Buses Taken for a 9-City Test Ride : Transportation: The odyssey exposes a few bumps, and one very large gap, in city and county mass transit.

7:15 A.M.

It’s a chilly morning outside Fillmore City Hall, and the FATCO Route B bus is nowhere in sight.

Photographer Larry Ho and I circle City Hall and finally spot the white Fillmore Area Transit Corp. bus, taking on passengers in a rear parking lot. We step aboard.

Soon the 15-year-old vehicle is rolling south on California 126, with Sammie Ferretta, 69, behind the wheel.

The retired maintenance engineer, a World War II tail gunner who spent time as a prisoner of war, steers the bus into Santa Paula. He is carrying a handful of adults and about two dozen teen-agers on their way to St. Bonaventure High School in Ventura.

The air inside is hot in front, cold in back. The ride is bumpy.

“I don’t like riding the bus,” sighs Alicia Barnes, 14, of Fillmore. “The one we usually get has broken windows and leaking vents. So the seats get wet.”

“This is a luxury bus for FATCO,” adds Katie Voelker, 15, also of Fillmore.

A Ventura College student, Josh Data, 20, of Fillmore complains that the $1.50 one-way fare is too high.

But Judi Mitchell, who boards in Santa Paula, believes it is a bargain. Mitchell, a receptionist at the County Government Center in Ventura, owns a car but often prefers public transportation.

“I think it’s more relaxed--I don’t have to worry about the traffic,” she says. “It’s cheaper. I don’t think I can drive my car to Ventura and back for $3, with the gas and the wear and tear.”

We tell Ferretta that we need to make our next connection outside the Ventura County Medical Center.

Instead, he lets us off a few blocks away at Community Memorial Hospital, where he assures us we can catch our next bus to Ojai.

Minutes later, a South Coast Area Transit (SCAT) bus pulls up. Its driver says no, he is not going to Ojai. The bus to Ojai boards on the opposite side of the street.

8:34 A.M.

We have finally found the right bus, a modern SCAT coach whose interior is lined with public service placards promoting AIDS education, a literacy program and the Ventura County Rescue Mission.

As the bus rolls into downtown Ventura, Virginia Slater, 73, a Jehovah’s Witness, shares her religious beliefs with other passengers.

“I’m a messenger of God, too,” Russ Gehman, 34, of Ventura tells her.

Gehman, who has shoulder-length black hair and a tattoo on his arm, wears a button that reads: “Born Again Pagan.”

“That means I used to be a tyrant until I found Jesus in my heart,” he explains.

SCAT is the county’s largest bus service, carrying 2.6 million riders annually. It is a joint-powers agency funded by Ventura County and five cities: Ojai, Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Santa Paula.

Cities such as Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Camarillo declined to join SCAT because they wanted to retain local control over bus services.

SCAT’s city and county subsidies are needed because the agency collects a 75-cent adult fare for a ride that costs $2.50, according to SCAT General Manager Peter Drake.

Some riders complain that SCAT buses don’t run often enough or late enough. But each additional hour of bus service costs $100,000 a year, Drake says.

Outside the bus, the aging storefronts of Ventura are disappearing now. Grassy slopes and clear blue skies come into view as the bus heads north toward Ojai along California 33.

“When I first started driving, I thought, ‘Gee, are they paying me to do this?’ ” remarks driver Mary Ann Webster, a 13-year SCAT veteran.

But this same scenic road turned treacherous during the recent rainstorms, she says.

“You had to keep your eyes open because the sides of the mountain started to come down,” Webster recalls. “They have huge old rocks, you know.”

Past the horse ranches, the antique shop and the market that sells “nite crawlers,” the bus weaves its way into rural Ojai.

At one stop, a mother and daughter board with several bulging bags.

“We’re on our way to do laundry,” the woman explains. With a hint of apology, she adds, “We’re supposed to be getting a washing machine and a car real soon.”

