Prop. A’s Half-Cent Sales Tax Keeps Transit Moving On : Cities, Private Bus Companies and Riders Strike It Rich

An air of whimsy has accompanied Lawndale’s recent experiment in municipal mass transit.

Planning Director Mark Winogrond coined a phrase for the city: “It trolley-fied May 1,” he said.

Lawndale’s new trolley has City Councilman Terry Birdsall as pleased as a kid with a new electric train. “I get on as many times as I can,” the 45-year-old Birdsall said.

The giddiness even infected official releases.

“Clang . . . clang . . . clang goes the Lawndale Trolley,” one began.

Tax in Effect 3 Years

But mass transit is an increasingly serious business in Lawndale and other South Bay cities. It is the Proposition A Revolution at work. The half-cent county sales tax for transit projects, which took effect three years ago, has showered millions of dollars on municipal governments--an amount projected to total more than a quarter of a billion by July 1, 1986.

The money has allowed the governments to set up more than 1,000 transit projects in the county--although a handful of “creative” projects were rejected by county officials--and has provided new mass-transit opportunities to thousands of people. And the tax has proved to be a bonanza for private bus companies seeking contracts with municipal governments.

In the South Bay, Proposition A funds will amount to $22 million by July 1, 1986, permitting some highly visible projects that are under way or about to start:

- A commuter bus dubbed “Herman” will roll through beach communities beginning Aug. 19, taking commuters from Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach to jobs in El Segundo. County transit officials hope it will eventually relieve congestion on the San Diego Freeway.

- Riders of the year-old Carson Circuit are linking up with buses to downtown Los Angeles.

- The 2-year-old Palos Verdes Transit regularly fills up with school children as it winds along the Peninsula.

The impact on the South Bay’s biggest municipal transit system has been less visible if no less important.

Taxes Used to Keep Fares Low

Torrance Transit, with 3.6 million passengers a year and 40 buses on the road driving 1.5 million miles a year, has used $4.4 million of its Proposition A money to keep the bus fare at 35 cents a ride.

“It’s a good idea,” said Shirley Brown, 41, a licensed vocational nurse who rides Torrance Transit every day from her home in Gardena to her job at the Del Amo Convalescent Hospital in Torrance. “It’s cheap. The RTD is terrible,” said Marie Valcinus, 20, a Long Beach student waiting for the Torrance system’s No. 8 at the corner of Hawthorne and Sepulveda boulevards. The RTD fare rose from 50 to 85 cents a ride July 1.

Proposition A pays for 36% of Torrance’s current $5.1-million bus operations budget and is providing an additional $1.2 million for construction of a $5.9-million bus maintenance facility on Madrona Avenue. The facility is set for completion in February.

About 25% of Proposition A revenue--the so-called local-return money--is divided on a population basis among all cities in the county, as well as unincorporated portions of the county. (Each county supervisor decides how the money is used for unincorporated areas in his district.)

In the 1985-86 fiscal year, Torrance will pull in an estimated $1,284,264 in local-return money.

Because it has a municipal bus service with fares below 50 cents, Torrance is also eligible for additional fare-reduction funding through Proposition A. Torrance will receive an extra $1.2 million in Proposition A money during the current fiscal year for fare reduction. And Torrance is one of several cities in the county that has engaged in buying Proposition A money from cities that don’t have a use for it.

Here’s how it works: A city that has Proposition A money but no transit project to spend it on sells the money--usually at 60 to 65 cents on the dollar--for general revenue funds from another city that can use the transit funds. General revenue funds, which come from taxes and other sources, are more valuable because they can be spent on anything.

For example, Torrance this year bought a total of $190,000 in Proposition A money from Southgate and Rolling Hills for about $115,000.

Money Spent on Security

Inglewood, the next-greatest recipient of Proposition A funds in the South Bay, will receive a total of $3.2 million in local-return money through June 30, 1986.

But it is not spending the money on buses. Inglewood’s largest item is security. The city has committed almost $1.7 million for security since 1982.

The money pays for 10 police officers spending full time on transit safety, riding Southern California Rapid Transit District buses and patrolling bus stops in and out of uniform.

Carson, which gets the third-largest share in the South Bay, began the six-route Carson Circuit a year ago and recently expanded it to seven routes. The fare on the 21-passenger mini-buses is 25 cents.

