The Stanislaus Regional Transit Authority, branded as The S, is a

public transportation Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

system serving Modesto, California and surrounding Stanislaus County. It was formed in 2021 from the merger of the Modesto Area Express (MAX) and Stanislaus Regional Transit (StaRT) systems. Most routes connect at the downtown

Modesto Transportation Center The Modesto Transportation Center is a bus terminal and former train station located in downtown Modesto, California. History The Central Pacific Railroad was built through Modesto in 1870, and was taken over by the Southern Pacific in 1884. I ...

; the Vintage Faire Mall serves as a secondary hub.

History

Modesto intracity service

Originally, passengers in Modesto were served by streetcars over the short-line Modesto Interurban Railway from 1911 to 1917, operated intermittently first by the

Tidewater Southern Railway The Tidewater Southern Railway was a short line railroad in Central California in the United States. For most of its history, it was a subsidiary of the Western Pacific Railroad. It was originally built as an interurban system, connecting to th ...

; the

Modesto and Empire Traction Company The Modesto and Empire Traction Company is a Class III short-line railroad operating in California's San Joaquin Valley. It is owned by the Beard Land & Investment Company; the Beard family has always owned the railroad. The Beards also creat ...

was founded on October 7, 1911 and began regularly scheduled passenger service between Modesto and

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

on November 1 of that year. Passenger service was discontinued in 1917 after freight became more important. Public bus transportation service in Modesto started on September 19, 1927, when the City Transit Company (CTC), a private venture, began operations under a city franchise. CTC ran a single bus on a 30-minute schedule, but soon added two more buses to expand service throughout Modesto. City Transit told the City Council they would renew its liability insurance in June 1932 as a condition to keep the franchise; however, struggling with profitability, the franchise was transferred to a new owner three months later in September 1932. The privately-owned Modesto Motor Bus Service (MBS) took over and ran transit operations in Modesto through 1973, serving a peak of one million riders in 1945 due to wartime shortages of gasoline and automobiles. The 1955 map of four routes resembled a cloverleaf in shape; that year, MBS petitioned the

California Public Utilities Commission The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC or PUC) is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition ...

to raise fares from 15 to 20 cents, with losses projected to be that year. GM 1970s bus 1 3 (247694123)

By 1968, the unreliability of the aging MBS fleet led the city to purchase four new

GM "old-look" transit bus The GM "old-look" transit bus was a transit bus that was introduced in 1940 by Yellow Coach beginning with the production of the model TG-3201 bus. Yellow Coach was an early bus builder that was partially owned by General Motors (GM) before bei ...

es, which were then leased to MBS to improve its financial health. At the time, MBS was owned and operated by Willis M. Kleinenbroich, who was responsible for maintaining, driving, and dispatching the buses. By 1973, with the service continuing to lose money, Kleinenbroich attempted to sell the company but found no private buyers; instead, it was acquired by the city of Modesto in 1973 and renamed to Intracity Transit. The city would continue to purchase several

GM New Look bus The GM New Look bus is a municipal transit bus that was introduced in 1959 by the Truck and Coach Division of General Motors to replace the company's previous coach, retroactively known as the GM "old-look" transit bus. Also commonly known by ...

es in 1973 and 1976. Modesto subsequently rebranded it as Modesto Area Express in 1990. As the New Look fleet aged, Modesto replaced them with mid-size

Rapid Transit Series The Rapid Transit Series (RTS) city bus is a long-running series of transit buses that was originally manufactured by GMC Truck and Coach Division during 1977, in Pontiac, Michigan. First produced in 1977, the RTS was GMC's offering of an Adv ...

(1980),

Gillig Phantom The Gillig Phantom is a series of buses that was produced by an American manufacturer Gillig Corporation in Hayward, California. The successor to the long-running Gillig Transit Coach model line, the Phantom marked the transition of Gillig fr ...

, and

Gillig Low Floor The Gillig Low Floor (originally named Gillig H2000LF and also nicknamed Gillig Advantage) is a transit bus manufactured by the Gillig Corporation. The second low-floor bus introduced in the United States (after the New Flyer LF), the Low Floor ...

buses; for the longer suburban/commuter express routes, Modesto has used MCI D-Series highway coaches.

Stanislaus County intercity services

Stanislaus Regional Transit was a division of the Stanislaus County Department of Public Works, which operated fixed intercity routes, mainly within the county; one route connected to neighboring

Merced County Merced County ( ), is a county located in the northern San Joaquin Valley section of the Central Valley, in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 281,202. The county seat is Merced. The county is named after ...

Merger

A 2019 ''Transit Efficiency and Innovations Study'' recommended the merger of MAX and StaRT and on January 26, 2021, the Modesto City Council and the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors each approved the merger, forming the new Stanislaus Regional Transit Authority.

Routes

References

External links

{{Valley Transit San Joaquin Valley Transportation in Modesto, California Bus transportation in California Public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area Public transportation in Stanislaus County, California Transit agencies in California