SamTrans To Change Bus Routes on Peninsula

SamTrans announced that it will be discontinuing two bus routes on the Peninsula, starting in August 2013, and replacing them with another bus line.

Routes 390 and 391, which run along El Camino Real, will be discontinued and merged. 

The new line called "Route ECR" will run on the weekdays and on the weekends from Palo Alto to Daly City. It is scheduled to make stops at cities along the way every 15-20 minutes. 

The reason for the change is to eliminate confusion about the two bus lines and improve scheduling precision, Ackemann said. SamTrans bus lines and other public transportation hubs in the Bay Area are often criticized for being unreliable and the source of personal travel delays. The two lines are scheduled to arrive at stops every 40 minutes.

The 390 and 391 buses have the largest amount of bus riders in San Mateo County, said Jayme Ackemann, communications manager for SamTrans. 50 percent of all the trips in the SamTrans bus network take place on this thoroughfare, according to SamTrans.

Chuck Harvey, SamTrans deputy CEO of operations, said the goal of creating this new line is to give people the ability to throw away the bus time tables. 

“The service is intended to be ‘spontaneous use,’ which means that a customer can walk out to El Camino and expect a bus every 15 minutes without consulting a schedule,” Harvey said. “Route ECR will take them anywhere they want to go along the corridor.”

The transportation company began to test providing more buses in August 2012 to determine whether the actual ridership data justified modifying the bus schedule. Ridership has grown by four percent since then, according to SamTrans data. This growth encouraged the company to create Route ECR and streamline the rider experience every day of the week.

The weekend buses will be scheduled to arrive every 20 minutes, while the weekday buses are expected to arrive at stops every 15 minutes. The new “Route ECR” line will be deployed August 12, 2013.

To see where the new route will stop, view the map attached to these words.