Redondo Beach, which has an unsubsidized, privately operated trolley system, is spending some of its Proposition A money on dial-a-ride services, which operate much like taxis. Most of its Proposition A money, however, is still in the bank. Two South Bay cities are among 17 municipalities that decided to use Proposition A local-return funds to offset the July 1 fare increases imposed by RTD, using “buy-down” programs.

Reduced-Fare Passes

Hawthorne and Inglewood will enable elderly and handicapped residents to buy monthly RTD bus passes for $4, the rate before the fare increase. Hermosa Beach is considering the same idea.

It took some cities a while to understand that the Proposition A local return money will last as long as the half-cent sales tax, which is to be levied indefinitely.

“The 25% is forever,” said Jacki Bacharach, head of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which must approve local transit projects financed by Proposition A revenue.

“A lot of cities think that this money is not forever. It took a long time to explain to my own city,” said Bacharach, who is also a council member in Rancho Palos Verdes. Transportation Commission staff say the program has worked well overall, although they concede that some problems are to be expected when 85 different jurisdictions (the 84 municipalities plus unincorporated Los Angeles County) get their hands on new money.

For example, eager-beaver Maywood started up a dial-a-ride service this spring without bothering to tell the commission, which found out about it through a newspaper article.

Requested Funding

The city then sought after-the-fact funding for the unauthorized first two weeks. “Our sin is one of inadvertence. The city of Maywood is not an affluent city and we need your help,” Leonard R. Locher, the city’s chief administrative officer, pleaded in a letter to the commission May 13.

The commission gave Maywood $4,250, half of its request.

Most proposals have been for things like dial-a-ride services, new bus routes, trolleys, fare discounts, bus shelters, buses, and the like--unquestionably transit-related uses.

“We really try to keep a hands-off approach,” Bacharach said. “As long as the funds are used for transit, it really is a local decision what they are used for. In the main, cities are being very responsible in the use of their funds.”

But some have been “creative,” Bacharach said. Rancho Palos Verdes wanted to use Proposition A money to pay for part of a recreation trip to the Grand Tetons in 1983. Other cities wanted to sponsor trips to Mt. St. Helens, Mexico and Las Vegas, commission officials said.

For County Residents

“The tax is supposed to benefit residents of Los Angeles County,” explained commission programming analyst Kristine Hill. “When the Grand Tetons and some of these other trips came up, we thought of our legal responsibilities.”

The issue was put before the commission.

“I went down and testified” in favor of the trip, said Mary Thomas, Rancho Palos Verdes director of leisure services. “It was obvious to me it was going to be a giant headache. Some of the panel felt it was not appropriate.”

The commission worked out a policy permitting recreational trips within the Los Angeles urban area. For trips out of the area, the policy permits payment for the local segment.

“We don’t like it. We let them do it but we don’t encourage it and they can be guaranteed of an audit at the end of the year,” Hill said.

Trips for Seniors

San Dimas is the only city to use the policy, commission analysts said. In 1983 and 1984, the city took busloads of seniors to the Lawrence Welk Village in Escondido, Palm Springs, the Date Festival in Indio, the Ramona Pageant in Hemet and Wild Animal Park in San Diego.

Proposition A money paid $252.28 for the portions of the trips in the Los Angeles urban area.

A South Bay program sponsoring rides to get drunk teen-agers home from weekend parties became another controversy last year.

Gary Bess, then executive director of the South Bay Free Clinic, wanted to use Proposition A local return money allocated to South Bay cities to help run the service.

He went to Hawthorne officials, who liked the idea. The city sought and received approval from the commission in December for a $5,000 program.

“We tactfully called it ‘after-hour ride-share,’ ” Hill said.

Other Cities Solicited

The Hawthorne request was only the beginning.

The South Bay Free Clinic began soliciting all South Bay cities for Proposition A funding.

“The amount of money escalated to the twenties of thousands. Calls came from Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, El Segundo, all the Peninsula cities. The proposed budget was $120,000,” Hill said.

“It was a good strategy--get it approved and then expand it.”

Bess, who has since moved to head the Los Angeles Free Clinic, responded, “I wish I was that cunning.” But he conceded that with the Hawthorne approval “as a precedent, we went to other city governments.”

Policy Re-examined

The multiple requests prompted a re-examination by the commission, which decided that the service was needed but was not public transportation.

“They were very rigid,” Bess said.

Hill said it’s an important issue.

“It isn’t over yet,” she said. “We have had proposals for prisoners, unwed mothers and public inebriates.”

None of those projects was approved, but they and the drunken-teen proposal prompted an ongoing policy review for programs for special groups of transit users.

