After 50 years of ensuring that its passengers get where they need to be on time, Long Beach Transit is taking a break to celebrate its anniversary and those who ride with them.
On Friday, LBT will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in Downtown Long Beach at Promenade Park, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event will honor the history of the transit, its progress and the people it has affected over the last 50 years.
According to LBT Marketing Manager and Cal State Long Beach alumnus Kevin Lee, since it’s birth in 1963, LBT’s ridership has grown more quickly than the Long Beach population itself. More than 28 million people a year use the transit.
Students have contributed hugely to the expansion of the transit, according to Lee. One of the biggest changes in the last 50 years is ridership from CSULB, which Lee said was the major influence for the U-Pass program that started in 2008. Under the program, students can ride LBT buses for free.
“We had to change our entire system to accommodate the students at CSULB,” Lee said.
Since the debut of the program, the number of daily student riders swelled from 1,200 to 10,000, which makes up 11.4 percent of the 88,000 total riders on an average weekday.
Today, nine of LBT’s 36 routes pass through campus.
Lee said that the pioneer U-Pass program started out as a trial, and was seen to be such a success that LBT has launched other programs to make the transit more accessible all over the community.
“The [anniversary] event is a ‘thank you’ to our customers,” Lee said. “We have been moving people around the community, to work, to school, to the beach, for 50 years … the only reason why we do this is because we have customers … this is something that we can give back to the community.”
The event is an opportunity for the public to learn about the transportation company’s transformation over the last five decades through displays of memorabilia and addresses from keynote speakers, such as President CEO Laurence W. Jackson and Board Chair Barbara Sullivan George, Lee said. Music will be played, light refreshments served and each attendee will receive a free bus pass holder with the 50th anniversary logo.
LBT has been compiling yearbooks of photos to document the transportation evolution from the days of horse and buggy, Lee said. The yearbooks continue through the establishment of the Long Beach transportation company to today’s widely used transit. Twenty of these yearbooks will be raffled off at the event.
At the event, a CNG bus, which runs on compressed natural gas, will be on display, and LBT employees will demonstrate how they work. The bus reduces both sound and air pollution, and LBT recently added 54 CNG buses to their fleet, Lee said.
One of LBT’s biggest recent accomplishments was in 2004, when the hybrid gas and electric buses were introduced, according to Lee.
At the end of last year, LBT was 70 percent alternatively fueled. Lee said that the goal in the near future is to be 100 percent alternatively fueled, using a mix of different fuel types and propulsion systems, such as compressed natural gas or hybrid methods.
Lee said that LBT’s projects have been successful in part because the community embraces economically conscious innovations, such as the city’s bike share program and the Green Port initiative.
“We love our city,” Lee said. “It’s not L.A. It’s not Orange County. We have a great vibe going on. We want to be eco friendly and support our community.”