The BruinGo! bus pass pilot program with the Santa Monica Bus Lines will be extended through another academic year while Transportation Services officials step up marketing efforts and collect more data to evaluate the program's effectiveness in reducing parking demand on the campus and surrounding neighborhoods.

"It would be easy to say, 'Let's discontinue it,' since the numbers show there has been no significant increase in ridership," said Mark Stocki, director of UCLA Transportation Services. "The people who rode the bus before the program was launched are still riding the bus, only now they are riding for free."

But the program, which started in September and was funded for only one year, will resume next September while officials try to boost bus ridership and obtain more data so that a fully informed decision can be made on the program's ultimate fate.

"We wanted to give this program a real chance of succeeding. We want to try everything possible to make this a success," Stocki said.

BruinGo!, which is fueled by $1 million in parking revenues, is the first program of its kind to utilize the latest electronic fare-box technology. Swiping their BruinCards, students, faculty and staff can ride free on any Santa Monica bus, even if their destination is not the campus.

"It's perhaps the best university transit pass program in the country and one of the least expensive," hailed Professor and Chair of urban planning Donald Shoup, who was instrumental in getting the program launched. "It's one of the few that is also open to faculty and staff."

Advocates for the program have collected 1,500 comments from the campus community, overwhelmingly in favor of the program, Shoup said. Surprisingly, employees are using it for local business trips, to get to the Santa Monica-UCLA or the Veterans Administration hospitals. "For people who come in on the vanpools, it gives them much more mobility," he noted.

Officials estimate that $300,000 left unspent from the $1 million will go toward funding the additional year. Transportation Services also plans to apply for grants from the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the EPA. "We are exploring every available option," said Stocki. If they are unsuccessful, he added, "then we will have to squeeze it out of other programs."

Ridership surveys taken last May before the program began and again one week last November, when BruinGo! was in effect, show that average daily student ridership on inbound Santa Monica buses actually dipped from 3,051 in the baseline survey to 2,938 riders. For employees, ridership rose slightly from 954 in a survey taken last April to 1,029 last November. Transportation officials noted that in the count, every advantage was given to the bus riders, who were counted every time they rode an inbound bus.

Meanwhile, parking demand among students hit a historic high this past winter quarter when 3,200 were on the waiting list for permits, Stocki said.

While officials brainstorm how best to entice commuters from their cars to try mass transit, work is moving forward on two planned parking construction projects, one to put 1,500 spaces under the Intramural Field, of which 700 spaces will be built to replace parking lost to hospital construction; and another to build 2,000 spaces in the new Southwest Campus Housing project south of Weyburn Avenue and east of Veteran Avenue for single upper-division and graduate students.