Richard Ornelas keeps a lot of people in Manteca on the move.
In the span of 45 minutes Tuesday, he made it possible for:
*an elderly gentleman to reach his house of worship.
*an older lady return home from a shopping trip to Ross.
*a Manteca High student to return to her home campus after taking specialized vocational classes clear across town at the Manteca Unified School District office complex.
They are three of the riders that Manteca Transit drivers help to catch the ACE train to commute to Bay Area jobs, get to medical appointments, go to and from high school, shop or dine out, access entertainment and recreational opportunities, or connect with bus service to reach Modesto and Stockton.
Ridership last year increased by 9,306 riders for an 11 percent growth that pushed overall rides taken past 100,000.
And even though he’s been driving for Manteca Transit since 2009, no two days have been alike even though Ornelas spends 6.5 hours as he did on Tuesday repeatedly driving the same 14-mile route.
Ornelas knows a lot of his passengers on a first name basis.
“He talks to his passengers,” noted Juan Portillo who oversees the city’s transit operations, adding if a rider is having a bad day, Ornelas also lends a sympathetic ear during layovers.
And his concern is not superficial. Far from it.
After exchanging pleasantries with an elderly gentleman that doesn’t speak English who was heading from the transit center to the Sikh temple in Airport Way on Tuesday, Ornelas shared he was trying to learn Punjabi so he could better interact with him.
“It’s a difficult language to learn,” Ornelas said.
Once the bus reaches the temple, Ornelas followed the elderly man off the bus and walked him across Airport Way to make sure he did so safely.
The morning is the heaviest with standing room only often on the 26 passenger bus as students make their way from newer southwest Manteca neighborhoods to Sierra High.
Not only are high school riders pleasant and well behaved, Ornelas notes many of them are bus savvy and make heavy use of the real-time app to keep track of buses.
“The ones that move to Manteca from the Bay Area, especially big cities like San Jose, are used to buses running every 15 minutes,” Ornelas said. “We’re not there yet, but we will get there.”
Manteca Transit is already exploring the possibility of adding a second bus to the one of four routes that have the heaviest ridership. When that happens, the time between buses for that route will drop to 30 minutes.
Front row seat to
changes on streets
Being a Manteca Transit driver gives him a front row seat on an almost daily basis to see how the city he grew up in is changing.
After driving past Golden West School on North Main Street where he once went to elementary classes — he also attended Lincoln and New Haven schools before graduating from East Union — Ornelas headed west on Argonaut Street to his next stop at the Manteca Boys & Girls Club.
“This used to be the edge of town,” Ornelas said as he turned south on Acacia. “You used to be able to look out of my friend’s back yard and see them work on Interstate 5 (in Lathrop).”
Speaking of turns, Ornelas had no issues with maneuvering the longer Manteca Transit buses emulating the burgundy, deep blue, and white color schemes of ACE trains. He noted the turning radius is actually easier than the smaller cutaway buses.
Ornelas takes pride not just in his job, but the fact he is representing the City of Manteca.
He’s known to be super picky about what the bus he’s driving looks like.
One time he stopped a mechanic from placing a dirty rim back on the bus without cleaning it first as it would not be placing the proverbial best foot forward for the city.
Ornelas — and other drivers — routinely keep track of graffiti and other issues they see that they relay to dispatchers, who in turn notify the responsible city departments.
The Manteca native praised the city’s decision to retain Manteca Property Service to help keep public property clean.
Ornelas noted since the firm was hired several years ago, they not only have made sure the streets are clean of debris but also bus shelters are kept presentable.
He also takes pride in the fact the bus he’s driving was built “just over the hill” by Gillig in Livermore, the wheelchair lift it is equipped with was made by Lift-U in Escalon, and the bus is powered by compressed natural gas produced by methane from Manteca’s wastewater treatment plant.
Ornelas, which worked on avionics used by Cal Fire aircraft based at Stockton Metro Airport before joining Manteca Transit, noted bus technology has come a long way from his younger days when school bus drivers were constantly shifting.
“I want to make sure I give a shout out to our brothers and sisters who drive for Manteca Unified,” Ornelas said.
Drivers for Manteca Transit and Manteca Unified routinely wave to each other as they pass on city streets.
Ornelas said he respects the job and responsibility they have keeping school children safe.
Safety is such an overriding concern and is constantly hammered to the point it becomes second nature that sometimes Ornelas finds himself pulling over and starting to put on his emergency blinkers at railroad crossings when he’s driving his Ram pickup truck before he realizes he’s not driving a bus.
People are counting on drivers
As a professional driver who basically does the same route over and over during the course of a workday, he takes a slightly different take on road construction.
“They’re working hard to improve streets but it takes time,” Ornelas said as he maneuvered through road work on South Main near Atherton Drive before heading west on Airport Way.
He also noted the sometimes maligned pedestrian fences and medians installed last year on North Main are doing their job at increasing pedestrian safety and improving traffic congestion.
It has drastically reduced the number of pedestrians trying to cross mid-block as well as vehicles turning left across oncoming traffic to get in and out of driveways to reduce the chances for accidents and keep traffic flowing.
At the end of the day, what counts for Ornelas is being to help people go about their daily lives.
He has regulars that go shopping two or three times a week complete with folding shopping carts. He can tell you what stores they prefer to go.
And it is why he understands the directive that it is OK if a bus is running late given safety concerns and traffic, but what isn’t OK is a bus being early.
“People are counting on you,” Ornelas said.
They need to know if they get at a stop by a certain time that a bus will come as opposed to passing by two or three minutes earlier.
To help that happen, there are “timed” stops as oppose to other “stops” that drivers will pass if there is nobody waiting.
Ornelas and other drivers will be feted on March 17 when Manteca Transit celebrates driver appreciation day.
Ornelas is the dean of Manteca Transit drivers, if you will, as he’s been on the job the longest for two years longer than the next closest driver, Pete Briseno, who started in 2011.
Manteca Transit was launched 20 years ago.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
