Budget-Cut Threat Makes Ride Uneasy for Bus Commuters

The dark sky ahead is broken by fissures of pink light. Soon the sun will rise.

Already the Ventura Freeway, busiest in the world, is thick with commuters. Like thousands of others, the two dozen riders on RTD Line 423 are headed for work. Unlike the others, however, these people believe the best way to get there is by bus.

In Southern California most commuters would rather drive, usually by themselves, than take public transportation. This is particularly true of those who travel a long distance, such as the 60-mile round trip between Thousand Oaks and downtown. But there is a minority that takes the view of commuters on the East Coast, where trains from the suburbs into New York City are a way of life.

Despite the bouncing of the bus, Carithia Williams easily retouches her morning makeup. Two rows back, Tim Cahill sleeps. Paul Bronstein gets a head start on his work day by sorting through the mound of legal papers inside his briefcase.

‘It’s So Much Easier’

“It’s so much easier than driving,” said Williams, 38, of Thousand Oaks. She works for American Telephone & Telegraph. “You can relax and talk to people. I carry my headphones, and when it gets quiet, I put them on and listen to FM. I don’t understand why anyone would fight that traffic when they can sit back and ride.”

“For me it’s the best alternative there is,” agreed Alan Herns, 65, of Newbury Park, who works at an ARCO Plaza retail store. Herns usually rides the second of the two buses that constitute Line 423. The two run 15 minutes apart, morning and afternoon. Both are scheduled to go out of service June 30 if, as RTD planners expect, the budget-cutting Gramm-Rudman amendment causes reduced federal subsidies.

“We’re all apprehensive,” Herns said. “If the bus stops running, we don’t know what we’ll do. It’s a very necessary thing and it should be continued.”

Express lines generally bring in less money from fares than other buses. In tight financial times, transit planners often single them out for discontinuance. The uncertainty about whether the service will continue creates an angry, embattled mood among riders on Line 423.

“Every time the RTD talks about changing lines, they say they’re eliminating this one,” said Paul Bronstein, 42. A deputy district attorney who lives in Woodland Hills, Bronstein catches Line 423 at its last stop before it travels downtown on the Ventura and Hollywood freeways. He has made the commute by bus for 10 years, watching lines come and go.

“I was on the 716 the first day of Park and Ride, which was about 1975,” he said. “The RTD knows people need the bus, but they don’t seem to care. You wonder if they don’t use the threat of canceling this bus just to get government money.”

Motives Questioned

Skeptical commuters also suspect that RTD discourages ridership on Line 423 by assigning rickety buses to it.

“We seem to get the worst equipment,” one rider said. “I remember a two-week period when we had 10 breakdowns. Once the replacement bus broke down. I know lots of people who stopped using the bus because of undependable service. Then, when ridership goes down, the RTD does a survey and says there isn’t enough demand to justify the service. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

Marc Littman, a spokesman for RTD, replied that there is no intentional assignment of substandard buses to Line 423.

“We have a pretty good maintenance schedule for all our buses,” he said. “It is true that the older buses aren’t as comfortable as newer ones. We assign buses for express service that can handle freeway speed, and some of the newer buses are more sluggish.”

Littman himself rides an RTD express bus, Line 434, into downtown each day. The line originates in Malibu. Like the 423, it is among 51 lines chosen for possible elimination.

“I’m in the same boat as the people on the 423,” Littman said. “The RTD Board of Directors is going to decide Feb. 27 whether these lines can continue. We expected we’d have to discontinue them before now, but the federal cuts didn’t happen. Now, with Gramm-Rudman, we’ll see.

“Part of the problem,” Littman said, “is in the nature of express service. One reason express service is so expensive to operate is the distance people stay on the bus. Look at the whole RTD system, and the average ride is four miles. But, once the express gets on the freeway, no one gets on or off. We don’t get nearly as many fares.”

A one-way trip on Line 423 costs $2.60. A monthly pass is $92. Many riders on the line think fares are high enough to cover RTD costs. But, according to Littman, the shortfall is sizable.

“Systemwide, the fare box takes in about 40% of what it costs to operate the buses,” he said. “The rest comes from other sources. But, on Line 423, we get a little less than 17 cents of the costs from the fare box. The people on 423 have to understand, we’re under a lot of pressure by government to abandon high-subsidy lines.”

Comments Already Taken

Public comment on the 51 lines chosen for elimination was heard at a RTD board hearing last September. Riders will not be allowed to speak at the Feb. 27 meeting. Tentative date for termination of Line 423 is June 30.

Officials in the cities of Westlake Village and Agoura Hills are discussing the formation of their own rapid transit district should the 423 and a companion line, the 161 local into the San Fernando Valley, be discontinued. Service on Line 161 may end as soon as March 30. A private bus company, Pathfinder, already runs into downtown.

“We’re losing money at this point,” said Karyn Pfening, 27, co-owner of the company. “We took it over from Conejo Coach last August when they went out of business. It’s not profitable, but we’ll stick it out a while longer. If RTD drops out, that might help us.”

Pfening said that Pathfinder is running at about 60% of capacity. A monthly pass costs $95. Some RTD riders find the Pathfinder inconvenient because it makes fewer pickups and it runs just one bus from Thousand Oaks, not two, as the RTD does.

Tim Cahill, 19, of Westlake Village said the end of RTD’s Line 423 would be a disappointment. For eight months, Cahill has ridden the bus to his job at a downtown law firm.

‘There’s a Good Feeling’

“I like it better than I thought I would,” he said. “The ride is long, sometimes an hour and 45 minutes going home. But there’s a good feeling in it. Everyone’s got their regular seats, and they can get a little annoyed if somebody takes it. I usually fall asleep on the way in. On the way home, I talk to this older guy I met. He tells me his philosophy of life.”

Margaret Friedman, 39, of Agoura Hills has the opposite pattern. She reads or talks to acquaintances on the morning trip and sleeps going home. Friedman works at a law firm, which, like some other downtown employers, helps pay for the monthly RTD pass.

“I took a vacation from the bus and drove for six months,” she said, “and it taught me how much I prefer the bus. Driving can make you a nervous wreck by the time you get to work.”

Two Bank of America employees, Joe Figueiredo, 44, of Westlake Village and Bob Ricketts, 43, of Agoura Hills, were unaware they worked for the same company until they met on Line 423.

“I’ve gotten to know five or six people from work on the bus,” Ricketts said. “We’ve had some good times. About once a month, going home, we used to have a TGIF party in the back of the bus.”

“That’s right,” Figueiredo remembered with a smile. “It sure beat fighting traffic in a car.”

The celebrations are a thing of the past, partly because of stricter RTD enforcement of laws against eating or drinking on a bus. Not only are the number of citations up, the maximum fine for a violation was raised last year from $50 to $250.

But the riders on Line 423 merely shrug at that sort of news. With their bus tabbed for extinction, they don’t have much to celebrate anyway.