MTA Strike Talks to Continue, Both Sides Say : Transit: Thorny issues impede settlement. Only 44 buses roll Sunday, and an eerie calm settles over Downtown shopping district.

As the Los Angeles transit strike left weekend shoppers and leisure travelers stranded, negotiations in the weeklong strike continued with both sides agreeing to talk until they could hammer out a settlement on some “very, very difficult issues.”

But with no agreement reached as of Sunday evening, the walkout was poised to enter its second week today.

On the first weekend of the strike--the first strikee since 1982--only 44 buses rolled Sunday, and limited rail service was available on the Red Line subway and Blue Line trolley.

The MTA’s board of directors is set to meet this afternoon on the status of negotiations. “We just have to see where we go from there,” said MTA spokesman Jim Smart.

“I’m very very optimistic,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman. “They’re making progress. Hopefully they’re going to reach some kind of understanding that will come back to the board for our perusal.”

Tens of thousands of people who rely on the transit system to attend church, shop, visit friends--and go to work--spent part of their day lamenting inadequate public transportation in the nation’s second-biggest city. Many remained stuck at home, but others tried to find friends and neighbors to take them where they needed to go.

Still others tried walking, even as they bewailed having to depend on public transportation in the world’s most sprawling metropolis.

“Old people like me who can’t drive are really suffering,” said Suk-Jom Lee, who couldn’t get to church Sunday because of the strike. He is an elder at Young Nak Presbyterian Church at the edge of Chinatown.

“I hope both sides will think of us and settle as soon as possible,” he said.

In Downtown, an eerie calm pervaded the Broadway shopping district, normally teeming with weekend shoppers hunting for bargains amid loud music from store radios.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman Andrea Greene said Broadway shoppers were very much on the MTA’S mind when it chose to operate its four busiest lines--21 Wilshire, 45 Broadway, 204 Vermont and 30/31 East 1st Street and Pico Boulevard.

“The majority of the riders on the weekend are less affluent patrons who live in southeast Los Angeles and rely on MTA to do their weekly shopping in the Downtown corridor,” Greene said.

Still, somber merchants blamed the strike for keeping customers away.

“The strike really killed business,” complained saleswoman Gloria Ramirez at Moda Express, estimating that sales were down 75%.

One children’s store tried fighting back by slashing prices: white baptismal dresses with lace-edged ruffles were marked down from $35 and $39 to $14.99. That didn’t seem to help.

“It’s terrible. Bad. There aren’t enough people,” said store worker Efrain Luna, gazing at the half-empty sidewalks. Luna himself normally takes the bus to his $40-a-day job; now he has to drive and pay $5 to park.

Even the usually bustling Grand Central Market was tame.

“There are no customers,” said George Yuan, who sells an array of foodstuffs inside the market. In his six years at the market, he says, he has never seen anything like it.

The outlook for transit patrons should be better today.

Thirty-six lines will operate with 400 buses on “normal frequency,” Greene said.

That may be peanuts compared to MTA’s normal weekday run of 1,900 buses on 200 routes. Still, it is a tenfold improvement over the weekend.

Though exact figures are unavailable, MTA estimates that between 300,000 to 450,000 people ride MTA buses and trains on weekdays.

Sunday’s negotiations resumed at 3 p.m. at an undisclosed location after union and management representatives had talked until nearly 12:30 a.m.

“All I can say is that both sides are committed to talking, but we have some very, very difficult issues to face today,” Smart said.

Jim Wood, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, which is participating in the talks, declined to divulge details of the meetings, nor how the marathon sessions were going.

Michael Bujosa, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, could not be reached. The main stumbling blocks have been MTA’s demand to contract out work, and a two-tiered salary system for mechanics created by reducing some of the existing classifications.

The transit strike began last Monday when the mechanics, who earn an average of $44,000 a year plus $18,000 in benefits, walked off their jobs and the MTA’s 4,400 drivers and 600 clerks honored their picket lines. The average driver earns $50,000 a year, and $18,000 in benefits. The average salary for clerks was unavailable.

To provide minimal service, the MTA is using management personnel to put 400 buses--more than half of them rented--into service today.

Every day that the system is on strike, MTA saves $550,000.

Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this story.