Youth Ride Free program coming
Santa Cruz County youth looking for a ride across town are guaranteed to have a free one waiting for them beginning next month after the Santa Cruz METRO Board of Directors approved its first-ever Youth Ride Free pilot program.
The year-long program, set to launch March 1, aims to increase access for riders in grades K-12 and also foster a familiarity with the public transportation system that local authorities are leaning into for future planning opportunities.
“Our local youth represent the future of transit and they need better access to METRO,” said Santa Cruz METRO Board Chair Larry Pageler in a release. “This pilot program is a big step toward reducing barriers in ridership. A key goal for the Youth Ride Free program is to help develop lifelong transit riders, while meeting METRO's overall goal of increasing transit ridership.”
According to the release, a METRO study from 2019 found that only 9.7% or roughly 494,700 of its 5.1 million total ridership was age 18 or younger despite making up 19% of the county's total population. According to the website Data Share Santa Cruz County, 51,327 of the county's 269,893 residents are younger than 18.
Riders in grades K-8 looking to participate in the program may be asked by a METRO driver to identify their grade level or the school they attend and may also be asked to display a student identification if available before boarding the bus.
Youth in grades 9-12 will be asked to show a student ID to the driver and those without one can get a special pass from their school or at the Pacific Station Customer Service window in
Downtown Santa Cruz.
After suffering usage declines during the COVID-19 pandemic, Santa Cruz METRO recently set an ambitious goal of doubling its ridership within the next five years. METRO had a ridership of about 3.5 million last year and is aiming to increase that to 7 million by 2028. Danielle Glagola, a
METRO spokesperson, told the Sentinel this week that its current ridership was on pace to reach about 3.8 million, or a 10% increase from last year.
The transit agency also launched its One Ride at a Time program last month, which involved wrapping its buses in awe-inspiring images from the legendary wildlife photographerwriter duo Frans Lanting and Chris Eckstrom.
METRO and its partners also recently won $30 million
in grant funding from the Department of Transportation to bolster construction efforts for new bus-on-shoulder lanes in both directions along Highway 1 from Freedom Boulevard to State Park Drive. Funds will also be used to purchase four zero-emission buses.
Pageler called the grant a “major grant win” and said the investment will “increase access to transit, improve the speed and reliability of METRO buses,
and support our goals reduce emissions.”
The county's Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, approved by the Board of Supervisors late last year, found that the greatest source of greenhouse gas contributions in unincorporated county regions came from passenger and commercial vehicles. This category produced 447,514 metrics tons of CO2 in 2019 or roughly 61% of total unincorporated emissions, according to the report.
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