RTD Board Weighing Bus Fare Changes : Transit: District wants to close $65-million gap without hurting poor customers. Proposals include rate restructuring and eliminating transfers.

Seeking to close a $65-million budget gap without penalizing its poorest customers, the Southern California Rapid Transit District board Thursday agreed to consider such options as cutting base fares or eliminating monthly passes or transfers.

The RTD board also expressed an interest in reintroducing metal tokens to replace the paper tickets used for its discounted-fare program. RTD Controller-Treasurer Thomas A. Rubin said the tokens also could be used in any fare adjustment the board adopts to close its shortfall.

Shrinking fare revenues and growing costs have opened up the $65-million deficit in the district’s budget. Independent auditors are examining the RTD and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, looking for ways to raise money or trim costs without significantly increasing fares or cutting service.

The RTD, meanwhile, is reconsidering its fare structure, looking for a new combination that could increase revenues by $40 million or $50 million a year without driving away passengers.

Five options were offered by RTD Planning Director Gary Spivak:

* A proportional increase. This would raise the basic cash fare by 25 cents to $1.35, boost the price for transfers by a dime to 35 cents and bump the cost of a basic monthly pass to $52 from $42.

* A cash-only system. This would eliminate monthly passes and elevate the cost of transfers to 30 cents, but retain the basic $1.10 cash fare.

* A cash-only system with neither passes nor transfers. This would permit a basic cash fare of 80 cents, but it would have to be paid again each time a rider changed buses or transferred between buses and trains.

* A rush-hour fare. This would raise the cash fare to $1.50 during specified rush hours but retain a $1.10 cash fare during the rest of the day. Transfers would be a flat 35 cents and basic monthly passes would climb to $58.

* A no-transfer system. This would eliminate the sale of transfers, requiring riders to pay a full fare every time they changed buses. The basic fare could be reduced to $1 and basic monthly passes would be sold for $52.

The RTD has not scheduled a public hearing at which it could vote to adopt any of these proposals, but executives have considered how they might implement them.

Monthly passes came in for scrutiny because several board members said that they tend to let wealthier riders pay lower average fares. RTD said an average monthly pass is used 80 to 90 times a month, implying that users of basic passes pay about 50 cents a ride.

But RTD board members Richard Alatorre and Antonio Villaraigosa said poor people usually cannot scrape together $42 at one time for a pass, so they pay the full cash fare of $1.10. As a result, their average cost per ride is about $1.22 after adding the cost of transfers.

“The poorest of the poor are getting the least help,” said Villaraigosa, a teachers union official who was appointed to the RTD board by Supervisor Gloria Molina. Although the cost per ride could be much higher for express-pass users, who can pay as much as $102 a month, RTD officials said long-distance riders are subsidized considerably more than inner-city passengers on a per-trip basis.

For example, each rider on the 457 freeway express bus from affluent east Long Beach enjoys a subsidy of $11.99 a trip. In the central city, where more people use buses and trips usually are short, the average trip subsidy is less than 50 cents.

Several board members urged staff to suggest ways to trim losses on the district’s 10 worst loss-making lines, despite a potential backlash from affluent riders or transit labor unions.

“The first thing on the table has to be the outrageous subsidy we are paying to provide a ‘regional system,’ ” said Alatorre, a Los Angeles city councilman.