Fear of Crime : Bus Drivers--Stress Is a Passenger

Last October, a Southern California Rapid Transit District bus driver was on his routine run through Altadena when he stopped to pick up a teen-ager who stepped aboard and flashed a bogus student pass. The driver tried to confiscate the card, but instead touched off a brawl.

According to the driver, the youth yanked him out of his seat and began pummeling him. Other passengers joined the fray. And the driver, suffering from a dislocated shoulder, was knocked out of work for seven months.

Andy Fowler, on the other hand, has been luckier during his eight years of driving for the RTD. Even though he works in some of the most unforgiving neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles, Fowler has managed to escape assault.

But the fear of attack has never left him.

‘You Are the Target’

“When you come in here and work on these lines out here . . . you are the target,” said Fowler, 35, who works the “extra board,” filling in for drivers on their regular routes. “Every day I’m expecting trouble, whether it happens or not.

“That’s just the attitude you get with the public out there. . . . Even now, when I’m talking to a passenger, I get nervous because I don’t know when somebody’s going to go off on you just for a lousy fare.”

Fowler’s apprehension and his colleague’s injuries reflect the worst nightmare for urban bus drivers: a random attack by their own passengers. For many drivers, the mere threat of such violence has become a disturbing intrusion into a job they already consider highly stressful.

Bus operators work in a world steeped in rigid rules and timetables. RTD drivers are warned that wearing white socks instead of dark-colored ones can cost a demerit. They realize that showing up one minute late to the assignment window can result in a day off without pay.

Industry Never Sleeps

Drivers risk the wrath of supervisors--and passengers--if buses arrive a few minutes early rather than a few minutes late to a stop. Their restroom breaks are often taken in gas stations and restaurants. And 12-hour days, with 10 hours behind the wheel, are not uncommon in an industry that never sleeps.

In Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States, researchers have found evidence suggesting that bus operators suffer from hypertension, cardiovascular problems, back ailments and a higher incidence of divorce and alcohol or drug use than found in the normal working population.

“Complaints about driving in congestion, abuse from passengers and fear of physical violence appear to cut across international boundaries,” said Lyn Long, a researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

“There’s no question it is a highly stressed profession,” said Dr. June Fisher, who is directing the first major U.S. study on bus operator stress and their working environment.

As director of the Center for Municipal Occupational Safety and Health at San Francisco General Hospital, Fisher initially reviewed medical charts of 1,600 local bus drivers and was startled to discover that 45% of them suffered from “heightened blood pressure.” Her subsequent research, financed by the federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration, links the higher hypertension rate to job pressures and environment--a conclusion that Fisher said has serious consequences for public safety.

More than 1 million daily riders depend on the health and skills of the RTD’s 4,800 bus drivers, who are paid as much as $13 an hour--and average $29,600 a year--for a job that does not require a high school education and involves only three months of training.

More than 75% of the drivers are black, Latino or Asian. Their average age is 40 and they have an average of nine years of experience. Nearly 700 are women.

Drug, Alcohol Use

In a 1980 survey, the RTD found that operators suffering from high stress were more susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse. The survey also blamed high stress for increased absenteeism and poor performance.

Some of these drivers botched their schedules. Others refused to pick up passengers. And still others were reluctant to confront passengers who declined to pay fares, the survey found.

High driver stress was also blamed for some of the more than 5,600 accidents involving RTD buses last year. But while the RTD averaged about 16 accidents each day--most of them fender-benders--officials noted that the RTD’s accident frequency rate--5.1 per 100,000 miles--was well below the 6.4-per-100,000-mile national average for bus companies.

In a controversial study of RTD crime released earlier this year, two UCLA urban planning professors, Ned Levine and Martin Wachs, claimed that the district vastly understates its crime problem on buses and at bus stops.

In a separate 1982 study of RTD bus crime, Wachs also pointed out that bus drivers are more than 10 times as likely as riders to become victims of transit crime.

RTD officials, however, said those findings paint a gloomier picture of transit crime than actually exists and contend that bus drivers do not face a substantial danger.

