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Our History
The Cities of Lancaster and Palmdale and the County of Los Angeles joined together in 1992 to create the Antelope Valley Transit Authority to meet the growing need for public transportation in the Antelope Valley. AVTA began transit service on July 1, 1992.
AVTA began operations with three services: Transit, Commuter and Dial-A-Ride. A fourth service, Access Services, was added in 1996 to serve the disabled as a "complementary paratransit service" in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 1998 the Tuesday Medical Shuttle was created, which offered rides to nine major medical facilities in the Los Angeles basin and San Fernando Valley.
AVTA is an award-winning transit agency.. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recognized AVTA as an Efficient Transit System. The California Transit Association gave a Transit Innovation Award to AVTA in 1998 and a Transit Image Award in 1999.
Our customer base has grown steadily each year, to the point where we have nearly tripled the number of passenger trips in just over a decade of operation. In response to our Board's mandate to operate responsibly, AVTA pays for a much higher share of its costs through fares compared to other transit systems in Los Angeles County.
The phenomenal growth of the Antelope Valley continues as new residents and businesses continue to relocate here. To keep up with the increased need for transit services, AVTA opened its new, larger facility with state-of-the art equipment for maintaining our vehicle fleet. This facility offers the room we need to meet the growing mobility needs of the Antelope Valley in the decades to come.
Looking Ahead
AVTA has enjoyed extraordinary success in its 14 years of existence, thanks
to strong support from customers, Board members, and elected officials. As we
continue to evolve, we face many challenges. We have undertaken several studies
that have set forth the blueprint for growth to serve our customers in the future.
Like all of you, AVTA must live within its means. This requires us to work smarter,
and so we are investing in new technologies to help us deliver quality service
in a sustainable manner for years to come.
Our Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) project is a fancy name for new
technologies that will help us to manage our resources much more effectively,
re-think how we deliver service, improve the quality of our transit service,
and make our buses and vans more convenient and easier to use for our customers.
Imagine calling AVTA in the morning to schedule a trip later that day, being
called back when the vehicle is within five minutes of your home, paying with
your ATM bank card, and having a guaranteed connection to your next bus through
our ability to monitor our buses' locations every minute of the day.
Naturally, all of this will not happen immediately, but AVTA is excited to begin the first phase of this project. We look forward to working with you, our loyal customers, to make it easier and more convenient than ever to get around Antelope Valley.