We sat down with Sam Gutierrez, the City of Rosemead’s Director of Public works, to hear how the City was able to reduce the cost per ride of their senior dial-a-ride service by more than 60% while doubling their total public transit ridership - all for the same budget.
To start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the City?
My name is Sam Gutierrez. I am the Director of Public Works for the city of Rosemead. In this role, I oversee the planning, maintenance, and improvement of the city’s infrastructure, including streets, facilities, and essential public services including public transit. I started here in November of 2024, and before that I worked for the cities of Baldwin Park and West Covina. And while I was at Baldwin Park I was undertaking a project focused on how the City could improve the performance of its fixed-route system, and coincidentally when I joined the City of Rosemead one of the first tasks I was given was to do the same thing here - I think all over across this region we have these similar challenges facing suburban communities who have a public transit need but are not being very well served at the moment with their current systems.
When you arrived in Rosemead, and you started to look at the transit system, what were some of the biggest challenges that you guys were facing and what made you say “maybe we need to rethink how we're doing things”?
Well immediately our main concern was a lack of ridership. Constituents were coming to us and, rightly so, wanting to know why the buses were always running empty? We were paying about $1.5 million a year to operate these buses. And also, similar to Baldwin Park, and a lot of cities in the greater Los Angeles area, the city of Rosemead operates a Dial-A-Ride service primarily for seniors. The Dial-A-Ride was a little bit more utilized, as compared to fixed-route, but it was not very reliable and there were a lot of complaints from seniors that they weren't getting picked up on time and they weren't able to schedule their appointments reliably.
For me, seeing this same story play out again just kind of solidified in my mind that so many cities of similar size were experiencing this same issue – incurring significant cost to run these fixed-route buses that aren’t being fully utilized while also offering essential transit through Dial-A-Ride services but not managing them efficiently enough to get people to their appointments on time and have it be reliable. There just had to be a better way.
And so how did you identify microtransit as a potential solution at least replacing the fixed route element of the service?
So, one of the first steps we took was to look at the other cities around us and see what they were doing. We saw a few neighboring cities were beginning to experiment with microtransit and ridehailing programs and we started to think “well hey, is there a possible way where we can adapt to something similar?” One of the things that I think we take for granted is that today’s world has changed and people are now used to using “apps” on a phone which is a very personal experience. They expect a lot of technology and transparency in their day-to-day lives, which is lacking in our fixed route systems. If we wanted to make transit attractive to the younger generations and bring in new ridership we really needed to elevate the technology powering it.
And as you were contemplating some of these changes, what was the reaction from the community? How did you get them comfortable with the concept of making a big change to the network? While there may not have been a ton of ridership on the fixed route I’m sure for the people who did use it and of course for the senior program, these programs are essential and change is always a bit scary.
We did a lot of outreach, and most importantly we met the community where they were. We didn't say, "Hey, come down to City Hall and we'll tell you all about this new program." We knew this would be a sensitive change and it needed a personal touch. So, we got out in the community. We went to senior centers, we went to the community centers. We met with them, we sat down with them face to face and in some instances we met individually with people we knew needed extra help.
We did a lot of outreach specifically for the senior and the disabled community, but the City of Rosemead is a little bit unique in that its constituency is very diverse. So we had to coordinate these meetings in four different languages. And so putting all of that together was challenging, but I think it was well worth the effort because I think it really helped the community understand the process.
And what surprised us was that a lot of them had phones and were open to using an app but their phones had not been updated to the latest version. So we acted a little like tech support and we helped them update their operating systems and get them going - we helped install the app, we walked them through the setup process.
And of course like with any launch there are some that are worried or upset about change and you start to panic. So when we started seeing the ridership numbers take off in the first week of service we were very happy; there was just a collective sigh of relief.
What were the key considerations that you were looking for in a vendor to come in and help you make these changes?
We knew that we wanted to work with a company that had a good track record in implementing the microtransit side of the service but it was also critical for us to find somebody that had experience serving the Dial-A-Ride community and would help us develop the right strategy to transition these riders and make the process very smooth for them. We wanted to launch with both the new microtransit service to replace the old fixed-route at the same time as we transitioned the Dial-A-Ride and have them both operate as one cohesive branded service. Via had experience doing this for other nearby communities and they had this great internal branding team who helped us put this plan together really quickly.
It was also very important to us to find somebody who had local experience and who worked and delivered great results for our neighbor and who understood our area.
And then of course cost is always a factor. We needed a partner who could help us implement our envisioned program within our current budget constraints. Via quickly stood out during the procurement process because they ticked all the right boxes.
And now to the fun part. What have the results been?
Oh wow. We could not be happier with how things turned out. There was just a tremendous amount of pressure for it to be successful. We literally just ripped the band-aid off; the fixed-route ended on a Sunday and then we started on Monday with a whole new transit system.
It’s always so scary to take a risk, and it could have gone the other way. But we started seeing ridership jump up quickly and not only catch up to the numbers that we were achieving with the old fixed route but actually surpassing those numbers.
And on the Dial-A-Ride side we actually started to see a lot of new seniors taking advantage of it and others coming back to us. They had stopped riding not because they didn’t need the service but because they were frustrated with the old system. So they gave Rosemead Go a try and just absolutely jumped on board and started using it. We’ve been able to reduce the cost per ride of our Dial-A-Ride service by more than 60%, we’ve doubled ridership, and instead of empty buses we’ve got full microtransit vehicles driving around.
What would you say was kind of the hardest part of the project?
I think that the implementation part was definitely the hardest. I cannot thank Via enough in taking on this challenge and partnering with us, and you know, kind of holding our hands through the implementation process.
We were given just eight weeks to move forward with the implementation. But within those 8 weeks we successfully got it up and running. In the first week we developed the branding including the logos and the color coding. And getting that done so fast allowed us to start disseminating the information and which allowed us to hit the ground running starting with community outreach maximizing the time to ensure people really understood this was a whole new approach to public transit.
Finally, what advice would you give to other cities who kind of are facing the same challenges as Rosemead?
You know, I think the most important thing is to know your ridership. Are they truly being served by the existing fixed-route or whatever system you have in place? Once you understand that, it opens up the possibility of new and innovative ways of addressing some of those needs. I think those are important things to consider before you make a move. And I think what helped us here in Rosemead is that we looked closely at what our neighboring cities with similar challenges were doing.
It's clear that small-city public transit needs to leverage the latest technology that is available. What breaks the paradigm for a lot of folks is that now they don't have to walk to a dedicated bus stop, right? You can go to the nearest corner you get picked up all managed on your phone. So that makes a lot of sense, it clicks immediately with the younger generation. You have to be able to serve those people while still prioritizing the seniors and disabled community and ensuring that they too understand how they use the system, that it’s going to be ADA compliant and easy to use. We can incorporate all of these elements into one commingled system and we’re proof that it works!