RTD Struggles to Get People Back on Buses : Transit: Ridership is rising after years of decline. But many problems, including funds tied up by a suit, make the task formidable.

While Los Angeles County welcomed 800,000 new residents in the late 1980s and wrestled with worsening traffic congestion, RTD bus ridership plummeted 20%, or 96 million passengers--more than the total number of bus riders in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city.

Although the Rapid Transit District is arresting that decline, it still carried 80 million fewer riders last year than in 1985, the year the county launched its ambitious multibillion-dollar program to greatly expand bus lines and rebuild rapid rail service.

With the first of those expensive rail services already running and more to open at the rate of one a year for the next decade, the RTD and other agencies are scrambling to find ways to coax people back onto mass transit.

Some of those ideas, such as guaranteeing on-time buses and providing riders with customized door-to-door directions between home and work, are credited with helping to stem the ridership hemorrhage in the fiscal year ended June 30. Ridership rebounded 3.7%, to 416 million boardings--not including 7 million people who boarded the Metro Rail Blue Line trolley in its first year.

“The rate of growth of riders exceeded the rate of growth of the population in general. We clearly did make some real gains last year,” said Dana Woodbury, the RTD’s planning director.

Woodbury attributed the turnaround to a renewed interest in mass transit caused by the Blue Line, rising gas prices during the Gulf War and stiff new air-pollution regulations that require employers to encourage their employees to stop commuting alone in their cars.

Air-pollution regulation “has undoubtedly encouraged people to return to public transit,” Woodbury said, although he added that there is no research yet to substantiate that hunch.

The RTD also has made more seats available by replacing balky old buses.

“The reliability of the (older) buses was poor, so it was difficult keeping enough of them in . . . service,” he said.

Still, Woodbury said, fewer than 4% of all trips made in the county are made on RTD buses, a figure that rises to 7% during peak commute periods. Plans to increase mass transit’s share to 10% of all trips face several serious obstacles:

* Cheap gasoline and heavily subsidized parking, which make automobiles more attractive.

* Federal tax laws that sharply limit employer subsidies for bus passes.

* Traffic congestion, which delays buses as well as cars and adds to bus operating costs.

* Vandals, who cost millions in cleanup costs and discourage riders by defacing buses.

* Inadequate subsidies, which limit the number, comfort and cleanliness of buses.

Despite such obstacles, RTD President Marvin L. Holen said he is eager to continue rebuilding ridership by adding 500 buses to the 2,000 already on the streets--while also finding a way to cut fares.

“The decline in ridership is related directly to the decline in service--buses and lines that were cut” during a budget crisis in 1988, said Holen, a Los Angeles lawyer appointed to the RTD Board of Directors by county Supervisor Ed Edelman. “We had those riders once. The reduction means we turned them off. We turned them off by jamming them into buses.”

But the money for such expensive proposals is held by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which is busy building subways, uncorking freeways--and arguing fiercely in court to unknot hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax receipts tied up by a citizen lawsuit.

Voters approved a half-cent sales tax surcharge in 1990, in part to buy more buses for the RTD. A similar tax was upheld in court in 1982, but until the courts decide the legality of the new surcharge transit officials are banking the tax revenue and spending only the interest on such relatively inexpensive projects as the Freeway Service Patrol.

If the $400-million-a-year revenue stream from Proposition C is found to be legal, it would be used to put another 1,400 rush-hour buses on the streets by 2010. The first few hundred new buses could be ready by the time the first commuter rail lines open in October, 1992, according to the LACTC’s revised 30-year plan. But the 500 buses Holen desires would not be bought until around 1995.

LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson acknowledged the need for more buses “sooner rather than later.” It is one of three primary components of his 30-year transportation master plan for Los Angeles. But he said the buses will have to be bought in stages because many projects, from the hugely expensive Red Line subway to a Harbor Freeway busway, also need funding in the near future.

“We have to offer people a choice,” he said. “It is not that rail answers all questions, because it doesn’t. It is just one part of a complex system. Buses are another. . . . Some people simply won’t take a bus--but they might take a train, or car-pool.”

Peterson and Holen reject suggestions that bus fare subsidies would be a wiser use of transit funds than building rapid train lines, saying congestion is crippling RTD bus operations.

“The average speed of RTD buses is 12 m.p.h.--and falling,” Peterson said. “The average speed has been steadily declining over the years because buses get caught in the same traffic jams as cars. As it is, buses can’t attract enough riders to relieve congestion. How will they attract more as they slow down? They won’t.”

The RTD still carries more passengers than any other mass transit system in the nation outside of New York, and it averages more passengers per bus--at a lower subsidy--than anywhere else in the U.S.

But it failed to keep pace with Los Angeles’ booming growth just when it was needed most.

In 1980, more than 388 million people boarded RTD buses. A decade later, the number was 401 million, an increase of 3.3%. In that same period, however, the county’s population grew 18.5%--and the number of registered vehicles grew 21.9%.

Los Angeles voters in 1980 approved the first sales tax surcharge to deal with that growth; a three-year RTD fare reduction to 50 cents from 85 cents was the sweetener to lure votes from tax-weary residents. Fares were lowered in July, 1982, after courts upheld the surcharge.

RTD ridership, which had fallen to 359 million riders a year in 1982, mushroomed with the lower fares. By June, 1985, when the subsidy expired, nearly 500 million riders a year boarded buses. The number dipped 10% the year basic fares returned to 85 cents, then declined about 3% annually for the rest of the decade.

The basic fare was raised to $1.10 in 1988, during the same budget crisis that prompted the RTD to abandon several long-distance, low-ridership lines--which were immediately picked up by the private Foothill Transit Zone, which uses non-union labor.

Again this year the district was so strapped for cash that its staff recommended hiking the basic fare to $1.15, but that idea was rejected by the board in favor of cost cutting. Now the district faces the dilemma of needing to simultaneously trim expenses and expand service.

Enlarging the bus fleet by 25%, as Holen suggested, would cost $135 million to buy 500 buses and $55 million a year to run them. But Holen argues that such fleet growth is needed if the district is to increase its ridership and help the city avoid choking on its own traffic.

Woodbury agreed, saying, “You discourage a lot of people at bus stops from ever trying to ride a bus again if they can’t get a seat--and in some cases can’t get on the bus at all. Crowding definitely decreases ridership.”

Vanishing Bus Riders

Rising fares and overcrowding are factors blamed for the loss of 96 million bus riders in the last half of the 1980s. When a sales-tax subsidy of bus fares ended in 1985, the RTD passenger total fell, while Los Angeles County’s population increased and freeway congestion soared.

Source: Rapid Transit District, U.S. Census, L.A. County Dept. of Regional Planning