Youths Call for Improvement in Inner-City Bus Service

When she arrived in South-Central Los Angeles two years ago from Quito, Ecuador, many things struck Christina Andrade as novel. The size of her new city. The variety of its people.

While impressed with U.S. technological advances, Andrade was markedly less awed by one Los Angeles institution: bus transportation.

“The buses in Quito were a lot better--and cheaper,” says Andrade, now a 17-year-old high school student, who compared the approximate 25-cent fare in Quito to the $1.10 tariff in Los Angeles. “The buses here are crowded, dirty. You don’t feel safe and they don’t run as often, especially at night.”

On Friday, Andrade and other youths and activists from inner-city neighborhoods gathered in the Pico-Union district west of downtown and called on transportation authorities to improve public bus service in Los Angeles’ densely populated urban core, where many rely on buses to get to work, school, shops and other destinations.

The bus advocates have formed a grass-roots organization, United To Improve The Transportation In Pico Union, which is slated to hold a community meeting today at the headquarters of El Rescate, the immigrant service organization. Teen-agers have spearheaded the movement, with technical assistance from El Rescate and others.

“We don’t get cars on our 16th birthday like a lot of kids in the suburbs, so we need the buses,” said Erica Lara, an 18-year-old from Pico-Union who, like others, has ample horror stories of crowded buses, long delays, nonexistent service and mass transit crime.

In their view, the county’s vast bus network, covering about 4,000 miles, is being sacrificed to subsidize small but extremely expensive rail services that enrich out-of-town contractors and cater largely to better-off suburban riders.

“There’s a great inequality in the provision of transportation services,” said Sara Martinez, economic development director at El Rescate. “People here don’t have cars; they take buses everywhere. But it seems all the money now goes to rail and the suburbs.”

Not so, said authorities of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which finances and operates Los Angeles County’s mass transit system. But officials acknowledge that budget concerns have meant that bus service is lagging in some districts.

“We will not sacrifice the bus system,” said Bill Heard, an MTA spokesman. “We’re trying to have a system in which bus and rail support each other, but we recognize that we’re not able to provide as much bus service as we would like to in certain areas.”

The bus versus rail battle is not new. The Labor/Community Strategy Center, a grass-roots policy group, has long pressed officials to put more emphasis on bus routes and less on costly rail mega-projects, such as the $5.3-billion Red Line subway that began partial service in January.

“What we’re seeing is increasingly a two-tiered transportation system in Los Angeles between the suburbs and the city area,” said Lisa Hoyos, a representative with the Labor/Community Strategy Center.

A few figures indicate what critics see as a disparity.

Area buses carry 1.3 million passengers daily, compared to 51,000 who travel on the Blue and Red rail lines.

Minus fare-box revenues, taxpayers contribute $1.17 per bus rider. The per passenger subsidy is $11.34 on the Blue Line rail system, which courses from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles.

For security, authorities spend $1.25 for each rail passenger, compared to 3.3 cents per rider on area buses.

Armed with such data, the community activists hope to put pressure on the MTA to increase bus service and bolster security.

“If we help improve bus service, it could make a big difference in people’s lives,” said Lilian Sosa, a 17-year-old daughter of Guatemalan immigrants.