Overall Rate Dropping

In a six-month survey from December through last April, the RTD reported a districtwide rate of one assault against operators for every 500,000 miles of driving and said the overall crime rate was actually dropping.

“I’m not trying to minimize the fact that we have a crime problem on our buses, but the crime problem on our buses is a reflection of the crime problem in our communities . . . and it is being controlled,” said James Burgess, RTD’s transit police chief.

In 1984, for example, the RTD reported 195 assaults on operators, including 3 rapes, 20 robberies and 26 assaults with deadly weapons--down from the 228 total assaults the year before.

However, dozens of bus drivers interviewed by The Times maintain that the crime situation is far worse than the district acknowledges.

“It’s a combat zone out there on some lines,” one driver said.

Another, who asked not to be identified, said drivers as well as passengers often do not report incidents because they fear retaliation from troublemakers or their friends, particularly gang members. Other drivers said victims simply do not want to bother with the additional time and paper work to report incidents.

Younger Drivers on Worst Lines

Because of the RTD’s seniority system, the younger and less-experienced operators, including some women, often drive the most crime-plagued bus lines.

One part-time driver, Cadie Gill, said she was threatened by a drunken passenger in Pomona during her first few months on the job and had to be rescued by several passengers who pulled her assailant away.

Another woman RTD driver, who works in South-Central Los Angeles, said she swiftly learned about her lack of authority. “A lot of times you tell them to turn down the radio, and they just turn it up louder,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

The South-Central Division covers some of the toughest lines in the district’s system. The 53 and 55 lines, which go through the heart of a densely populated, low-income community, are among the district’s worst for crime, according to RTD statistics.

Valencia Taylor, 23, a mail handler who rides the 55 line down the core of the central city, said she and other riders have been threatened by knife-wielding passengers and have had to withstand rocks thrown at buses and ignore verbal abuse from drunken or drugged passengers.

She also has seen drivers harassed and beaten while riding the bus. “One day some kids got on, and then as they got off they just hit the driver upside the head,” she recalled. “Then they threw bottles at him.”

But the South-Central lines are not the only ones plagued with problems.

Pickpockets and Vandalism

On the crowded buses that creep along Wilshire Boulevard, pickpockets prey on unsuspecting riders. Bus lines in the San Fernando Valley have been victimized by vandalism. Along Venice Boulevard, there have been angry skirmishes between rival gangs on the buses. Unruly schoolchildren have wreaked havoc on buses in the San Gabriel Valley. And passengers in West Los Angeles have been harassed by other riders headed for the beach.

On some weekday afternoons, buses going from Los Angeles City Hall through the downtown area act as makeshift gambling parlors for three-card monte players and masters of the “now you see it, now you don’t” shell game, played in the back of the bus.

“One gambler just unfolded his newspaper and played his game on the lap of an undercover cop,” one transit policeman marveled.

Last year, union leaders threatened to halt bus service to a Claremont school district unless officials curbed student harassment of drivers. And on the affluent Palos Verdes Peninsula, drivers claimed that some students have been so rowdy that one tried to commandeer a bus and prevent it from picking up additional passengers.

Union and RTD officials agree that such incidents have contributed to a stressful climate in which the numbers of driver disability and worker compensation claims have steadily grown.

A spot check of workers’ claims against the RTD showed that 308 drivers were off their jobs last May 31 because of job stress, occupational injuries or unprovoked attacks.

In Immediate Trouble

In one of the claims, a strapping 6-foot, 3-inch driver described how he picked up a couple of passengers at a bus stop and found himself in immediate trouble. In his report, the driver told how a man pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, poked it to his head and warned: “If you do anything stupid or call police, I’ll blow your . . . brain out.”

The driver, who went to a medical center after the robbery, said he resumed driving but called for the transit police to follow him the rest of the night.

Some bus crimes prove more annoying than dangerous.

