville Park ‘N’ Ride lot off of I-680 and Sycamore Road, as well as the Walnut Creek BART Station. Though it is a very well used service, the buses are not at capacity the entire time while on the streets.

A typical trip on Route 92X leaving the ACE station in the morning often looks like this recent one, where 26 people boarded and were heading north. Most of those people departed at Bishop Ranch. The number of people left on the bus dropped to six. Further down the line up to 20 people were on this bus. By the time the bus reached the Mitchell Park ‘N’ Ride lot, however, there were only four people on board.

So, as you can see, the exact location where you observe a bus can lead to a wrong conclusion about how many people actually use that particular service.

Time Of Day
Time of day can be another factor. While a bus might carry a relatively high number of people on one trip, it might carry far less on the next. For example, perhaps between roughly 12:00 noon and 2:30 p.m. a bus on a Route carries a low number of passengers. That same bus on the same Route may later carry full loads between 2:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. as students go home from school. Then, the next trip or two may see low numbers of riders only to be full again after 5:30 p.m. as people go home from work.

For example, let’s look at County Connection Route 35 — a service that traverses between the San Ramon Transit Center and the Dublin BART Station. After leaving our bus yard in North Concord, Route 35 went into service at 7:00 a.m. heading south from the San Ramon Transit Center. Fourteen people boarded and went to BART. During its eight and half hour run, it had one trip that carried only six people on a San Ramon Transit Center departure bound for the Dublin BART Station. However, it carried 11 people on the 12:00 noon trip to Dublin BART. At 2:00 p.m., this bus carried 17 people between the San Ramon Transit Center and the Dublin BART Station, while carrying 31 people on the return trip back to the Center. Then the bus completed its day and went out of service. This one bus and one operator carried a total of 123 people during its roughly eight-hour run.

So then, you might ask: “Why not use a smaller bus, when you know which times County Connection hits peak ridership?” If we had used different buses of different sizes, based upon the roller coaster nature of rider usage, we would have needed not one, but multiple buses going back and forth from San Ramon to our bus yard in North Concord and multiple operators on the clock. Given our resources and cost to take this approach with not only Route 35, but also all our routes, it would be cost prohibitive. This is why once we send a bus out into service, it is a better use of resources to keep the bus out even though not every trip the bus makes will be well used by the riding public.

So, perhaps the next time you see a bus that is not full, you might better understand that one person’s empty bus is another person’s full bus somewhere along the route.