Changes to an East Bay Bus route should focus on frequency, improved connections

County Connection's 4 bus from Walnut Creek BART to downtown has an opportunity to improve service and seamless transfers. New funding will increase service frequency, helping facilitate better transfers to BART. However, the reliability issues with first-generation battery electric buses (BEBs) currently used on the route persist, hampering the opportunity to improve service.

Seamless Bay Area supports local advocacy to address the issues and take the opportunities to improve rider convenience. And we support the adoption of a general practice to focus improvements based on service outcomes. 

Background

The County Connection 4 bus is one of County Connection's most popular bus routes, taking passengers from Walnut Creek BART to downtown Walnut Creek. The route is currently served by two buses which complete a 23 minute route through downtown, with 17 minutes of wait time at BART. The bus is also free, with fares being paid in part by the City of Walnut Creek.

Current alignment (Source)

A staff report to the County Connection board cites that the route has faced significant delays and on-time performance issues due to a number of factors: the current figure-8 route which requires multiple left turns, increasing downtown traffic, and charging issues with the first-generation battery electric buses. 

More frequent service and route alignment changes coming soon

This past October, the County Connection board approved a myriad of changes to improve the 4 bus. 

Weekday service frequency will increase from the current 20-minute headways to every 15-minutes for the next 5 years beginning on January 11, 2026, thanks to a $4.1 million grant from the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program that County Connection was awarded to run an additional bus on the route. The program provides funding for affordable housing, and for transit improvements to support affordable housing, in this case Civic Crossing project, a new affordable housing development with 93 rental homes at 699 Ygnacio Valley Road.

Additionally, the grant will help fund the deployment of transit signal priority along the route – which should help the bus complete its route more quickly – and add new bus shelters with real-time information. 

In conjunction with these upgrades, staff also recommended a new, shorter alignment, bus stop balancing changes, and future upgrades to meet ADA standards.

Proposed alignment (Source)

All-in-all, these changes are a strong recipe for growing ridership: faster and more frequent service that facilitates high-quality transfers to and from BART. However, a major issue threatens to throw a wrench in these plans.

Reliability issues with first-generation battery electric buses cause service headaches 

Back in 2012, County Connection received a $4.3 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration's Clean Fuels Grant Program, helping fund the purchase of four electric buses and building of two charging stations to be used on the 4 bus. These were some of the first battery electric buses to be manufactured in the United States and went into service in 2016. 

Like many first generation technologies, these buses have had substantial reliability problems, which have been documented by County Connection and the Mercury News. The buses used a proprietary battery management system, charge controller, and plug-in chargers made by a Portuguese company, Efacec – which the company stopped supporting in 2018. Since then buses have been exclusively charged wirelessly at the Walnut Creek BART station and at the depot, with technology provided by Wireless Advanced Vehicle Electrification (WAVE). According to a staff report, "this has presented challenges because WAVE has had issues supporting its equipment, which has resulted in significant unscheduled downtime of the electric buses."

The batteries themselves have also presented problems, with only 100 kilowatt hours (kWh) of storage capacity. For context, most buses sold in 2025 have 500 kWh of capacity. A 2018 County Connection staff report noted they are keeping the batteries above 50% charge to preserve their lifespan, which also has implications for the bus range. County Connection was unable to provide specific reliability statistics for the battery electric buses, but other documents imply there have been substantial problems keeping the fleet in service. 

While these buses were a great launching pad for the US and California-based battery electric bus manufacturing facilities, today's battery electric buses have much longer range, are less expensive, and more reliable. However, federal grant rules require buses purchased with federal money to be operated for 12 years; meaning the first series of the Route 4 battery electric buses must be run until 2028.

To address these reliability issues, the County Connection Board approved a $800,000 contract with Gillig in September to update the batteries, battery management system, and charge controllers on the eight their battery electric buses.

It is unclear how long it will take for the battery electric buses to get these upgrades, but they likely won't be ready for the January 2026 schedule and alignment changes.

Room for Improvement

Despite the fact that the new route is shorter, more direct, and transit signal priority upgrades will speed up buses when it comes online, the newly approved timetable assumes the total round trip time will actually take longer than the current service – up from 40 minutes to 45 minutes.

Current service and approved service proposal versus ideal service vision.

The new timetable assumes each bus will spend nearly 45% of its runtime idling at BART (or about 6.2 hours of a 14 hour shift).

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the timetable is being designed around the limitations of the aging battery electric bus capacity. These bus currents require long dwell times to recharge at Walnut Creek BART.

Seamless supports local advocacy to solve these problems by focusing on service outcomes for riders. Local advocates analyzed the issue and concluded that if County Connection was able to get dwell times down from the planned 20 minutes to 5 minutes, it's feasible the agency could achieve 10-minute frequencies. 

This would increase the amount of time the bus is running revenue service and picking up passengers from 55% to 83%. In total, this would mean additional 11.6 hours of bus service every day, with the same number of drivers and the same number of buses. And this would better match BART's 8- and 12- minute headways during most of the day.

Some strategies to reduce dwell times could include:

• Running electric buses for only a half day: Planning for a half-day of battery electric service could solve many of the range issues that are currently being solved with in-route wireless charging. These could be swapped out for diesel buses when drivers change shifts. It is unclear if this would be in compliance with the federal requirements.

• Running the current battery electric buses at lower charges: A 2018 report notes that CCCTA tries to keep the bus battery above 50%, to preserve their lifespan. If that is still the case, it may not be necessary given the agency just signed a new contract to purchase and install new batteries.

• Applying for a waiver from the Federal Transportation Administration: There are clear reliability problems with the buses as they exist. The agency could seek a waiver to suspend current battery electric buses until the new upgrades to vehicles come online. 

It's important for public transit to be a leader in green energy, but if we can run more frequent service, we can increase passenger counts and reduce the number of single passenger car trips.

Conclusion

The new service changes and route alignment will already provide more convenience and facilitate better transfers between the 4 bus and BART. We are glad to see County Connection taking steps and this is a much welcome improvement from the current route.

However, it seems there is still room for improvement and 10-minute frequencies are feasible with current resources. In addition to supporting the local advocacy for these specific improvements, we believe it should be the norm for agencies to prioritize service for riders including frequency and connections, and the cost-effective delivery of service.   

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