Road to Recovery : MTA Campaign Seeks to Repair Battered Image, Lure Bus Riders

With bus ridership declining and costs increasing, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working to spruce up its image and bring back passengers distressed by poor service, higher fares and last year’s strike by transit employees.

Under a recently announced plan, the MTA intends to decentralize its operations, creating four regional offices--one of which will encompass the Westside--to respond more promptly to customer concerns ranging from the cleanliness of buses to the alteration of bus routes and schedules.

The MTA will couple the reorganization with a public relations campaign promoting bus service.

“This is an effort to position ourselves in a competitive market with other municipal carriers and private carriers,” said Ellen Levine, the MTA’s new western regional manager. “We’ll be more responsive.”

The agency hopes the make-over will woo customers back to the MTA and help bolster revenues, Levine said. Over the last 10 years ridership on MTA buses has dropped steadily, saddling the agency with increasing budget deficits.

And Westside riders are of concern to the agency. About 360 million passengers--26% of the MTA’s total ridership--are expected to travel this year on bus routes serving Brentwood, Culver City, the Fairfax district, Hollywood, Malibu, Mar Vista, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, West Hollywood and West Los Angeles.

The phone numbers of Westside MTA officials will be posted inside buses so riders will know whom to call. The officials will report to Levine.

In the past, customer complaints and questions became ensnared in bureaucracy because they were handled by MTA executives in the agency’s downtown headquarters, Levine said.

The MTA plans to promote the agency’s new image by visiting city councils and attending meetings of civic groups. Levine spoke at a meeting last week of more than 40 transportation coordinators from businesses in West Hollywood and Hollywood.

Many transportation coordinators would like the MTA to reroute buses and designate new bus stops, but have not known whom to contact, said Stuart Anderson, who led the meeting for the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

“[Levine] gave people a sense that the door was open and she wanted to hear about things,” Anderson said. “I don’t know if it was all fluff, but I can tell you that [Levine] will be getting a few phone calls.”

Some longtime critics of MTA, however, remain skeptical

“I think it’s window dressing and lip service,” said Martin Hernandez, organizer of transportation policy for the Labor/Community Strategy Center, a nonprofit group in the mid-Wilshire area that works on environmental and social issues.

The center is organizing a grass-roots group of passengers to press for better bus service. The group complains that the MTA has cut back on bus transportation to pay for the construction of the city’s rail system.

“Without the proper funding sources to eliminate overcrowding, to do maintenance and clean up these . . . buses, [the MTA’s new approach] won’t matter,” said Hernandez. “They’ll have their work cut out for them with this customer service plan. There will be a lot of complaints they just can’t address.”

But attracting new riders and keeping old passengers is important for the MTA. In the 1994-95 budget year, the agency expects to collect $184.5 million in bus fares, compared to $9.1 million from rail customers.

Bus fare revenue is a key element in the MTA’s plan to close a looming $97-million budget deficit in the 1995-96 fiscal year. Although the MTA also plans to eliminate 600 positions and lay off 234 employees, the actions will only cut the agency’s deficit by 35%. The remainder would be offset by further cost cutting and improved bus and rail revenues.

Officials hope their efforts will reverse the damage done to the MTA’s image last year when the agency introduced a hotly disputed 25-cent fare increase to close a $126-million budget deficit.

The hike, the MTA’s first in six years, boosted fares from $1.10 to $1.35--and prompted a lawsuit by the Labor/Community Strategy Center in U.S. District Court. The suit, scheduled for a pretrial hearing in August, contends the fare hike would unfairly burden the poor and minority residents.

The biggest blow for the MTA came last summer, however, when more than 7,000 union employees staged a nine-day strike that nearly brought the organization to its knees. Although the MTA was able to keep its buses running with a skeleton crew and scaled-back service, many customers were forced to find alternative transportation.

“People got off and they never came back,” said MTA spokesman Jim Smart.