In front of a real estate office near the Ojai Valley Inn, the bus lets us off. The driver assures us that, across the street, we can catch the Ojai Trolley for the next leg of our trip.

Minutes later, an employee at the real estate office says no, we don’t need to cross the street. We can catch the shuttle right in front of his business. Utterly confused, we await the trolley.

My route around the county was devised a day earlier by the county’s Dial-A-Route computer.

Its three-page itinerary looked fine until I looked at one of the last legs of the trip. The computer wanted to send me from Thousand Oaks to Simi Valley by way of LAX and downtown Los Angeles.

Dial-A-Route is a toll-free telephone service operated by the Ventura County Transportation Commission. An operator uses a computer to tell callers which buses to take, where and when to pick them up, and how much the trip will cost.

With relative ease, the computer found the coaches that could take me to the first eight cities: FATCO to Fillmore, Santa Paula and Ventura; SCAT to Ojai, Oxnard and Port Hueneme; an Interconnect bus to Camarillo and Thousand Oaks.

I was wary because some of the connections were just 10 minutes apart. If one bus got caught in traffic, the schedule could be shot. If we didn’t catch the 3:10 p.m. Interconnect bus--its last run of the day--the trek might end right there.

Still, if the buses were on time, the route to Thousand Oaks looked like it would work.

But then there was that five-hour trip from Thousand Oaks to Simi Valley: A $14 airport shuttle from Westlake to Los Angeles International Airport; a $1.50 RTD bus from the airport to Union Station in Los Angeles; an $11 Amtrak train trip back to Simi Valley.

This route was ludicrous. So was the $26.50 total cost.

The problem was, the Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks bus systems didn’t connect. To the computer, the LAX-Union station trip seemed like the best public transit route between the cities.

An operator for RTD--the Los Angeles County bus service--later suggested a somewhat better alternative: take RTD buses from Thousand Oaks to Woodland Hills, then north to Chatsworth; there, catch a Simi Valley Transit bus back to Ventura County.

This 95-minute trip would cost less than $2.

The 10th city on the list--Moorpark--would be impossible to reach by public bus. Moorpark operates one coach that never leaves town. The Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks city buses don’t run to Moorpark.

Mary Lindley, a Moorpark employee who handles transit programs, says Moorpark residents, who have the highest median income in the county, just seem to prefer their cars.

“We don’t have the demand, I think, that most communities have for public transit,” she explains. “Typically, you’d expect that if there were a lot of people out there who needed the service, you’d get the calls. I don’t get the calls very often.”

It appeared we would need a taxi for the very last leg of the trip.

9:58 A.M.

A green vehicle that seems to have cruised through a time-warp pulls to the curb in Ojai. We toss a quarter apiece into an open fare box and sit on wooden benches.

One of the passengers, homemaker Victoria Clause, says she rides the 3-year-old Ojai Trolley service half a dozen times a week, usually with her two youngsters.

“I use it to go downtown,” she says. “I use it to take the kids to day care. I use it when we just need to get out of the house.”

Dan McBride, 80, sits nearby.

“I had eye surgery recently, so I don’t have a driver’s license,” he says. “So the trolley works out well for me.”

As the coach makes its slow 45-minute circuit through town, driver Richard Volz rings the bell and waves at pedestrians.

The former horse racing agent says he knows many of Ojai’s residents. “I’ve been here 16 months driving this thing,” he says. “I’ve been asked to run for mayor six times already.”

As Volz chats with passengers, he forgets to let us off at the Ojai Park-N-Ride lot, where we are supposed to catch the next southbound SCAT bus.

“Be back there in 20 minutes,” Volz tells us.

Unfortunately, our bus leaves the Park-N-Ride in five minutes.

Volz lets us off near Ojai Avenue and Maricopa Highway and directs us to a nearby bench. He tells us the SCAT bus we’re after will stop there.

We breathe a sigh of relief as the blue and white coach rolls into view.

