“I don’t have any more seats. I’m full.”
That was the explanation the operator of an AC Transit Line O Transbay bus gave to several waiting riders at Webster Street and Willie Stargell Avenue, the last bus stop leaving Alameda’s West End, before closing the doors and driving off just after 8 a.m. on a Thursday in mid-October.
As part of my occasional commute to downtown San Francisco, I was sitting in one of three flip-down seats in the lower-level vestibule by the back door of the commuter bus. It turned out that I would be the last person allowed on, having boarded several stops earlier at Webster Street and Santa Clara Avenue. The driver was able to find one last seat for me after determining that a local-bound passenger would be getting off soon at Buena Vista Avenue.
Nearly a dozen other riders waiting at stops along Webster Street and on Seventh Street in Oakland were not allowed onto the bus. The driver instructed them to wait for the Line W Transbay bus instead, which was scheduled to come 15 minutes later. By the time our Line O bus had exited the Posey Tube, we were running nearly 20 minutes late due to a mix of heavy traffic and the extra work the operator had to put in to find seats for multiple riders.
These passenger pass-ups in the West End have affected the 7:30 a.m. Line O trip to Salesforce Transit Center since at least August, as noted by several riders on social media and in communication to the Alameda Post.
“This has been happening all week!” one rider at the Webster and Santa Clara stop told the Post in late August. She added that she avoided Line W as an alternative, as that particular 7:40 a.m. trip to San Francisco had also been running unpredictably late for a few weeks at that point. Other riders said they switched to riding a local route to Oakland and then transferring to BART to get to San Francisco.
The overcrowding on Line O is likely attributable to the continuing return-to-office trend in downtown San Francisco, as well as the discontinuation of the Line OX Transbay route in August due to low ridership, as part of AC Transit’s Realign service plan. To keep Transbay service in Bay Farm Island, Line W was rerouted and extended from High Street in August 2025.
But that change has left riders in the East End with Line O as the only remaining regularly scheduled bus route, Transbay or otherwise. Since August, riders like myself have seen the 7:30 a.m. Line O buses getting full before even reaching Webster Street. City of Alameda planner Brian McGuire presciently warned AC Transit at a Realign-focused Transportation Commission meeting back in November 2023 to anticipate that problem if the agency eliminated Line OX.
As part of a standing agenda item on Thursday, October 16, members of the City of Alameda-AC Transit Interagency Liaison Committee (ILC), which meets every three months and includes staff and representatives from both entities, reviewed ridership and complaints for routes in Alameda. Data from AC Transit showed that riders of Line O lodged 127 feedback contacts from July through September 2025—over half of the feedback involved pass-ups or overloaded buses. By comparison, only 46 total feedback contacts were received for Line O for the preceding three-month period.
During the meeting, AC Transit Director of Service Development Robert del Rosario said that the agency is aware of overcrowding on Line O and that staff is exploring potential near- and medium-term mitigation strategies.
“We’ve been able to deploy a standby bus whenever available to help manage the loads on Line O,” said del Rosario.
A recent post by an Alameda community member on the r/Alameda reddit went into further detail about the extra service on Line O, accompanied by an email response they received from AC Transit.
“In the short term, we are running a Line O tripper leaving Fruitvale at 715a on Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays to address in the specific time period when overcrowding is most prevalent,” read the email.
However, when asked by the Alameda Post to confirm the existence or details of the tripper service, AC Transit spokesman Robert Lyles instead focused on the upcoming service change scheduled for January 2026 as the next opportunity to officially address overcrowding.
“If workforce and financial resources permit, one potential solution would be to increase peak-hour frequency on Line O from the current 30 minutes to every 20 minutes, adding an additional trip during the busiest commute period,” Lyles said in a statement to the Alameda Post. “However, because this service adjustment depends on stable funding and sufficient staffing, we cannot guarantee this addition.”
In the meantime, AC Transit has added a new stop for Line W in both directions at Webster Street and Buena Vista Avenue, and is “exploring options” for transit mitigations with its agency partners ahead of the Oakland Alameda Access Project.
“We truly value [rider] feedback and are listening,” added Lyles. “Their experiences and observations are invaluable in ensuring our bus lines continue to meet the needs of the communities we serve.”
Lyles also explained that since the new MCI commuter buses that serve Line O are equipped with seat belts, the California Vehicle Code mandates that passengers must be “properly restrained by a safety belt while the bus is in motion.” In other words: no standing passengers are allowed on the MCI buses, which have 52 seats.
Articulated “bendy buses” are also out of the question for Line O, according to Lyles, since “many bus stops along the route were designed to accommodate 40-foot buses. Due to space constraints, operating a larger bus at these bus stops would pose safety [and accessibility] concerns.” Articulated buses had been regularly deployed on select Line O trips until summer 2025.
Despite the uncertainty, the Alameda Post has observed that when the Line O “tripper” service is operating, it typically runs 10 to 15 minutes ahead of the officially scheduled 7:30 a.m. Line O trip to San Francisco, and mostly on Tuesdays through Thursdays. For now, the “tripper” bus does not always register correctly on AC Transit’s trip-planning software, so riders are not able to consistently find real-time departures for the extra service.
However, it does appear to be catching on. Last Tuesday, the regular Line O bus arrived at the Webster and Buena Vista stop on time, and as I followed it north on Webster Street, it picked up all waiting passengers before entering the Posey Tube. The “tripper” had left just 10 minutes prior.
Ken Der is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Ken-Der.
