The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System is hoping to ramp up promotion efforts for the 910 bus route, which began operating at the end of January, making it the first overnight route available.
While the route runs a route similar to the Blue Line, the trolley must remain closed to passenger traffic from 1 to 4 a.m. to avoid conflicts with freight rail. This puts a strain on early-morning commuters, as the first San Ysidro departure at 4:19 a.m. brings in the largest ridership of the day — leaving some commuters unable to board due to constraints on passenger capacity.
Route 910 currently has seven stops, starting at the San Ysidro transit center and ending at the Santa Fe Depot, which were chosen based upon commuter surveys and ridership data.
During a March 26 SANDAG Borders Committee meeting, Stacy Bishop, manager of marketing and communications for MTS announced the upcoming efforts to expand marketing for the new route.
Initial advertisements were targeted toward existing riders; now, they are hoping to make more potential commuters aware of the option.
“But now that we’ve been able to see that we have quite a bit of capacity still on the route, we will be doing some cross-border ads at digital billboards near the border, some Spanish radio stations, and so we’ll be promoting the service more on a broader scale,” Bishop said.
During its first two months in operation, the 910 route’s initial ridership has increased nearly 33%. The most popular trip times are just before the trolley starts (northbound) and after the trolley finishes (southbound).
However, the busiest trips are seeing about 40 passengers, which is not quite at capacity. As the seated capacity for the buses in operation is 60 passengers, with a maximum capacity of 80-90, Bishop said, the availability for more passengers is pushing the effort to make more aware of the new service.
In order to monitor the effects of the marketing campaign and the needs of commuters, MTS will be surveying riders this upcoming May.
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