10:42 A.M.

The trip from Ojai to Oxnard, nearly two hours, is our longest stretch.

The bus fills as it moves through Ventura and Oxnard. Several riders are forced to stand. The passengers include Spanish-speaking laborers and a woman carrying an awkward load of books.

At one stop, the driver displaces several seated riders and folds up a side seat to make room for a young woman in a wheelchair.

At 12:30 p.m. we arrive at the Oxnard Transit Center, a long platform where riders can transfer from one SCAT bus to another.

On one of the benches, Karen Alvarado, 19, of Oxnard is holding Ataline, her 6-month-old daughter. Nearby are her son Joshua, 2, and her sister, Rene Loya, 10. The family is returning from a visit to a vocational school, where Alvarado hopes to learn secretarial skills.

“We use (the bus) very often,” she says. “Our car is broken. The kids just sit there and enjoy the ride.”

We hand our transfer passes to a driver as we board another SCAT bus for the 30-minute ride to Port Hueneme.

There’s no way to get from Port Hueneme to Camarillo, the next city on the tour, without going back by bus to the Oxnard Transit Center, then transferring to another SCAT bus headed for the Esplanade Mall.

The buses on the Oxnard-Port Hueneme run tend to go in a giant circle, and on the way back to Oxnard we run into one woman who has lost her way.

Cassandra Lofton, 20, of Oxnard sheepishly admits that she’s traveling in the wrong direction. Lofton, who has no car, was heading for her new job as a security patrol dispatcher when she realized that the Oxnard-Port Hueneme coach was carrying her away from her destination.

“I know the area--I just don’t know the bus system,” she says on her way back to the Transit Center after her accidental detour to Port Hueneme.

Lofton will have to explain to her co-workers why she is late.

“They’ll have a good laugh on it,” she predicts.

3:10 P.M.

The Interconnect bus pulls up at The Esplanade mall for the trip to Camarillo and points east.

This service, started in 1973 by the county and the cities of Thousand Oaks and Camarillo, is the only local bus that links the east and west ends of the county.

To make the coach stand out, the operators hired a graphic artist to paint a colorful depiction of the Conejo Grade on its sides. On this day, the interior is decorated with red hearts in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Our Dial-A-Route schedule states that the fare to Westlake Village will be 75 cents. The driver says this is an error. She collects $1.25.

The interior of the Interconnect resembles a school bus. Appropriately enough, most of the passengers on this run are St. Bonaventure High School students, bound for home.

One of the students, Andrew Lucchese, 18, of Camarillo complains that the bus is often late. But he has no other options.

“If you want to take a bus from Ventura to Camarillo,” he says, “this is the only one there is.”

Another passenger, Robert Hunter, 30, of Newbury Park cannot drive because of an injury.

He has no complaints about the Interconnect service, which allows him to attend college in Ventura. But his fellow passengers--the St. Bonaventure students--get on his nerves.

“The kids are rambunctious, boisterous,” Hunter asserts.

After a few stops in Camarillo, the Interconnect cruises to The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks, then ends its run at 4 p.m. at a Westlake Village shopping center.

Up to this point, the trip has taken a pretty logical course. But logic breaks down when it comes to getting from Thousand Oaks to Simi Valley. This is the part of Ventura County transportation that requires some help from Los Angeles.

In Westlake Village, we board an RTD bus that pulls away at 4:30 p.m. and begins rolling toward the San Fernando Valley. Driver Dan Ennis describes Westlake as “the last outpost” served by his system.

Almost an hour later we are at the bustling corner of Ventura Boulevard and Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Woodland Hills. After a 10-minute wait, we transfer to a northbound RTD bus that lets us off in Chatsworth just before 6 p.m.

Outside a mini-mall that boasts a convenience market, a doughnut shop and a dry cleaner, we watch the sun slip below the horizon. We await the coach that will carry us back to Ventura County.