Riding one evening with undercover transit police, a reporter watched as officers boarded several buses, rousting one teen-ager for smoking and citing another for blasting a radio. The violations could result in the youths paying $50--a maximum fine that will quintuple next year.

They were the evening’s only arrests. But they represent the most common passenger problems encountered on RTD buses by drivers and transit police.

In 1982, the first year after a state law went into effect banning smoking, eating, spitting and radio playing on board public transit, the RTD issued 1,428 citations for those offenses. In 1984, that number had climbed to 1,696.

$4.7-Million Security Budget

The transit district budgets about $4.7 million for security, including funds to pay for 70 undercover and uniformed officers. The RTD recently eliminated a program of using local police officers to moonlight for the district. The district also relies on television cameras that have been installed in more than 900 of the district’s 2,600 buses, and emergency alarm systems in all buses.

Using additional funds from Los Angeles County supervisors, the RTD has relied on various task forces to oust pickpockets and purse-snatchers from buses and plans to deploy six special transit officers in high-crime areas, RTD Police Chief Burgess said.

Drug dealers, who once walked the bus aisles pushing their wares like vendors at a baseball game, have been swept off buses, he claimed. And targeting crime-prone areas has reduced transit crime in some of those neighborhoods, Burgess said.

But skeptical drivers are taking their own precautions.

A number carry chemical Mace issued by the district. Others are enrolled in self-defense classes. Some attach heavy chains to their hole-punchers to use as emergency weapons. And a few reportedly carry concealed knives or electric stun guns--both illegal and potential cause for dismissal.

Based on its survey of stress among drivers, the RTD developed a training program for drivers in 1981 and reported a sharp drop in accidents and personnel problems, such as absenteeism. Like other transit districts, the RTD also started employee counseling sessions as well as classes for drivers designed specifically to deal with stress.

Drivers Want More Police

But RTD drivers union leader Earl Clark said these programs are not enough. Drivers want more transit police, better buses and more drivers to reduce overcrowding and long shifts, Clark said. He also said those measures would help reduce friction between drivers and passengers.

Many bus drivers interviewed for this report were convinced that they have a poor public image, tarnished in part by the Ralph Kramden character on “The Honeymooners”--Jackie Gleason’s 1950s television portrayal of a loud-mouthed, overweight bus driver.

“Art Carney played a more likable character on that series and he was a sewer worker,” one driver grumbled.

However, a 1980 Los Angeles Times Poll, which sampled 1,207 bus riders, drew a warm response toward drivers. Nearly 7 out of 10 passengers said their drivers were polite, and 80% of those polled described the drivers on their lines as skillful.

Still, consumer complaints at the RTD have risen over the years, including reports of discourteous drivers and buses passing riders by. In the first five months of 1985, the RTD received about 4,600 complaints from riders registering such complaints as well as grievances about route schedules or faulty buses. In 1982, less than half that number complained.

Some drivers such as Wiley Bryant, who has worked for nearly 40 years in Los Angeles, have never been assaulted, have had few accidents and are hard-pressed to recall any run-ins with passengers.

Brusqueness Blamed on Stress

Others are like the young woman driver who blamed a stressful day for a recent brusque encounter with passengers that was witnessed by a reporter.

It was evening rush hour, and, unknown to her, a reporter and some undercover RTD officers had joined passengers lined up at 6th and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

When her No. 40 bus arrived, it was empty. The driver swung the doors open, stormed off the bus and immediately lambasted a middle-aged woman who was trying to step aboard.

“Don’t you get on this bus. Stay away!” the driver barked at the passenger. “Do you see anybody on this bus? Then get off. Nobody’s boarding.”

As confused patrons waited for an explanation, she brushed by them to walk to the nearby car of her transit supervisor.

When the driver returned, she admonished the perplexed passengers again before taking her seat and allowing them to board.

Once under way, she barreled through downtown intersections and yelled at one passenger who stood up in her seat. At one stop, the undercover officers exited and reproached the driver, who blamed her troubles on an exhausting day.

“I was stressed out,” she recalled later. “I was just fatigued. This is hard labor we’re doing.”