Intrepid Riders Take Bus Line’s Travails in Stride

As a stubborn strike held hundreds of thousands of people captive to capricious schedules and no-show buses, it was still possible to traverse the heart of the city Wednesday. All it took was the patience of a saint.

On this line, which connects Koreatown and the largely poor immigrant population of the neighborhoods around Lafayette Park with the central business district of downtown Montebello, the array of annoyances was perhaps typical. Tedious waits. Unworkable transfers. Knee-knocking trips in yellow school buses with seats barely big enough for an adult.

The four Laidlaw school buses serving Line 18 on Wednesday were a small part of the hastily mobilized but vastly overmatched fleet desperately trying to move some bus riders to some places some of the time.

Printed flyers could not begin to keep up with the ever-shifting response to the transit emergency, creating a credibility gap on the street. Even though freshly printed brochures handed out Wednesday promised pickups every 12 minutes, waits for buses averaged an hour or longer. (That was better than Tuesday, when a single bus trundled passengers along the route that serves 6th Street to the west of Downtown and Whittier Boulevard to the east.)

The buses were free, but the substitute drivers were not exactly what the regular passengers were accustomed to.

One, perhaps in a throwback to her training as a school bus driver, imposed a rule normally reserved for children: She would not allow riders to stand up. When the seats filled up, she simply drove past stops where customers waited.

The riders of the No. 18 tend to be members of the working poor. Their daily lives involve complex commutes to far-flung, low-paying jobs as janitors, cooks, clerks and nursing assistants.

For them, the strike is imposing additional irritations in terms of lost time, sleep, wages, jobs, opportunities and equanimity. Some were eager to cast blame.

“We need the bus, we need it,” said Ruben Ruiz, 46, waiting to board the 18 after taking another bus on his journey from Whittier to an unemployment office, where he hoped to apply for work. “It’s not right. We pay our taxes. . . . The buses are ours, not City Hall’s. They don’t think about the people. I don’t blame the mechanics. I blame City Hall.”

Once on the bus, though, people reacted with relief.

“You are a blessing,” sighed 41-year-old Maria Navarro to the driver of an eastbound bus as she climbed aboard at 6th Street and Normandie Avenue about mid-morning.

The Glendale resident said she was trying to figure out how to get to an office where she had been told she could apply for a job as a teacher and a translator. But the bus she was told to take was not in service and she admitted she was lost.

“I hate this,” she said of the strike, as she got off the bus a few stops later and began hiking across Lafayette Park in search of Wilshire Boulevard. “When will it stop?”

That was a common question among the riders and at stops, as they shared their worries about how to hang on to jobs far from their homes without dependable transportation.

A soap factory worker stood at a stop at Lafayette Park and 6th Street at 7:30 a.m. and wondered if the bus would come in time for him to keep his job. He did not make it to the factory just south of Downtown on Monday at all, and on Tuesday he arrived two hours past his 8:30 a.m. start time.

“My boss said he would have to fire me if I was late one more time,” said the man, just as a battered blue van pulled to the curb.

“One dollar? El centro ?” the driver yelled out the passenger window, offering a ride to Downtown. Unhesitating, the man hopped in and was gone.

Nephi Sena, 42, figures the strike already has cost him $100 in lost wages because he has had difficulty getting from Downtown to a job unloading trucks in El Monte on time. On Wednesday at midmorning, he was trying to visit a doctor in Alhambra before trying once again to make it out to his job for a night shift.

“Ever since this started happening everything’s getting all haywired,” said Sena, looking out at homeless people camped out on Skid Row as the bus crept toward the gleaming office and bank towers to the west. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent, and if it lasts I’m going to have to look at welfare.”

He and other No. 18 riders were willing to blame Gov. Pete Wilson for the strike, even though the Metropolitan Transportation Agency is not an arm of the state government. One regular rider of the line, who boarded a westbound bus carrying a push broom, a bucket and a coiled garden hose, began shouting in Spanish about Wilson. Some of his fellow riders cheered him on, while others rolled their eyes.

There was not universal sympathy for the strikers.

“Lots of people make minimum wage and five or six of them have to live together in an apartment,” said Victor Farfan, 47, riding the No. 18 as usual Wednesday as part of his daily 90-minute trip from Lynwood to work with the MacArthur Park maintenance crew.

Minimum wage workers, he said, “have to sacrifice” and so should the mechanics and bus drivers.

Gloria Sotoj, 39, has not yet lost any money because of the strike. But the strain of worrying about what is to come was evident on her face as she described her three-hour trip from Westlake to Westwood on Tuesday to get to her part-time housecleaning job.

