1 Year Later, Blue Line Is Having a Bumpy Ride : Transportation: Trolley is considered safe, runs on time and is clean. However, ridership is less than expected and the costs are higher.

As transit officials prepare to throw a party in Long Beach today marking the first anniversary of the Metro Rail Blue Line, the news is mixed about this cornerstone of Los Angeles’ 30-year plan to curb traffic and smog.

On one hand, trains and stations are clean and odor-free, graffiti are virtually nonexistent, schedules are kept and security is outstanding--achievements that transit officials consider vital to lure car-bound commuters to the Blue Line and to other mass transit lines scheduled to open at the rate of one a year for the rest of the century.

But there are problems, too. The major ones: The trolley line has undershot some ridership predictions and overshot its budget.

The minor ones: irksome ticket machines so finicky about paper money that savvy regulars pay the daily $2.20 round-trip fare with coins. And there is the poorly designed Del Amo station that, like the sun at the end of a bad novel, is sinking slowly in the West--a condition that engineers are still trying to fix.

Nevertheless, the 22-mile, $877-million Blue Line--the first leg of a 300-mile, $140-billion Metro Rail transit system--is being watched to see if commuters take to rail transit.

“The Blue Line, symbolically, means a lot to Los Angeles,” said Art Leahy, assistant general manager for operations at the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

“As the Blue Line goes--as its success goes--so go the Red Line and Green Line,” said Capt. Frank Vadurro of the Sheriff’s Department’s Blue Line squad, referring to the next two rapid transit rail lines scheduled to open in 1993 and 1994, respectively.

Commuter rail service to Moorpark in Ventura County, to the Santa Clarita Valley and to San Bernardino is scheduled to start operating late next year.

“The future of L.A.’s system relies on the public’s perception of the Metro Blue Line,” said Long Beach Councilman Ray Grabinski, who is also chairman of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. “This line has built the public’s confidence in rail transit by being reliable, safe, quiet and clean.”

So far, it has also been more expensive and less popular than projected.

When Blue Line construction started in 1985, transportation officials predicted that the trolley would carry 35,000 riders a day. By the time the first train departed, the projection was lowered to 5,000 to 7,000 a day. At that time, transit officials predicted that ridership would grow to 12,000 a day by the end of the first year.

However, those estimates were widely dismissed as an effort to lower expectations, and make it easier to claim success later. Actual daily ridership--which counts each round-trip commuter twice--averaged 30,433 in April, the RTD estimated. Critics, such as Jonathan E.D. Richmond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consider that number “respectable.”

Ridership fell 20% to 24,365 in May, then slipped to 21,921 in June. In the first half of July, the daily average remained at 21,921.

The drop, which Leahy attributes to seasonal fluctuations in commuting patterns and the end of the school year, nevertheless comes at a time when some riders are being compelled to use the line by changes elsewhere.

On June 23, the RTD completed its program to consolidate service on the Blue Line’s 22-mile route by canceling a limited line between Los Angeles and Lynwood and an express line between Los Angeles and Long Beach, forcing riders to use buses or hop on the trolley, and bringing illusory growth in mass transit ridership at a considerably higher cost to the RTD.

To compensate, the transportation commission agreed to divert $4 million in construction money to the Blue Line operating budget, which ran about 20% over a commission projection. In the new fiscal year, the RTD has budgeted a 14% increase in Blue Line costs even as the financially strapped district is risking a strike by proposing to cut drivers’ fringe benefits.

RTD General Manager Alan F. Pegg has said the consolidation of services, along with RTD proposals to extend Blue Line service hours and increase the number of trains at rush hour, could increase average daily ridership to more than 40,000.

Longer hours would woo many commuters who drive alone to their jobs, Leahy said. “It increases people’s confidence that if they get hung up at work, they can still get home easily,” he said.

By the end of the decade, when the Blue Line will connect with the Red Line from downtown to Hollywood and the Green Line from Norwalk to El Segundo, ridership should peak at 54,000 a day, Leahy said.

Even that lofty goal is only one-fifth the capacity of a typical multilane freeway, but transit planners say trains are meant to supplement freeways, not supplant them. Even with the expected addition of millions of new residents in the next decade, they contend, freeways can avoid gridlock if the percentage of travelers who car pool or take mass transit can be doubled, to 40%. More buses cannot do the job alone, they argue; trains, with more capacity and separate routes, are essential.

