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Guadalupe Flyer passengers will see a new, but familiar, operator later this summer due to a consolidation with Santa Maria Regional Transit.
“We’ve danced around this idea for several years now,” Santa Maria Transit Manager Gamaliel Anguiano told the Guadalupe City Council last week.
The Santa Maria City Council approved the consolidation without comment Tuesday night, while Guadalupe’s voted for the merger a week earlier.
“This is a great step,” Guadalupe Mayor Ariston Julian said.
In recent years, transit operators have had to deal with assorted challenges including driver shortages and increased regulatory demands as passengers sought increased mobility options, Anguiano added.
Consolidation offers a number of benefits, city staff said, including streamlining administration, implementing consistent fares, boosting accessibility and handing off state and federal compliance to Santa Maria staff who are well familiar with the requirements.
The idea isn’t new. In 2016, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments conducted a study suggesting the two systems merge.
The renewed proposal came as the contract with Guadalupe’s transit operator gets set to expire.
For several years, Santa Maria-based SMOOTH has operated the Guadalupe Flyer, providing services to passengers needing transportation around the small city or into Santa Maria.
“After working with your staff and your contractor …we find that there are not reasons why this consolidation wouldn’t be a success,” Anguiano told the Guadalupe City Council last week.
Santa Maria’s transit system, with contractor RATP Dev, already operates buses serving Orcutt, Los Alamos, Vandenberg Space Force Base, Santa Ynez Valley and New Cuyama.
“Adding Guadalupe to the fold is well within our wheelhouse,” Anguiano added. “It probably makes just as much sense if not more sense than some of those other communities as our communities are very much socially and economically intertwined.”
Approval by both city councils came after a few months of analysis into the proposal for the switch to occur July 1.
“As a transit practitioner, public transit plays a very vital role for many,” he said, listing senior citizens, youths, those starting careers and college students.
In April, public meetings took place in both Guadalupe and Santa Maria to collect comments on the consolidation proposal.
Once completed, the Guadalupe Flyer brand will disappear, being replaced by the Santa Maria Regional Transit routes.
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