Roy Myers, who administers Thousand Oak Transit, is well aware that his system doesn’t carry people to neighboring Simi Valley. When people ask him how to make such trips, “I tell them about the RTD route--but I tell them it’s going to take the better part of the day to get there.”

If a rider wants to save time, Myers suggests that he or she take a bus to the northern end of Thousand Oaks, ride a cab a few miles north to Wood Ranch, then board a Simi Valley Transit bus for the rest of the journey.

Myers says the east county bus systems have concentrated on service within their city limits. Both Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks have run buses to Moorpark College in the past, but the services were halted because there were few riders.

Some transit experts have suggested that despite the geographic barriers and far-flung centers of population, a countywide bus agency might serve the region more efficiently.

“It probably wouldn’t,” says Mike Sedell, assistant city manager of Simi Valley. “But what are needed are better connections between the systems. Whether that need justifies the expense is what needs to be seen.”

6:51 P.M.

We have been waiting 40 minutes since the last RTD bus let us off in Chatsworth. Simi Valley Transit Route C buses run only once an hour. Our coach, the route’s last run of the day, finally groans to a halt at the bus stop.

This is the only Simi Valley bus route that goes beyond the city limits. It usually carries Simi Valley residents who work in the San Fernando Valley.

We present our RTD transfers, but the driver says we must also pay a 40-cent “zone charge.” I draw out two quarters. The driver cannot make change, so he suggests I just deposit the entire 50 cents.

We join a handful of silent, weary passengers as the bus pulls onto the freeway for a 14-minute ride through the darkness. The lights of Simi Valley soon appear outside the windows.

One of Ventura County’s top transit experts was skeptical about this entire venture. She cited the limited bus service hours and the scarcity of intercity connections. It might be impossible, she warned, to get to each city in one day.

Others raised a more pointed question: Why bother?

To those who drive a car to work, to the movies or to a shopping mall, the public buses that rumble through Ventura County don’t mean much.

But to people like Pat Sims, 39, of Ventura the buses are just about the only way to get around.

“I don’t have a car,” said Sims, who works for the county’s Public Social Services Agency. She spoke while riding a bus to a Ventura tax preparation business.

“I’ve only been here about a year,” Sims said. “The buses have been my lifeline to getting around.”

Corey Smith, 18, of Westlake Village does have a car. But he figures it would cost $50 a month to drive across the county each weekday to attend Ventura College.

Instead, at half the cost, Smith rides the Interconnect bus to school. On some days, he pedals his bicycle to The Oaks mall, then clamps it to the front of the bus before boarding.

“If it weren’t for this service,” Smith said, “it wouldn’t be as easy to go to college.”

Nevertheless, Ventura County’s transit network is far from perfect.

The new routes proposed by the Transportation Commission are being touted as a way to make it easier to get from one city to another.

One new route would tie Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Westlake Village and Agoura Hills. A second would link Camarillo, Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

A third would serve Piru, Fillmore, Santa Paula, Ventura and Moorpark.

Finally, a revised Ventura Freeway Interconnect bus would operate more often and follow a new route through Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks.

Transportation officials hope that Ventura County employers, who are under pressure to reduce auto-related air pollution, will provide passes or other incentives to encourage their workers to use these new buses.

Even so, the fares are expected to cover only about 18% of the routes’ $2-million annual operating budget.

Federal funds may pay 88.5% of the remaining cost for a two-year tryout period, which could begin in less than 12 months.

In the coming weeks, county and city officials, along with Moorpark College, Camarillo State Hospital and Point Mugu Naval Air Station administrators, will be asked to chip in to cover the other 11.5%, about $187,000.

The plan’s proponents have vowed to halt the new intercity buses if too few people ride them during the two-year tryout.

7:10 P.M.

The American Cab pulls up a few minutes after we arrive at a bus stop at the eastern end of Simi Valley. We had called an hour earlier to arrange the trip to our 10th and last city, Moorpark.