She lives in Montebello, but she and her 3-year-old son are sleeping on a couch in her sister’s living room in Westlake to be closer to her work during the strike. “I’ll call my employer and talk to her, but I don’t know what she’ll do,” Sotoj said.

The strike, and its attendant delays, has forced many of those on the No. 18 line to alter their lives.

Gyan Rajdev, 42, has stopped attending a word processing class at the Metropolitan Skills Center because it ends too late to allow him to get from Westlake to his job as a convenience store clerk in Gardena. And because all lines stop running at 6 p.m. and he gets off at 9 p.m., he will have to ask his boss to drive him home or sleep at the store.

Andrea Greene, an MTA spokeswoman, apologized for the inconvenience to riders and acknowledged that bus routes are changing daily, depending on demand and the number of buses available. On Wednesday, the MTA rolled out 345 vehicles, compared to 318 the day before.

The turmoil of the passengers’ lives is felt by the substitute drivers, said Eusevio Yanez, 38, who has been driving a school bus for Laidlaw for six years.

Yanez, the father of four, said that because schools are out for summer vacation he would receive unemployment instead of a salary if he were not driving during the strike.

Yanez, a Teamster who volunteered to drive during the strike, was going out of his way Wednesday to try to ease a difficult situation for the riders of the No. 18. He helped elderly people on and off the bus, stowed unwieldy packages, exchanged pleasant greetings and offered his best guess about proper connections.

He has encountered some angry picketers this week, but he tries not to let it bother him. “They’re not supposed to take it out on us because we’re not trying to hurt them,” he said. “We’re only trying to help the riders.”

Maggie Hernandez, 60, takes the No. 18 every day from its easternmost end at Garfield Avenue and Whittier Boulevard in Montebello to its western terminus in Koreatown to reach her job as a chiropractor’s assistant. On Wednesday, she just missed the 7:40 a.m. bus and caught the next one after 9 a.m.

She would not reach the end of the line until 9:50, and then would have to walk a block to her office. That meant she would get there about half an hour late, 2 1/2 hours after leaving home.

“You have to put up with it and hopefully they will get this settled soon,” she said as the bus finally approached her destination. “By next week, people will get tired of it.”

The MTA Strike: Day 3

The region’s first transit strike in 12 years began at 12:01 a.m. Monday. Here is a look at Day 3:

* THE ISSUE: Dispute between the Amalgamated Transit Union, representing 1,900 mechanics and service attendants, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. About 5,000 bus and train drivers and clerks are honoring picket lines. The major sticking point is the MTA’s demand to contract out work. Union members say they believe that it will eliminate jobs and result in poorer quality work.

* THE STATUS: No negotiations scheduled until Friday.

* WHAT’S OPERATING: Some 345 buses on portions of the 30 busiest routes, out of the usual 1,900 buses on 200 routes. Some routes will use school buses, operated by private drivers, identified by “M” logos in the front and back. Service is continuing on the Red Line, Amtrak, Metrolink commuter rail and municipal/private operators such as Foothill Transit, L.A. city commuter express and DASH. The Blue Line is offering limited service.

* THE ROUTES:

The MTA is offering regular service on these routes:

204 Vermont Ave., 240 Reseda Blvd.; 424 Ventura Blvd.-L.A.; and 442 Hawthorne-Manchester-Express and on the Red Line.

Portions of the following routes are being served:

1/217 Hollywood Blvd.-Fairfax Ave.; 16 West 3rd St.; 18 E. Whittier Blvd.-West 6th St.; 21 Wilshire Blvd.; 30 Pico Blvd.-East 1st St.; 33 Venice Blvd.; 45 Broadway; 76 Valley Blvd.; 81 Figueroa St.; 92 Glenoaks Blvd.-Brand Blvd.; 105 Vernon Ave.; 108 Slauson Ave.; 115 Manchester Blvd.-Firestone Blvd.; 117 Century Blvd.; 125 Rosecrans Ave.; 152 Roscoe Blvd.; 163 Sherman Way; 180 Hollywood-Glendale-Pasadena; 207 Western Ave.; 210 Crenshaw Blvd.; 212 La Brea-S.F. Valley; 251 Soto St.; 260 Atlantic Ave.; 420 San Fernando Valley-Hollywood-L.A.; 470 Whittier-Montebello-L.A.; 560 Van Nuys Blvd.-Westwood.

The Blue Line route runs between Willow station in Long Beach and 7th/Metro station only.

* HOURS: Bus and train service is from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays only.

* FARES: 50 cents on MTA buses and Blue Line, with no transfers. Elderly and the disabled pay 25 cents. No fee on the emergency school buses.

* FOR MORE INFORMATION: (800) COMMUTE or (800) 371-LINK (for Metrolink information.) Recorded information in English and Spanish is available on (800) 870-0MTA.