Op-Ed: Hey AC Transit, Riders Already Paid for Reliability. It’s Time to Deliver
Editor’s note: On Wednesday, Sept. 9/today! at 5, the AC Transit Board will consider the semiannual Service Reliability Report for the second half of fiscal year 2025–26. Advocate Kuan Butts posted the comments he plans to make, drawing on his review of Oakland Avenue schedules, AC Transit’s published performance (KPI) history, the district’s September staff report, and independent vehicle-location observations. Streetsblog thought the comment was basically already an op-ed and, with permission, worth sharing with readers.
In 2017, Line 33 brought Oakland Avenue service through Adams Point and Grand Lake (some of Oakland’s densest neighborhoods) to a median of about every 15 minutes, with some gaps as tight as 12. The pandemic interrupted that progress, but by 2025 service had stabilized around every 16 to 17 minutes. Then AC Transit’s “Realign” replaced Line 33 with Line 88: a 20-minute median with gaps approaching 30 minutes—the most sparse service schedule offered in over a decade.
Riders were asked to accept less frequency in exchange for reliability. Yet district data shows Service Operated was about 98.5 percent immediately before Realign in 2025. By July 2026, it had fallen to 89.93 percent. This is the second-lowest monthly result in all of AC Transit’s published KPI data. At the system average, a regular weekday rider has gone from encountering fewer than one dropped trip a month to about one every week.
I appreciate the candor of the Staff report. It provides additional context around the widespread collapse of service. For example: Staff reports that 32,908 scheduled trips did not run from January through June, 44 percent because of operator unavailability.
But reporting once or twice a year is not a functioning feedback loop. By the time the Board sees six-month averages, riders have lived with the problem for months. Meanwhile, Board response and subsequent Staff planning work is only beginning to plan chasing last year’s failure. Ridership is a lagging indicator: by the time falling boardings reveal lost trust, the damage is already done. Yet public KPI data remains months behind—for example, last fiscal year’s ridership reporting is still incomplete.
I urge the Board to take four steps:
- First, require an automated weekly reliability scorecard, post it publicly, and include it in every regular Board packet.
- Second, measure the rider’s experience. Break punctuality into 5-minute incremented delays. Report long gaps, bunching, partial trips, and results against all scheduled service—not only trips that ran. Treat extreme delays as catastrophic failures, and adopt a high-target measure that expands on On Time Service Delivered—the current 75 percent target is far too coarse.
- Third, whenever performance misses target, require named causes, a responsible executive, deadlines, and public corrective-action updates. Do this every Board meeting.
- Finally, consider tying executive evaluations (and any incentive compensation) to timely, rider-centered reliability outcomes.
Riders already paid for reliability with reduced frequency. The Board must ensure AC Transit honors that bargain, measures it weekly, and restores service as performance improves.
The board meeting, again, is today, Wednesday, September 9, at 5 p.m., 2nd Floor Board Room, 1600 Franklin Street, Oakland. Remote access on Zoom at Webinar ID: 984 8717 5063 or via phone at (669) 900-6833. Submit your own written comment here.
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Kuan Butts created the AC Transit Report Card and has been involved with TVRR as an organizer and with Transport Oakland as a board member.
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