Orange County Essentials
- Use the OCBus app to pay.
- Transit app is accurate.
- Buses don’t come very frequently, and often run late.
- Limited usefulness of routes. Few express routes.
November 2024
Payment
I paid using the OCBus app. You can buy $2 single-ride passes, or $4.50 day passes. The 4.50 pass didn’t make sense financially for my trip, but I did it anyway. It generates a QR code which you hold under a scanner when you board. My day pass scanned successfully. I’ve never gotten a single-ride pass in the app to scan successfully (the driver always just waves me on anyways).
The app is a bit of a mess to set up. It gave several inaccurate error messages when I tried to log in.
The fare scanners on the bus can technically handle tap payment, but they’ve been disabled when I’ve ridden. Supposedly, buses that cross into LA county are supposed to work for taps.
Riding
Once on the bus, everything is fine. Typical bus. The distances I was traveling were long, and it stops really frequently (my transfer point was 40 stops away), but it’s clean, feels safe, and was relatively efficient in getting there, all things considered.
Routes and Network
The coverage of buses in Orange County is poor. There are very few express routes, and you’ll often have to walk 15-20 minutes to get to the nearest stop. The best buses I rode ran every 40 minutes, so it was a matter of waiting at a nearby cafe until tracking showed it was nearby. A 20 minute car ride often translates to a two-hour bus ride, especially if you need to make transfers. Pretty much all of the routes are straight north-south or east-west, so a transfer is all but guaranteed.
You can also thank a bunch of astroturfing NIMBYs for killing what would have been an immensely useful light rail project in the early 2000s.
Reliability
These buses often run late. Tracking will show a bus just sitting at some spot midway through the route. (They also show it idling before the trip begins, but that’s reasonable.) I’m not sure what the bus is doing… maybe someone is having trouble getting on or off, or maybe the driver popped out for a snack or a pee, but it’s happened to me several times.