The new bus will operate solely on Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada during peak transportation hours. During off-peak hours, it will run the entire length of Route 3, which goes west into La Crescenta and south to Glendale Community College.
The compressed natural gas shuttle, which cost $403,000, was paid for with city revenue generated by Proposition A, a half-cent county sales tax. The 35-foot-long bus can accommodate up 80 people standing.
“These buses typically have a life expectancy of about 15 years, but our older bus has gone far above and beyond that,” Alameda said.
The original shuttle bus is scheduled to be retired in the next 18 months, he added.
Dan Allard, who lives in La Crescenta and works at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recently gave up his car. He rides the Glendale Beeline and the La Cañada Flintridge Shuttle daily.
“It’s been great,” Allard said. “I get on the bus, I read, I listen to music, I do work.”
JPL has limited parking, so the shuttle is a luxury for employees looking for a ride up Foothill Boulevard, employee David Oberhettinger said. He rides the shuttle at least once a week to go to lunch, he added.
And like many of his fellow shuttle riders, Oberhettinger uses the Next Bus smart phone application, which uses global positioning satellite technology to track, down to the minute, when the next bus will be at the closest stop.
“I am sitting there at lunch, and I say, ‘Well, do I have to rush my meal? OK, I have 10 minutes left.’ It gets to about five minutes. I ask for the check, I walk out to the bus stop and the bus is there,” Oberhettinger said.
La Cañada officials are in talks with representatives from the Pasadena Area Rapid Transit System to create a local connection to the Metro Gold Line, Alameda said.
“What we are looking at doing is, through the service that Pasadena has in place with their fixed route transit, is getting a connection point that would be near Descanso Gardens,” Alameda said.
