Fare Flare-Up : Low-Income Riders Fuming Over Hike in Charges to RTD Bus Passengers

Shirley Ventress: ‘We can’t really complain about it. Eventually they had to do it. I’m not all bent out of shape.’

Bob Teer: ‘I don’t know if I can express it without getting nasty. RTD--it’s never been any good.’

Armando Mancia: ‘We may start looking for other ways to get around, like a cheap bicycle.’

Silvia Alvarado: ‘With the wages we earn, it’s just not enough. Prices are high and the price I get paid is low.’

Thousands of poor and low-income bus riders reacted angrily Friday to RTD fare increases that catapulted Los Angeles’ rates above those in all other big cities in the West and were expected to hit hardest at the city’s neediest residents.

Many riders said they could not afford the new fares, which jumped from 85 cents to $1.10 for each ride and from 10 cents to 25 cents for a transfer. In East Los Angeles, some residents said they would walk long distances to work, and one man was thinking of buying a bicycle.

In South-Central Los Angeles, riders said the increases will hurt welfare parents looking for work or trying to make it to newly found jobs. One man said he is so poor he may have to tell his company he cannot show up for his new job.

Little Concern in Suburbs

In fact, the only areas where riders were not uniformly worried or angry were suburban neighborhoods, where professionals commuting to downtown or Century City expressed little concern.

The hikes, approved by the RTD board in May to bail out the troubled agency, came the same day that hundreds of landlords raised rents 4% in line with the city’s rent-control ordinance. It was also the day that minimum wage earners got a raise from $3.35 to $4.25 an hour. “It’s pretty ironic that as soon as low-income people have a boost in their wages, a bus company or landlord puts his hand in their pockets and takes it out,” said Larry Gross, of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a community group. “It seems they want people to live on the air.”

For daily commuters, the RTD said, the cheapest fare is a monthly bus pass costing $42--up $10 from the old price. However, that works out to more than $500 a year, or about one-seventeenth the annual salary of someone paid the new minimum wage.

“It seems that no one cares about the poor people,” said Concepcion Peres, 43, of East Los Angeles. “We cannot find jobs, homes, and now we can’t afford transportation. How are we supposed to get to work, grocery stores or to hospitals when we are sick?”

Francisco Paz, 24, who takes two buses to his job downtown from Olympic Boulevard near Alvarado Street, said: “It’s not right. We Latinos are the majority of the people who ride the bus. . . . The situation is unbearable.”

The RTD raised the fares in hopes of covering a projected deficit of $47 million for the current year. The $1.10 basic fare is now the highest of any major western city. San Diego’s is $1; San Francisco’s and Denver’s basic fares are 75 cents, Seattle’s is 65 cents.

However, to offset the deficit, the RTD also cut positions, reduced services and sought extra funds.

“We didn’t ask them (the riders) to suffer alone,” RTD spokesman John Hyde said.

More than 60% of RTD’s riders earn less than $15,000 a year, according to an RTD survey. Hyde said nobody knows how much the fares will hurt such riders--only that it will hurt.

He said RTD is urging its daily riders to stop paying cash for each ride--by far the most expensive way to go--and instead buy monthly passes. The agency also hopes riders will buy new $9 ticket booklets--good for 20 rides for seniors and the disabled and 10 rides for others.

Can’t Afford Pass

However, many among the city’s working poor and low-income commuters--a vast group that crams the buses each morning and evening--said they will have great difficulty buying the $42 monthly passes.

Silvia Alvarado, 33, a garment worker, said she makes about $130 a week doing piece work at a factory and can no longer afford to buy a monthly bus pass.

“With the wages we earn, it’s just not enough,” she said in Spanish. “Sometimes I work from 7 to 7. Prices are high and the price I get paid is low.”

Silvia Escobar, 37, an immigrant from El Salvador, said she has no choice but to buy the pass to get to her housekeeper job in Pacific Palisades--a two-hour bus ride. Yet she must support two daughters on her salary of $35 a day.

Armando Mancia, who takes a bus from East Los Angeles to his roofing job in Highland Park, said, “We may start looking for other ways to get around, like a cheap bicycle.”

Some residents said the increases will further depress Watts and South-Central Los Angeles, where thousands of residents are at or below the poverty level and a high unemployment rate has been only slightly affected by the city’s economic boom.

Sype Lyndsay of South Los Angeles, an employee at a Boys Market on Crenshaw Boulevard, resignedly bought his 17-year-old son a student bus pass, paying $18 instead of $12.

“For a kid who lives in the inner city and tries to get from one place to another, the bus system stinks,” Lyndsay said.

Claudia Moore, who heads Project BUILD, a job preparedness program at the public housing projects in Watts, said the increase will hurt the program, which buys $3,000 worth of bus tickets each year for people who need to get to work or a job.

“There is so much talk about gangs and drugs and here is a community group (Project BUILD) that is helping,” she said. “I see this action as one of the biggest barriers” to the project’s efforts.

Unhappy in Chinatown

Gail Wilson, 31, a public housing resident on welfare, says she buses her two daughters to a school outside Watts to keep them out of the gangs.

“My girls are doing much better at the school they attend now and I don’t want to take them out,” Wilson said.

In Chinatown, many residents going relatively short distances said they were switching to the downtown bus service, DASH, which charges only 25 cents.

Waiting for a bus in the San Fernando Valley, jewelry salesman Harout Nazarian, 22, of Van Nuys, said, “This is the last month I take the RTD.”

“I don’t know if I can express it without getting nasty,” said Bob Teer, 72, of Hermosa Beach. “RTD--it’s never been any good.”

If they weren’t angry, many riders were confused over the new prices, despite a publicity campaign by RTD.

Had to Borrow Quarter

At Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, an out-of-work Basil Shady, 40, was forced to walk about 1 1/2 miles to his bank. “I just forget about the increase,” he said.

A pregnant woman, who identified herself as Marina, got on a bus at Wilton Place and had to borrow a quarter from a passenger.

“How embarrassing,” she sighed in Spanish after a middle-aged man gave her the money.

Numerous riders said they would switch to competing bus companies in suburban communities that offer far cheaper bus service.

The RTD has estimated that the 25-cent extra fare, an increase of 29.4% over the old fare, will create a 9% drop in ridership.

“I think it stinks,” said Karen Giger, 31, of Gardena. But, since she has epilepsy, she cannot drive. She and other riders awaiting a bus in Redondo Beach said they will use the Torrance and Gardena bus systems when possible, because the fare is 50 cents.

Only in a few suburban areas were bus commuters generally uncomplaining about the increases.

‘Still Pocketing Money’

At the park-and-ride lot at Ventura and Lankershim boulevards in Studio City, most commuters didn’t care about the hike.

Maureen McAndrews, 28, a legal secretary from Sherman Oaks, said her company gives her $90 a month for parking, and she uses it for a bus pass. “I’m still pocketing money,” she said. “As long as it stays below $90 (a month), it’s still worth it.”

Said Shirley Ventress, 41, of North Hollywood: “We can’t really complain about it. Eventually they had to do it. I’m not all bent out of shape.” But, she said, if her company were not subsidizing her parking, “I’d be going crazy.”

Times staff writers Maureen Fan, Scott Harris, Marita Hernandez, Kimberly L. Jackson, Barbara Koh, George Ramos, Lucille Renwick, Carla Rivera, Karen Roebuck, Suzanne Schlosberg, Shawn M. Smith, Ginger Lynne Thompson and Hector Tobar contributed to this story.