Originally posted on Reddit
This Tuesday, City Council will be considering renewing the contract and increasing the budget of Circuit Transit, an on-demand transit network company that provides ride hail services in limited locations within Long Beach.
The new budget proposes an increase from $1.34 million to $6.47 million to fund a larger service area, 8 more vehicles, and longer operation hours. As touted by the city staff report, Circuit facilitated 5,220 trips in June 2024. This represented 0.3% of what Long Beach Transit accomplished in the same timeframe, and yet the amount of money allocated to LBT from the City in FY25 is only $6.83 million. The math is not mathing. Why are we investing in a transit service that is so much more expensive and serves far fewer people?
Having transit service along our coast is a nice asset. The 121, the bus line that currently runs between Downtown and Belmont Shore, comes every 20 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends. However, it used to be much better:
Furthermore, what is now the 151 was also a fare free service that ran along 4th St to Downtown. This service ran every 15-20 minutes rather than what is now every 30. And to reach the Queen Mary? You only had to wait 8-10 minutes.
Over time, transit funding cuts and low ridership slowly chipped away at these services until we where we are today. We have a good opportunity to reverse course on some of this dilapidation and decay, but instead of using the money to fund a service that provides benefit to all residents in Long Beach, we may instead choose to subsidize a parking shuttle for the rich.
Let’s not continue repeating the mistakes of the past and be smarter with our transit investments going forward. Increasing the funding that the City of Long Beach contributes by almost two-fold will result in better transit service at lower cost than what Circuit would be capable of providing.
TL;DR: Circuit costs 55 times more to run than LBT. Bring back the old Passport.
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