Home › Breaking News
Supervisors vote to replace shuttle service at juvenile facility
STORY TOOLS 
More from Breaking NewsThe Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to replace the shuttle bus service at the county Juvenile Justice Center in El Rio with a dial-a-ride program through Yellow Cab Co., which officials say could save the county about $100,000 a year.
The bus route has been running since 2005, and has never had enough customers to justify its existence, county officials said. Typically, only four or five people a day use it, and it cost the county $450,000 to run it for the past three years.
The new system will cost the county about $7 per ride, and customers will pay a fare of $1 per ride. The Board of Supervisors placed a limit on the annual cost at $20,000, which was lowered from $40,000 at the request of Supervisor Linda Parks.
If the ridership stays at its current levels, the program will cost the county about $9,000 a year.
Like the shuttle bus, the dial-a-ride system will take passengers from the Juvenile Justice Center in El Rio to the Esplanade shopping center in Oxnard, two miles south along Vineyard Avenue. There, they can transfer to buses bound for the rest of the county.
"In the long run, the desire is to get a bus when we have the population out there to support it," Parks said.
Posted by luv2sail on June 24, 2008 at 8:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Is it just me or has everyone had to read this article several times to grasp it? It took 3 years@150k a year to figure out this was a tremendous waste of money? Unbelievable! Small wonder there isn't enough money to go around.
Now, we want to offer rides that cost seven dollars and only charge one dollar for it?
There isn't any public transportation between my ome and my office, a distance of seven miles.
Where do I sign up for this deal.
Posted by ojgrove on June 25, 2008 at 12:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Let's hope that the juvenile facility doesn't ever get the population out there to support it. The money saved would best go to early intervention programs for at risk juveniles.
Article discussions on this site are to support community debates of issues related to our stories and editorials.
Discussions should not stray from the subject of the story or editorial.
We do not allow the following:
- Posts that degrade others on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
- Disparaging remarks, abusive language or obscene comments.
- Threats, whether obvious or veiled.
We reserve the right to delete threads and/or ban users for these or other reasons we deem necessary.
Opinions are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.
There are 2 comments to this article.
Comments are found beneath the Yahoo! ad below.