The fee is $2 to enter the cab, and $1.50 per mile after that. As the meter clicks, driver Jim Voeltner tells us that Simi Valley’s limited public transit service helps keep his company in business.

“There’s no buses at night, no buses on the weekend,” he said.

He has driven to Chatsworth to pick up commuters who have missed the last bus or Metrolink train. Once he carried aerospace workers between distant Lancaster and Simi Valley--a $100 fare--because there was no convenient public transit route.

By about 7:30 p.m. we are in Moorpark. Mission accomplished, although not exclusively aboard public buses.

Getting around the county without a car has been an enlightening but wearisome experience. By and large, the buses were clean and driven carefully. Most of the buses arrived and departed on time. None was more than 10 minutes late.

The cost was an eye-opener.

Altogether, the 12-hour, nine-city bus trip from Fillmore to Simi Valley cost $7.25.

The 20-minute cab ride from Simi Valley to neighboring Moorpark cost $20.75.

* Q&A;: Transportation official looks at future. B8

* DIAL-A-ROUTE: Computer shows riders the way. B9

Around Ventura County By Public Transportation 1. Fillmore to Santa Paula to Ventura; FATCO Bus B; Fare: $1:50. 2. Ventura to Ojai; SCAT Bus No. 6; Fare: 75 cents. 3. Around Ojai; Ojai Trolley; Fare: 25 cents. 4. Ojai to Ventura to Oxnard; SCAT Bus No. 6; Fare: 75 cents, get a transfer. 5. Oxnard to Port Hueneme; SCAT Bus No. 1; Fare: Hand driver the transfer. 6. Port Hueneme to Oxnard; SCAT Buses No. 1 and 6; Fare: 75 cents with transfer. 7. Oxnard to Camarillo to Thousand Oaks to Westlake Village; County Interconnect Bus; Fare $1.25. 8. Westlake Village to Woodland Hills; RTD Bus No. 161; Fare: $1.35, get a transfer 9. Woodland Hills to Chatsworth; RTD Bus No. 245; Fare: Hand driver the transfer; pay 25 cents for second transfer. 10. Chatsworth to Simi Valley; Simi Valley Transit Bus C; Fare: 40 cents with RTD transfer. 11. Simi Valley to Moorpark; American Cab Co.; Fare: $20.75.

Total fare: $28.

County Public Bus Systems South Coast Area Transit (SCAT): Operates 11 routes in Ojai, Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Santa Paula and unincorporated county areas. Adult fare: 75 cents. Annual ridership: 2.6 million. Annual operating budget: $6 million. Fillmore Area Transit Corp. (FATCO): Three routes serving Fillmore, Santa Paula, Piru and Ventura; funded by the county and the city of Fillmore. Adult fare: 50 cents to $1.50. Annual ridership: 55,000. Annual operating budget: $250,000. Interconnect: One route linking Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks; funded by the county and the cities of Thousand Oaks and Camarillo. Adult fare: 75 cents to $1.25. Annual ridership: 38,000. Annual operating budget: $170,000. Thousand Oaks Transit (TOT): Three routes serving Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village. Adult fare: 75 cents. Annual ridership: 120,000. Annual operating budget: $380,000. Simi Valley Transit: Four routes serving Simi Valley and Chatsworth. Adult fare: 75 cents to $1.15. Annual ridership: 353,000. Annual operating budget $1.4 million. Camarillo Area Transit (CAT): Two routes serving Camarillo. Adult fare: $1. Annual ridership: 25,000. Annual operating budget: $180,000. Moorpark City Bus: One route serving Moorpark. Adult fare: 50 cents. Annual ridership: 12,000. Annual operating budget: $90,000. Ojai Trolley: One route serving Ojai. Adult fare: 25 cents. Annual ridership: 39,000. Annual operating budget: $70,000. Note: Many of the bus systems have discount fares for students, senior citizens and disabled people.