Judge Extends Order Blocking Bus Fare Hikes : Transit: Court action also prevents MTA from eliminating monthly passes. The agency is given more time to respond to a suit accusing it of bias.

A federal judge on Monday extended for at least another month a court order blocking the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from raising bus fares and eliminating monthly passes.

U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr.’s preliminary injunction will remain in effect until Oct. 17, when he will conduct another hearing on whether a trial should be held on a lawsuit accusing the MTA of discriminating against poor and minority riders.

In the meantime, the transit agency is prevented from increasing the fare from $1.10 to $1.35 and eliminating the popular monthly passes on the about 1,900 buses it operates in Los Angeles County and on the Long Beach-to-Los Angeles Blue Line trolley.

“It’s definitely a victory,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Constance Rice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

But MTA lawyers were buoyed by Hatter’s comments that he would lift the court order at the October hearing if the transit agency can provide documentation refuting charges that it has funded costly rail projects that largely benefit affluent white commuters at the expense of poor and minority bus riders.

On the one hand, Eric Mann, director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, which is a plaintiff in the case, said that regardless of the final outcome, his group finally has caught the ear of the transit agency.

“For two years, we have been saying to MTA, ‘Can we sit down and work something out?’ and they have said, ‘To hell with you.’ ”

But Mann said that after Monday’s hearing, a top aide to MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin E. White approached him and asked for a meeting. “This is a real victory for us,” Mann said.

On the other hand, MTA spokeswoman Andrea Greene said after the hearing: “We’re encouraged by the judge’s comment that with statistical data, he would have been inclined to rule in our favor.

“However, we are disappointed that we continue to lose $110,000 a day with the continued fare rollback.”

“Judge Hatter’s unfortunate decision (to extend his preliminary injunction) will cost at least $4 million and result in service cuts,” said County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, an MTA board member. “This will end up hurting the people the plaintiffs thought they were attempting to help.”

Hatter rolled back the fares Sept. 1, just hours after the increase took effect.

During Monday’s hearing, Rice gave an example of how a fare increase might affect riders with limited incomes. She said that for a single mother with an annual income of $9,500, elimination of the $42 monthly pass, which currently allows unlimited ridership, would increase transportation costs by 63%.

“I would have to limit my food to be able to survive,” Blanca Vasquez, who works as a $666-a-month dressmaker and is dependent on public transit, said in court papers.

But MTA lawyers responded that the first fare hike in six years was necessary to prevent cuts in bus service in low-income neighborhoods.

Rice disputed the MTA’s claims that the bus fare increase was needed to offset a $126-million budget deficit. She insisted that “less discriminatory alternatives” are available, noting that just a week after the fare increase was approved, MTA allocated millions of dollars for construction of a rail line from Downtown to Pasadena.

The MTA’s budget deficit was “the inevitable consequence of defendants’ reckless actions in pursuing a rail-at-all-costs strategy,” Rice said.

The plaintiffs, which also include the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles, argued that MTA buses carry about 350,000 passengers but receive less than a third of the agency’s money.

Metrolink commuter trains, along with the Blue Line and Red Line, carry fewer than 25,000 passengers, but receive 79% of MTA resources, the plaintiffs contend.

But MTA lawyers argued that it is wrong to include Metrolink cost in any analysis of MTA spending because the commuter rail line is operated by a separate agency. They argued that the Blue Line and Red Line, the only rail lines directly operated by MTA, receive only 10% of the agency’s operating funds.

MTA lawyers also asserted that the plaintiffs are pursuing a “political agenda favoring buses over rails” and argued that transit funds could not legally be diverted from rail construction to bus operations.