Essential--and, so far, expensive. Transit planners often justify the high cost of building train lines by arguing that they are much cheaper to operate than buses, mainly because trains can carry more passengers--up to 230, versus 62 on a bus--with one driver. The Blue Line has belied that equation.

Leahy conceded that it costs much more to move people by Blue Line trolleys than by bus--51 cents to transport a passenger one mile on the Blue Line, compared to 20 cents on buses. RTD buses recover almost 40% of their operating costs through fares; the Blue Line recouped less than 10% last year. Leahy attributes this to Blue Line ridership, which is way below capacity.

Regardless of ridership, basic Blue Line costs have been higher than expected.

Last July, the LACTC estimated that its share of first-year Blue Line operating costs would be $27.7 million. That was bumped up to $31 million when the funding agency signed a contract with the RTD to operate the line. By April, the LACTC contribution grew to $32.4 million.

RTD spokesman Jim Smart said the total cost of running the Blue Line for the fiscal year that ended June 30 was $38.6 million, and is expected to jump to $44 million this fiscal year.

The bulk of the blame for high operating costs has fallen on security.

The district, at the insistence of the county transportation commission, has hired the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to patrol Blue Line trains and stations--even though the RTD has its own police force. Commission members doubted the experience and qualifications of the transit police.

It was a costly decision. In exchange for assigning 108 deputies to ride the trains, check tickets and cite automobile drivers who get in the way of trains, the Sheriff’s Department was paid $12 million--nearly a third of the Blue Line budget.

“It’s ridiculous, insane,” one RTD director grumbled.

Leahy said the RTD believes its police force could do the job for $9 million a year, and a potentially heated political debate over the subject is shaping up. The Sheriff’s Department’s contract expires next year, and the RTD says it will take 10 months for its force to hire and train officers.

To accommodate those deadlines, the RTD board of directors must decide within the next two months which agency to use. Budget-minded RTD board members prefer the district’s transit police force, but publicity-minded transportation commissioners favor sheriff’s deputies.

Meanwhile, in its first year on the job, sheriff’s deputies have received virtually unanimous praise.

Although the Blue Line runs through areas with high levels of gang activity--tracks near the 103rd Street station mark the turf boundary between two rival gangs--Blue Line trains and stations are virtually graffiti-free, and the Sheriff’s Department said violence is rare.

Deputies assigned to the Blue Line arrested about 26 people a week last year, said Vadurro, the Sheriff’s Department captain. About two-thirds were arrested for such common misdemeanors as disturbing the peace and public drunkenness. Most of the 459 felony arrests were of people suspected of carrying narcotics or who were sought elsewhere on other charges.

Four people have died and nearly 40 have been injured in collisions that have given the Blue Line its worst publicity.

The RTD and LACTC have conducted public information campaigns, installed bright lights on trains and considered safety gates on sidewalks in an effort to reduce the number of accidents. Sheriff’s deputies have staked out the worst crossings to ticket people who skirt existing safety gates.

Leahy, a former bus driver who regularly rides trains and buses, handing out business cards to any rider who wants one, said he is encouraged by attitudes toward the line so far. “People love it,” he said. To keep that attitude bolstered, he said, RTD is racing to mitigate the annoying glitches that spring up. If ticket machines balk at a station, he said, the district dispatches people to sell tickets by hand. When riders said 9 p.m. was too early to end service, the RTD sought the money to extend operating hours until 10:30 p.m. To accommodate rush-hour riders who cannot find a seat, the RTD has plans to put more trains on the track.

As people become more familiar with the system, Leahy and other transit officials said, they expect ridership to grow and problems such as accidents to decline. Ridership is expected to rise as urban planners redevelop the old industrial lands that line much of the Blue Line’s route, filling those fields with houses and stores and offices crammed with potential commuters.

“We think it will take eight to 10 years for ridership to develop to the maximum level,” Leahy said. “This is a new service and it will take people time to adjust. They have to make some long-term decisions like, ‘Do I buy a second car?’ or even, ‘Where do I move? Where do I live?’ ”

Ridership Roller Coaster

Here is a look at average daily ridership on the Metro Rail Blue Line since its inceptioni. Introductory service in July, 1990, was free. 1990 July: 37,372 Aug.: 18,697 Sep.: 17,002 Oct.: 21,032 Nov.: 21,780 Dec.: 20,793 1991 Jan.: 21,523 Feb.: 22,858 Mar.: 28,894 Apr.: 30,433 May: 24,365 June: 21,921 Source: Southern California Rapid Transit District