Residents Making Noise About Buses

When the Big Blue Santa Monica bus rumbles past Gene Cunningham’s house on Riviera Avenue in Venice, the noise disrupts conversations and drowns out the television set.

Cunningham’s 4-year-old daughter, Sophie, whose bedroom wall is just a few feet from the street, is often awakened by passing buses and can only sleep in her room after 11 p.m., Cunningham says. Her window is kept closed to keep out exhaust fumes.

The bus travels the Riviera Avenue route up to four times an hour from 5:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

“It’s like living under an airport,” said Cunningham.

“You don’t get used to it (the noise),” said Maryann Stuehrmann, a free-lancer who works out of a photography studio on Cunningham’s property. “I really tried to brainwash myself to get used to it, and you just can’t. . . . Every 15 minutes it roars.”

Last year, Cunningham and his neighbors petitioned the City of Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Bus Co., which is owned by the City of Santa Monica, to reroute the bus. Since then, they have discovered that the noisy, smelly buses that they regard as a nuisance are looked upon by city and bus company officials as a public service.

Cunningham and neighbors Frank Serafine and Andy Rovins gathered 110 signatures on the petition, which called for the rerouting of bus line No. 2, which serves 1,253 passengers daily. The group, known as the Central Venice Residents Assn., sent the petition along with suggested alternate routes to the Santa Monica Bus Co. and to Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district includes Venice.

In response to the petition, the bus company arranged some test drives through the neighborhood to explore alternate routes. Company officials concluded that the best way to avoid Riviera Avenue would be to route the bus down Main Street, which runs parallel to Riviera a block further west. The bus would turn onto Abbot Kinney Boulevard (formerly Washington Boulevard) to rejoin the old route.

There was one problem: The sharp right turn--about 130 degrees--from Main Street onto Abbot Kinney was too much for a bus to handle, unless the intersection were modified. The matter was referred for study to the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, which concluded that it would cost $120,000 to overhaul the intersection--$85,000 to purchase 15 feet of street-side property to permit the widening, and the rest for construction.

That led to another problem: Who should pay? Councilwoman Galanter concluded that it should be the City of Santa Monica, whose buses were the source of the problem. Los Angeles, she said in a letter to residents, simply didn’t have the money.

“Unless funding were raised in the private sector,” Galanter said, “money for such a project would have to come from tax monies,” which are more urgently needed for programs such as health services, beach parking, improvement of dangerous intersections, transportation for seniors and after-school transportation for schoolchildren.

“We agree that it could be aggravating to have a bus pass outside your window, but it’s not a top priority,” Galanter said.

Predictably, fixing an intersection in Los Angeles is also not a top priority for the City of Santa Monica or its bus company. Santa Monica Bus Co. Director Jack Hutchison said the firm would be happy to change the route, if Los Angeles would pay to improve the intersection. Meanwhile, the bus will continue to run on Riviera.

“We would like to be good neighbors,” Hutchison said. But he said the bus company also must “balance the needs of the people who use the bus with the needs of the people who live in the area.”

Adamant that their situation was exceptional, the residents asked the Los Angeles County Health Department to do a noise study. Though the study, completed in June, described noise in the area as “excessive,” it said “the actual problem with the buses is related to . . . the inadequate setback of the residential units along their route.”

Because Riviera Avenue was once a canal designed to provide water access to residents in early 20th-Century Venice, the houses are set only five to seven feet back from the street. Though the study recommended that “measures be taken to reduce bus noise” in the area, it reported that the buses “are probably in compliance with state noise emission standards.”

Galanter aide Rick Ruiz said that many other Los Angeles residents have to contend with noisy buses. Unless the noise is shown to pose a health hazard to residents, rerouting the No. 2 bus line will not be a high priority. “It (the study) does not indicate that there is any direct health impact from the bus noise,” he added.

Serafine, one of the Riviera Avenue petition organizers, disagrees. A movie sound mixer familiar with the psychological effects of noise, he likened the rumbling buses to jackhammers beating inside his head. Sustained and annoying noises, he argued, can affect “mental and social well-being.”

Frustrated that neither Los Angeles nor Santa Monica will work to reroute the buses, Serafine said he will take the neighborhood complaints to the state Department of Transportation in hopes that a legislative solution might be found.

“It affects the whole neighborhood,” Serafine said. “We’re angry that they (the two cities) don’t respond.”