First of two parts. 

One week after the national Dump the Pump Day when free rides were offered all day to CulverCity Bus regulars and thrift-minded irregulars, Art Ida is sorting through data.

Inquiring whether Dump Day was successful amounts to an open-ended, difficult-to-corner question.

“We have a Passenger Counter on our busses, but it takes awhile to go through that data,” Mr. Ida said yesterday.

What most interests the director of the Transportation Dept. is the ever-changing liquidity of ridership on the 364 occasions that are not Dump the Pump days.

His central focus is on growing the ridership. “When it goes up,” he says, “we don’t know how much can be attributed to the Expo Line opening or where it is the free fare.

“We can take a stab and guess at it,” Mr. Ida said. “It will at best be an educated guess.”

Transportation’s bus operators told their boss that passengers seemed uncommonly happy Dump Day.

“Whether they would have ridden if it had not been free, that is difficult to say,” said Mr. Ida.

A seldom-heard question: How close is CulverCity Bus to an attaining an ideal number of riders?

“For the last three years, our ridership has been fluctuating,” Mr. Ida said.

He cited a combination of factors:

• “No. 1 is because gas prices are so low. Many people have used cars as an alternative. A car is cheaper and more reliable.
• “Another factor is President Obama’s immigration law. Immigrants can get driver’s licenses. That definitely has a lot to do with our ridership fluctuating.”

(To be continued)