SunLine provides a vital service to many of us who use it to traverse the Coachella Valley to go to work, school or important personal events such as doctor’s appointments. Public transportation is also important because, if effective, it can reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions, and contribute in the fight against climate change.
Yet, despite its criticality, the SunLine Transit Agency has taken steps that negatively impact the quality of its services without seemingly any accountability—and has not provided a roadmap to address its current shortcomings.
I moved to the valley three years ago and have used SunLine ever since. When I moved here, SunLine was operating under a reduced schedule; the justification was the pandemic, with the underlying assumption being that after the pandemic was over, SunLine would restore to its high-frequency service—what it calls Level 1 service.
The pandemic emergency is over, and service not been restored to Level 1; instead, the current service has degraded, affecting every user of the system.
In September 2021, SunLine moved to Level 1 and 2 service on some routes. Buses ran more frequently, and had extended hours. Users could see the end of the tunnel and feel like there was a path to normality. Unfortunately, the improved service only lasted a month: In October that year, SunLine cited operational difficulties and went down to Level 2. Today, SunLine operates on a reduced Level 3 schedule.
SunLine cited a desire for improved reliability as a reason to reduce the schedule frequency. The implicit promise SunLine made to its users was: We will reduce the schedule, but you can count on our buses being on time and showing up. However, SunLine’s promise has not materialized. In my experience, buses often arrive late, or don’t arrive at all. I’ve reported these incidents to SunLine, only to receive corpspeak responses.
(Editor’s note: The Independent reached out to SunLine via Twitter/X and two different email addresses in an attempt to confirm that SunLine was currently operating on a reduced Level 3 schedule. We received no response. The last schedule update we could find on the SunLine website is from October 2021.)
Nowadays, a trip from Palm Springs to Palm Desert that used to take 40 minutes from can take 55 minutes. This is due to several factors. Since SunLine runs a reduced schedule, every bus experiences more demand, which means that every bus makes more stops, and it takes more time for the bus to run throughout the route. The buses are also more crowded, leading to a worse customer experience.
All of this degradation has happened with virtually no accountability. SunLine announces schedule changes without appropriate lead time, and doesn’t request input from users. Certainly, SunLine has expanded good initiatives, like its SunRide program, to more cities in the valley. However, these small improvements don’t make up for the significant degradation in the quality of the service it offers.
Just recently, SunLine reduced its schedule even further. The No. 1 routes that traverse the valley along Highway 111 are running every 30 minutes. This is a high-density corridor, and SunLine should instead be increasing bus frequency.
What’s worse is that there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. SunLine users have no way of knowing whether these changes are temporary. We also don’t know if SunLine is aiming to restore its schedule back to Level 1 at some point—or if they will go in the other direction and reduce the schedule even further. We’re in the dark and subject to decisions that feel arbitrary and have concrete negative effects.
Local politicians who speak of climate change as a priority should hold SunLine accountable for its failures over the years. It is time for SunLine to give the Coachella Valley a responsive and at least minimally decent transportation service.
Miguel Guevara is a technologist living in the Coachella Valley. He arrived here after living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Mexico City, Cuernavaca, San Diego, Mauna Lani and Brazil. He enjoys hiking and biking in the desert. He can be reached at mail@miguel.pw.