In April, South Pasadena wanted to use $88,000 in Proposition A local return money for railroad crossing pads, arguing that the buses would benefit from smoother railway crossings.

Proposal Rejected

The commission rejected the proposal, ruling that all traffic--not just public transit--would benefit.

Torrance is not the only city buying Proposition A money with general funds.

The first one, Maywood, suffering from a fiscal crunch, advertised for a swapping partner and Long Beach agreed. The two sought approval from the commission.

“At first LACTC didn’t like it but it didn’t happen that often,” said commission programming analyst Alan Patashnick. The commission was mollified, he said, because the cities receiving the extra Proposition A funds had made transit a high priority.

Patashnick said there have been exchanges involving Torrance, Southgate, Long Beach, Maywood, Morningside Park, Artesia, San Marino, Manhattan Beach, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Commerce, Norwalk, Palos Verdes Estates, Irwindale, West Covina, Los Angeles County and the RTD.

Boon to Bus Companies

The Propositon A money paid to local governments has been a major boost to private bus companies that have picked up contracts with municipalities.

Commission figures show that private operators now hold 60% of municipal contracts for dial-a-ride services. About 50% of fixed-route service is provided by city-owned transit systems and the other 50% is from private bus companies contracting with cities, although the largest fixed-route operators are still public.

Transit Contractors, the biggest private operator in the South Bay, likes Proposition A, and with good reason: 13 of its 15 municipal contracts in the Southland are financed with Proposition A money.

“We have had phenomenal growth,” said general manager Al Fuhr.

The company said its revenues doubled to $2.5 million within the past year.

Wendell Cox, a former commission member who is now a transportation consultant in Washington, D.C., cites the Carson Circuit, one of Transit Contractors’ operations, as a national example of savings that can result from using a private bus company.

Cheaper Than RTD

“They have been able to buy that service for about 70% less than it would cost from RTD,” he maintained. “It is not a matter of private being better than public. It is a matter of competition being better than monopoly.”

In Lawndale, where the red and yellow trolleys stop at every school and park, transit excitement appears highest. A banner extolling the trolley flies over Hawthorne Boulevard.

Two billboards, one on Hawthorne Boulevard just north of 147th Street, the other on Rosecrans Avenue near Kingsdale Avenue, soon will declare:

“There is no such thing as a free ride . . . except on the Lawndale Trolley.”

June ridership figures showed a 31% increase over May, a rise officials said may stem from school being out.

A total of 18,117 people got on the bus in June. In May, the first month of operation, 13,825 did.

Said Councilman Birdsall: “You never have to walk more than two blocks to get one, and the price is definitely right.”

Barney Sandoval, 11, got on the trolley with his cousin Lalo Lopez, 12, and Ronnie Olivas, 11, one day last week. The three boys said they ride often.

“It’s really neat,” Barney said. “I just ride it.”

Said Lalo: “We just ride the bus all around. The trolley is cool.”

“It sure beats walking,” said Barney.

How Cities Have Used Transit Funds This table summarizes Proposition A funding to South Bay cities for fiscal years 1982-83 through 1985-86. The second through fifth columns of figures represent expenditures and/or commitments to spend. All figures represent thousands of dollars.

Cities Funds Fixed Rt. Dial-Ride Capital Other Received Buses Buses Items Items Avalon $73 $-- $-- $-- $29 Carson 2,740 1,143 365 182 133 El Segundo 464 5 66 88 -- Gardena 1,530 301 360 192 -- Hawthorne 1,902 -- 442 25 147 Hermosa Beach 601 42 64 69 4 Inglewood 3,185 -- 75 54 1,666 Lawndale 806 184 115 129 34 Lomita 629 -- 145 12 -- Manhattan Beach 1,090 174 93 -- -- Palos Verdes Estates 471 -- 75 18 150 Rancho Palos Verdes 1,443 -- 418 314 86 Redondo Beach 1,655 -- 224 -- 10 Rolling Hills 67 -- -- 14 16 Rolling Hills Estates 251 -- 72 144 5 Torrance 5,133 1,963 141 1,621 --

Cities Not Committed Avalon $44 Carson 917 El Segundo 305 Gardena 450 Hawthorne 1,288 Hermosa Beach 422 Inglewood 1,390 Lawndale 344 Lomita 472 Manhattan Beach 823 Palos Verdes Estates 228 Rancho Palos Verdes 625 Redondo Beach 1,421 Rolling Hills 37 Rolling Hills Estates 30 Torrance 1,408

Source: Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.