Catch a bus, catch a wave
When Orange County residents spot their new public transportation on the street this year, a lyric from the Doors may come to mind: “The blue bus is calling us / Driver, where are you taking us?”
On Monday, the Orange County Transportation Authority board voted to implement a new design for its upcoming fleet of buses, which will begin hitting the streets this fall. The design features a smidgeon of orange, mostly on the back, and, on the bottom of the sides, white to be covered by advertisements.
Mostly, though, a prominent blue will dominate the upper sides in a curly, wave-like pattern. (Orange below the wave could pass for sand.) With its beach-like palette, the design brings to mind a sightseeing tour as much as a Monday morning commute to work, and according to OCTA spokesman Eric Carpenter, that was part of the intention.
“You can contrast it with the other buses here — white has always been the solid color,” he said Wednesday morning as a driver maneuvered the first blue bus into the OCTA base in Santa Ana. “With all the groups we went to, initially, there was talk about doing orange, since, you know, in Orange County, people associate us with orange.
“And that was really a polarizing color. People seemed to either really like it or really not like it.”
Instead, OCTA — which enlisted two design firms to contribute concepts and then ran them by customers, stakeholders and others — evoked the ocean for its dominant theme. The new buses, which also feature the logo “OC Bus” at the top, will phase out the old fleet of about 550 vehicles. OCTA plans to replace 40% of its vehicles with compressed natural gas-powered buses by 2017.
According to Stella Lin, OCTA’s manager of marketing and customer engagement, the authority began in October with 50 concepts provided by Santa Ana-based Truth & Advertising and Mission Viejo-based Klein + Klein. After four rounds of online surveys and meetings with advisory committees, including OCTA’s Teen Council, the 50 designs boiled down to three finalists.
Those three were affixed on buses for a quick, temporary visual, and the blue wave ultimately won out.
“It’s quite a journey,” Lin said Tuesday. “Yesterday was a big relief for me, but I think everything was worth it.”
In phasing out the old design, OCTA also hopes to reverse a recent drop in ridership. In 2008, the buses averaged 230,000 boardings per day, compared with about 160,000 last year.
Already this summer, the authority has a new program to encourage children and teenagers to take the bus: a $20 pass to ride for 30 days. Before, Carpenter said, OCTA offered only a $60 pass for three months. The smaller increments may entice more buyers, he added.
To help promote the package, OCTA recently created an advertising campaign urging residents to “de-zombify” by going outdoors during the summer and leaving the computer screen behind.
Natalie Wang, a member of the Teen Council and a junior at Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, said she believes the new design will make travel easier — or at least more eye-catching.
“I think that it’s easier to see on the streets,” she said. “The old design would kind of blend in. It would kind of pass by. The new one, I think, pops out more and would more likely grab somebody’s attention.”