Commuter Express Assumes 9 Routes : Buses of a Different Stripe Making the Run Downtown

A state legislative effort to abolish the RTD may have been killed in recent weeks, but hundreds of former RTD commuters from Chatsworth to San Pedro have ended up with a new bus company anyway.

Commuter Express, a new privately operated bus service, took over nine RTD lines Oct. 5, most of them freeway express routes from the suburbs into downtown Los Angeles. In addition, a private service called Community Connection has taken over a shuttle line serving the Griffith Park Observatory in the Los Feliz area and a local line in San Pedro.

The three-year program, subsidized jointly by the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, is part of a broader, hotly debated push by some city, county and federal officials toward expanded use of private bus companies to replace and supplement the service provided by public transit systems.

Proponents of greater “privatization” of bus service say it reduces overhead and operating costs and breaks the bus system down into more manageable units, permitting better control of the quality of service.

Critics, most notably the public transit employee unions, argue that the trend amounts to union busting because drivers for private bus companies are often paid less and have fewer benefits and protections. They also charge that in the long run use of private bus companies will fragment responsibility, undermining the reason the RTD was formed 24 years ago as the county’s regional bus agency.

Commuter Express--the marketing name for the new service operated by Laidlaw Transit of Van Nuys--is the largest private bus company effort yet to take over RTD service. Using shiny new buses, funded largely by grants from the pro-privatization Reagan Administration, Commuter Express is now operating eight freeway express lines and one South Bay line serving the El Segundo defense industry employment center.

The RTD had voted earlier this year to drop all of the lines as part of a budget cutback. For the RTD, the routes were costly to operate and had relatively low ridership.

Donald Howery, general manager of the city transportation department, said the city hopes to lure commuters out of their cars and into the new, well-maintained, blue- and purple-striped Laidlaw buses, equipped with high-back upholstered seats. A top priority, based on the department’s research of what commuters want, will be keeping schedules, Howery said.

City officials, drawing on the results of a successful downtown shuttle bus that replaced RTD service and a privately operated pilot express line from Encino to downtown, estimate that Commuter Express will operate at a rate 37% below the RTD’s costs, while maintaining the same schedules, fare structures and bus stops.

As with the RTD, it will take subsidies to run the private service. Besides bus fares, operating costs will come from a Transportation Commission grant and part of the city’s share of a special half-cent sales tax for transit in Los Angeles County. From fares and subsidies, Laidlaw will receive between $6 million and $7.5 million to operate the service for three years. The contract allows for extensions thereafter.

The former RTD routes now served by Commuter Express are: 413 (North Hollywood to downtown); 419 (Chatsworth to downtown); 423 (Westlake Village to downtown); 430 (Pacific Palisades to downtown); 431 (Westwood to downtown); 437 (Marina del Rey to downtown); 438 (Hermosa Beach to downtown); 448 (Rancho Palos Verdes to downtown), and 686 (San Pedro/beach cities to El Segundo).

The local shuttles taken over by Laidlaw’s Community Connection service are Line 147 in San Pedro and Line 203 in Los Feliz.

Meanwhile, a similar program is getting under way in the San Gabriel Valley where Los Angeles County is funding the takeover of an additional six RTD bus lines. The RTD also had targeted those lines for elimination.

Mike Lewis, chief deputy to Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who is spearheading the county’s effort to use private contractors, said two freeway express lines--492 (San Dimas to downtown) and 494 (Glendora to downtown)--will be taken over Nov. 2. by Embree/Mark IV, a private bus firm.

Also, four local San Gabriel Valley lines will be taken over by Laidlaw Transit about Dec. 1, Lewis said.

Those routes, all serving the Pomona and Claremont areas, are 192, 194, 291 and 293.

Another, more extensive privatization plan for the San Gabriel Valley, applying to about half the RTD lines there, was recently turned down by the county Transportation Commission.

As with the city contract, the private bus companies will maintain the RTD’s schedules, fares and use the same bus stops. Lewis said the county estimates that the services will be provided at 40% to 50% below the RTD’s costs.