A new express bus service launched last week, taking passengers from East Palo Alto to downtown San Francisco, while making stops along the Peninsula, including Menlo Park, Redwood City Caltrain and the San Bruno BART station.
The new service will take advantage of the Highway 101 express lane, which opened last March and extends about 22 miles from the Santa Clara County line to Interstate 380. The effort got underway around 2019, and SamTrans subsequently received about $2 million in grant money to purchase three additional zero-emission vehicles through the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program.
The effort was spearheaded within East Palo Alto, and funding also helped provide some of the local residents in a nearby affordable housing development with transit passes. SamTrans spokesperson Randol White said the decision on which additional Peninsula stops to include were based on survey data dictating what was in demand throughout the county as well.
“We did have three rounds of community surveys that were done, and each survey helped define the changes that we’ve made over the past few years regarding routes,” he said.
“This is basically based on what people were asking for in these surveys, combined with data that shows where people are actually going.”
The weekday-only service will run roughly every 45 minutes and include stops in Menlo Park, Redwood City and San Bruno, with downtown San Francisco service included twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Key transit connections at the San Bruno BART, Redwood City Caltrain and the San Francisco International Airport would also be included. White said the bus line will particularly help individuals who don’t live closer to major public rail transit.
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East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio Lopez also praised the new line, stating in a press release he was excited about making “this equitable route a reality.”
The move is also part of a larger initiative to update several SamTrans bus routes, including the removal of Route 398 and increasing frequency for some lines, such as Route 110.
“We wanted to have routes that go where people want to go, and we definitely wanted to focus on equity routes and places where perhaps we didn’t have great service in the past. This project was born out of that,” White said.
The route launched Monday, Feb. 12, and will cost riders the standard fare.
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