Mayor seeks to ease MTA hikes

Assailing sweeping bus fare hikes proposed by the MTA as “extreme,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called for more modest increases that would ease the financial crunch on low-income riders.

Villaraigosa offered his plan as part of a larger strategy to address the agency’s estimated $104-million deficit for the coming fiscal year, a figure that Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials fear could balloon without new revenue. The MTA provides mass transit across Los Angeles County.

To make up for the more modest increases, the mayor suggested that the transit agency free up cash by borrowing money to finance the purchase of buses and rail cars over the coming years, slightly reduce the frequency of rail service and aggressively pursue state gas tax money.

Villaraigosa, who sits on the 13-member MTA board along with three of his appointees, laid out his scenario in a letter to fellow board members. The board is scheduled to vote on the fare hikes Thursday.

Under the mayor’s plan, cash fares would remain untouched at $1.25. Other prices would rise about 5% annually to keep up with labor and fuel expenses.

As a result, the mayor proposed that the cost of a day pass would rise from its current level of $3 to $3.31 in 2009 -- compared with MTA’s proposal of a hike to $8 in that span.

Also under Villaraigosa’s plan, monthly passes would increase from $52 to $57.33 in 2009, far less than the MTA proposal of reaching $120 by that year.

In his letter to the board, the mayor said the “proposed increases are extreme and would have a fundamentally negative impact on ridership and our most vulnerable customers, many of whom are low income and transit dependent.”

MTA chief Roger Snoble declined to comment on the mayor’s proposal, saying through a spokesman that he wanted to review it further. But in a Times opinion piece last month, Snoble argued that the MTA’s operating deficit is siphoning money that could be used to help build transit and highway projects.

Agency spokesman Marc Littman said the MTA recovers 24% of its operating costs from fares -- below the 38% recovered by most large transit agencies. And fares have been largely stagnant for the last decade, even as the MTA has purchased 2,100 buses, he said.

The MTA faces difficult choices as it struggles to balance its books, Littman said.

“If you don’t do it with fares, then you have to do it some other way, and the other way is to cut service, and we don’t want to do that,” he said.

The L.A. Bus Riders Union rejected Villaraigosa’s overture, saying any fare increase would reduce ridership, increase pollution and ultimately hurt the city’s poorest residents.

Statistics provided by the mayor’s office showed that 81% of MTA bus passengers earn $15,000 to $24,999 a year.

“Our position is no fare increase at all -- not one cent,” said Damon Azali, a senior organizer for the Bus Riders Union. “Once they win the right to a fare increase, they will keep pushing it.”

Azali and other critics of the proposed hikes have accused the MTA of spending too much on a rail system that serves a small portion of Los Angeles County at the expense of badly needed bus service on some of the region’s most crowded routes.

Villaraigosa acknowledged that his proposed increase in debt financing could ultimately slow the MTA’s ability to build transit projects. But the mayor reiterated his call for a greater expansion of mass transit in the city and region.

“While we have a duty to ensure that our bus system is robust, the MTA also has obligations to invest in our rail system and our highways,” he wrote. “I truly believe that the MTA must develop a multi-modal system, one that has a first-class bus system, a first-class rail system and a first-class highway system.”

duke.helfand@latimes.com

steve.hymon@latimes.com