The Coachella Valley’s lone mass-transit option for its roughly 450,000 residents is the SunLine Transit Agency (STA), based in Thousand Palms. With its fleet of 88 fixed-route buses and other vehicles, the STA is tasked with providing daily reliable, efficient and comfortable transportation.
In 2026, vehicles are more expensive to purchase or lease—and when you add in taxes, licensing, registration fees and the skyrocketing price of gasoline, paying $1 for a SunLine bus trip (or just 50 cents for seniors) may sound appealing. But when many people take into consideration the distance they must walk to get to a bus stop from home or work—often in triple-digit heat—one tends to think again.
Such are the questions and challenges facing SunLine CEO and general manager Mona Babauta. She’s been on the job since August 2023, and with her 26 years of experience in the public transit sphere, Babauta is spearheading an ambitious strategic planning effort, introduced by a community-outreach program (aka phase one) over the last two months. This data-gathering and planning project has been dubbed “SunLine: Rides Reimagined.”
“What we want to do is understand better the needs of the community,” Babauta told the Independent during a recent interview. “That’s our No. 1 priority, and that’s what we’re doing. We haven’t done any extensive work to go out into the community and get their feedback on why they don’t take the bus, and also why they do take the bus, (in some time). If they do take the bus, what more can we do to improve their ability to move throughout the valley as efficiently, as quickly and as comfortably as possible? The last time we did this was before COVID … so it’s high time we do it again.”
Is the “Rides Reimagined” effort intended to improve revenues, or to satisfy passenger concerns and needs?
“Of course, every time we do something that results in ridership increases, we are going to see increases in revenue,” Babauta said. “That’s an important goal of ours, because we want to, of course, collect more fare revenues. And then, we also want to look at ways to improve funding from the state and federal governments. Our ability to demonstrate that we’re doing things that increase ridership, and take cars off the road as well, those are two valuable metrics when we compete for funding at the state and federal levels.”
The public survey concluded in early March, but interested members of the public still have opportunities to submit their input in the coming weeks.
“All of the public meetings that we have scheduled moving forward, and that we know of at this point in time, can be found (at www.sunline.org),” Babauta said. “We also have our scheduled board meetings, and (residents are) always welcome to come to our board meetings and share their feedback.” (The April board meeting is scheduled for April 22, at SunLine’s Thousand Palms headquarters.)
Babauta pointed to some interesting survey results.
“The response rate has been incredible,” Babauta said. “We’ve gotten over 1,700 surveys, which is fantastic, because normally when we go out and do public outreach and ask folks to complete surveys, we don’t usually get such an overwhelming response. … We’re still trying to synthesize the data, and we’ll do cross tabulations also to help us learn more about each individual city and community, but what we heard from the public was: One, they’re willing to walk a little bit farther to be able to get to their destinations faster. We thought that was interesting, especially here in the desert.”
Now in phase two of “Rides Reimagined,” Babauta said SunLine is working to find a proper balance between “two service scenarios.”
“One service scenario is focused on maximizing ridership, and a second scenario is focused on maximizing coverage. There are trade-offs between the two, right?” she said. “When we look for data, we’re looking at where all the ridership is happening, and where all the density is. So, if we want to maximize ridership, we’re really focusing service along those corridors where the most jobs are, where there’s the most high-density housing, and where there’s the most shopping going on. … The coverage scenario entails the buses touching almost every part of the valley. When that happens, people won’t have to walk as far to grab a bus—but that bus is not going to get you from point A to point B as fast as you would like. So, there are trade-offs. … We’re providing two scenarios that reflect both of those interests that we oftentimes hear from customers and folks in the community, and when we develop those two scenarios, we’re going to go back and do another round of public engagement. That will likely start around May.”
SunLine will request feedback on those two scenarios, and present the findings at the July 22 board meeting, Babauta said.
“The board will be asked to give us feedback on these scenarios, and they’ll do that armed with the community feedback that we’ve got … already,” she said. “They might say, ‘We do not like either one of those scenarios, staff, so we want you to go back to the drawing board and come up with a map that maybe reflects both, or maybe leans more toward ridership … or something that leans more towards coverage.”
Once the SunLine team has determined their preferred service scenario, phase three of “Rides Reimagined” will begin.
“We’ll ask the public what they think through another survey process, and possibly other community meetings. We still need to figure all that out,” Babauta said. “Then we’ll go back to the board later this calendar year and present all of the findings that we got from the community … and share a proposed final scenario. Once the board takes action at the end, that (final scenario) is what my staff is going to use to inform our service changes—until this process is done again in another five to six years, possibly.”
Babauta said she knows that not all riders will be happy with that final scenario.
“I’ve been going to all the city councils, and other council meetings in the unincorporated areas of the county, (and) I’ve been telling folks that in the end, there are probably going to be folks who won’t be happy with what they see, because the bus won’t go exactly where they want it to go,” she said. “However, we’re going to do our best. We’re going to do our best to get bus stops as close as possible to them, so that we can minimize walks. We (already) offer other mobility options to minimize the gaps, to minimize how far people might need to walk, and to minimize (having) no access to mobility. Those other options include SunRide, which is our micro-transit offering: You call us and tell us where you are, and we will offer you a pickup point. The pickup point may not exactly be at your house, but it will be a short distance from where you’re at, and we will do our best to get you as close as possible to where you want to go.
“… To jump on SunRide is a $3 (trip), because it’s more of a premium service. … We also provide subsidized taxi service. Basically, we subsidize taxi rides for individuals who are over the age of 60 (or have) qualifying disabilities. … We will match every dollar that a rider puts into a taxi ride with another dollar, up to $75 (per month). So, individuals who qualify for the subsidized taxi program could take $150 worth of rides in a month, and we will subsidize half of that.”
Learn more at www.sunline.org/rides-reimagined.