Long Beach Transit - History

History

Long Beach Transit began operation in 1963 at the time the Pacific Electric Railway was discontinuing service. The primary area of service for Long Beach Transit has been the City of Long Beach and to a limited extent, the enclave city of Signal Hill, but it has also provided service to surrounding communities in Los Angeles County including Lakewood, Cerritos, Norwalk, and Seal Beach in neighboring Orange County.

The company has operated various types of bus services. During the 1970s and 1980s, it also ran small shuttle buses in the downtown area, called the DASH, for "Downtown Area Short Hops," and because the routes were shorter, the fare was lower than on the regular buses.

Originally, bus transfers could be obtained upon payment of $0.10. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, instead of using a common transfer with the route number punched on the transfer, each route had its own transfer with the route number printed on them. For transfers to other bus lines, Long Beach transit used the consolidated Los Angeles County interagency transfer, which every bus company in Los Angeles County except RTD used (its regular transfers worked for both RTD buses and as an Interagency transfer). The interagency transfer even had a check box naming each of the twelve bus companies in the county, and the particular driver would punch the box for the particular agency that issued the transfer. During the mid 1970s (sometime between 1972 and 1976); for a period of six months, a special subsidy was available. All bus trips in Los Angeles County were reduced from approximately $0.80 to $1.25, to $0.25 on weekdays and Saturdays, and $0.10 on Sunday (bus trips outside the county were subject to the regular rate). As a result, the issuance of transfers was discontinued for all trips within Los Angeles County. When the subsidy ended, the old price returned and bus companies resumed issuing transfers.

In the early 1980s, the company changed its transfer system. Instead of using books of transfers, every bus has a ticket printer, which issues the three types of transfers: regular transfers, which allow the user to transfer to a different route; "emergency" transfers (typically used if the customer becomes sick and has to get off the bus) which allow the user to get back on the same route; and "interagency" transfers, which allow the user to transfer to a different bus company (and gave the user an additional 1 hour of time before it expired) such as Orange County Transit, MTA, Norwalk Transit and Cerritos Transit buses. In case of machine failure, however, operators would still carry one book of each kind of transfers.

Effective in 1999, Long Beach Transit instituted a day pass, and on July 1, 2005, Long Beach Transit eliminated transfers within the system, although the interagency transfer is available for transfers to other transit systems.