Known for its bright white buses seen shuttling Angelenos from Downtown to destinations across the county, Foothill Transit has played a central role in Los Angeles’ public transportation landscape for nearly four decades. The agency operates a fleet of 359 buses and runs along 37 local and express routes, prioritizing safe, efficient service and sustainability. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Summer Olympics on the horizon, the Foothill Transit team wants to help raise a new generation of riders in LA.
“The founding mission of the organization has always been to be focused on and responsive to the needs of the communities that we serve,” said Doran Barnes, CEO of Foothill Transit. “The second reason for our creation was to be a different kind of transit operator that works with the private sector, blending the best of policymaking with a really entrepreneurial approach to delivering the service.”
Foothill Transit was established in 1988, back when the Southern California Rapid Transit District governed public transportation for all of LA County, to provide a more locally responsive agency that brought improved services to the San Gabriel Valley. Barnes said that since he began working for Foothill Transit in 1997 as deputy executive director, he has seen it grow from a “scrappy startup” into a robust system.
“It’s been a great evolution,” he said.
Today, Foothill Transit is governed by a Joint Powers Authority of the County of Los Angeles and 22 member cities, including Arcadia, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Bradbury, Claremont, Covina, Diamond Bar, Duarte, El Monte, Glendora, Industry, Irwindale, La Puente, La Verne, Monrovia, Pasadena, Pomona, San Dimas, South El Monte, Temple City, Walnut and West Covina. In 2022, the system had a ridership of almost 7 million people.
Along with covering approximately 330 square miles of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley areas of eastern LA, Foothill Transit has commuter express lines that travel into the heart of Downtown. The agency also recently built a new Downtown LA layover facility with LADOT and AVTA where its express buses will stay after the morning commute instead of returning to the operations and maintenance facility in Pomona, reducing the amount of fuel consumed while extending the lifetime of the vehicles.
“The primary service for residents in the Downtown LA area would be the Silver Streak, our long-haul line that goes from Montclair on the edge of San Bernardino County to Cal Poly Pomona and then to West Covina, El Monte, Cal State LA, the former USC Medical Center (LA General), and into Downtown,” said Felicia Friesema, director of marketing and communications. “That’s a 24-hour service and it is seven days a week, so it’s the line that tends to give a lot of people access to places that they might not have had access to before. We actually have a few students at Cal Poly who live in the Downtown LA area and use the Silver Streak to get to school.”
Sustainability
Out of Foothill Transit’s 359 buses, 307 are powered by compressed natural gas, 33 by hydrogen fuel cells and 19 by electric batteries. The agency was reportedly the first in the United States to deploy fast-charge electric buses and has the largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) buses in California.
“Even though we grapple here in the state of California with very specific issues when it comes to air quality, especially in the Los Angeles area, I think that what we address here has impacts not only across the country but across the planet,” Friesema said. “Do we do this in isolation? We absolutely do not. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has very specific guidelines in place and benchmarks that we have to meet in purchasing and deploying zero-emissions fleet vehicles. As of 2023, 25% of all fleet purchases that we make…
This article was originally published by a www.pasadenaweekly.com . Read the Original article here. .