Privately Operated Shuttle Fleet to Replace Downtown Minibuses

A fleet of new, privately operated shuttle buses will replace RTD’s 14-year-old minibus service in downtown Los Angeles next week--a change that city officials hope will significantly improve service, boost ridership and hold down costs.

Dubbed DASH--Downtown Area Short Hop--the distinctive new silver and magenta minibuses will represent the city’s biggest venture yet into politically sensitive private contracts for transit service historically provided by the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

Private Sector

The shuttle buses, which will begin rolling at 7 a.m. next Monday, will follow the same RTD route through Chinatown, the Civic Center, the financial district and the retail district in the southern portion of the Central City. The fare will remain at 25 cents and the same Monday-through-Saturday schedule will be maintained.

Nearly 18 months in development, the $1.2-million project gives the city the “ability to demonstrate that it is appropriate for certain services to be operated by the private sector with public financing,” said Donald Howery, director of the city’s Department of Transportation, which will oversee the new service.

Following a national trend toward so-called privatization of transit services--one that has been strongly encouraged by the Reagan Administration and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission--the city also has recently contracted out a Friday and Saturday night Westwood shuttle service previously operated by RTD. In addition, the city expects to begin running its first privately operated freeway express bus service next month from the San Fernando Valley to downtown Los Angeles, and is studying the possibility of taking over other RTD express routes and contracting out a minibus route to serve the Harbor area.

Unconvinced on Service

The RTD, which had been operating the downtown minibus service with an 80% subsidy provided by the city, did not fight the change. But RTD officials are dubious about claims that the private contractor will significantly improve service or save much money.

“I’m not yet convinced the quality of service will be as good as presented,” said Nikolas Patsaouras, president of the RTD Board of Directors.

City officials say they gave RTD about $800,000 a year for the special service. They say they will save more than $200,000 a year through the new arrangement. Part of the savings will come from reduced labor costs because the shuttle operator, Pomona-based Diversified Paratransit Inc., will be using non-union drivers. RTD’s unionized drivers, among the highest paid in the nation, earn approximately $13 an hour.

That issue is sensitive for Mayor Tom Bradley and his allies at City Hall, who have close ties to the labor movement. Bradley, who will promote the shuttle service Wednesday with a procession of the shuttles through downtown, has been trying to find areas to improve public transit and cut costs through contracting out, without alienating union officials. But the new shuttle contract has left RTD drivers “very upset,” said Earl Clark, general chairman of the drivers’ 5,000-member United Transportation Union, which has supported Bradley in the past.

Complaint to Union Chief

Clark said he has complained about the mayor’s support of the contract to William Robertson, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and one of Bradley’s closest advisers. Jim Wood, an executive with the federation and a Bradley appointee to the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which is helping to fund the shuttle contract, said the federation supports the drivers’ position. “The city felt this was the way to go,” Wood said. “I’m not happy personally with them choosing to make their savings out of wages.”

Craig Lawson, Bradley’s transportation specialist, said no opposition to the contract was voiced during public hearings. The “political acceptability” of the contract “really did not come up,” he said. “It’s a transportation decision, based on good transit planning and economic sense.”

As a demonstration project, the shuttle service has qualified for $333,000 in private contracting “incentive” funds from the county Transportation Commission, which oversees revenue generated by the half-cent sales tax increase approved by voters in 1980.

One criticism of the RTD’s service--called Miniride--has been that it is unreliable. Schedules are not kept because the minibuses often become bunched together, resulting in long waits at some stops, city officials said. Boardings on the minibus system dropped by 23% between 1981-82 and 1984-85, which city officials said increased the subsidy required to maintain the service.

Blamed on Service

“We attribute that to the level of service that was provided,” said the city transportation director, Howery.

Through intense supervision of the movement of the 12 new shuttles, the contractor hopes to maintain five-minute spacing of the buses during peak hours, about the same as the published schedule of the RTD minibuses.

City officials also hope that giving the shuttle service a fresh, separate identity--including new route signs at all bus stops--will attract new riders. Originally, the RTD shuttles clearly stood out because they were bright orange and had canopy-like roofs. In recent years, RTD has replaced the jitneys with small buses with markings similar to the other buses jamming downtown streets, noted Jim McLaughlin, a city transportation engineer in charge of the project.

RTD officials acknowledged that keeping schedules has been a problem, but they say it is because of downtown congestion, which they cannot control. “Downtown L.A. has very, very unreliable traffic patterns,” said Steve Parry, RTD’s manager of bus planning.