Overhaul at RTD

Given the highly publicized problems at the Southern California Rapid Transit District, it is no surprise that local political leaders have begun talking seriously about dismantling the large, often unwieldy agency in order to replace it with something new and presumably better.

It is useful to discuss such proposals, especially in light of this sprawling and still growing region’s many transportation problems--particularly the need for a modern mass-transit system. But all the talk about RTD’s shortcomings should not obscure the fact that its massive bus system still works remarkably well overall, and that RTD management has acknowledged its problems and is looking for ways to improve the agency’s performance. So it would be a mistake to overreact to the current crisis, scrap the existing system and start over.

Last week RTD General Manager John Dyer gave the transit district’s board of directors an action plan detailing a series of steps designed to deal with the many problems that have been uncovered by the local news media in recent weeks: insurance fraud; rising crime against passengers and bus drivers, including the theft of fare-box revenues; drug use by employees, including bus drivers; lack of proper drivers’ licenses for some bus operators; hiring and recruiting problems; high absenteeism, and the lack of adequate controls over expense spending by RTD executives and board members. While Dyer can be faulted for not having focused on these problems earlier, he should be given a chance to implement his plan.

Taken individually, each of RTD’s problems would not be seen as a sign that Los Angeles’ biggest public-transit system is breaking down. But the cumulative effect of so many of them, in so short a time, has been to create a crisis of public confidence for the agency. As a result, Dyer last week also dismissed the RTD executive in charge of bus operations and said that he plans to hire a new deputy general manager to assist him in administering the agency.

Hiring a new bus-system manager, with more authority and higher public visibility, could be the single best thing that Dyer can do now to restore confidence in the RTD. With the agency’s top officials dealing so much in recent years with the funding and construction of the new Metro Rail subway, it is clear that less attention has been paid to the day-to-day operation of RTD’s bus system, the biggest in the nation. If Dyer, a highly respected transit expert, were to recruit the best bus-system manager whom he could find across the nation to run RTD’s bus fleet, he could then more confidently devote his considerable energies to completing the subway that Los Angeles needs so badly.

Once RTD’s bus system is running at peak performance again, the aura of crisis will fade away and it will be easier for civic leaders to focus on the larger question of what kind of system Los Angeles should have to meet transportation needs as it enters the 21st Century.