New Priority for Public Transit

After three years of foot dragging, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has finally decided to invest in improving bus service. When the board votes today to adopt its 1996-97 budget, it is expected to approve $10.4 million to improve and expand bus service by supporting several important programs, including new buses for the city’s most transit dependent communities.

This modest investment accounts for less than 2% of the overall bus operating budget for next year. It is not enough. The MTA still has miles to go in making the bus system more cost effective and customer service oriented. But this is an important first step in response to the public’s demand for a better bus system.

Effective, efficient public transit is essential to the livability and economic vitality of the city. Each weekday, more than 2,000 MTA buses roll onto the streets, carrying more than 1 million passengers.

Reliance on buses is expected to continue for the next decade. Experts predict that by the year 2010, 95% of all MTA passengers will ride buses, not rail. Yet until now, repeated calls for making improvement of bus service the agency’s top priority have gone unanswered. Instead, the beleaguered rail program has continued to attract unbelievable amounts of attention and money from the MTA board and staff, while the bus program has been neglected. Buses are overcrowded. Passengers and drivers have well-founded concerns for on-board safety. Overall, the system is customer unfriendly.

Significantly, the bus plan in next year’s budget establishes citizen advisory councils to give riders a greater voice in improving service. These new councils herald the beginning of a long overdue customer service orientation at the MTA.

This and other bus service improvements will be accomplished without a fare increase and without one-time revenues to balance the budget, which this year is based on extremely conservative revenue estimates. Should the more optimistic revenue forecasts in a UCLA study be accurate, the MTA will receive an additional $10 million next fiscal year. Every penny of these additional funds should be allocated directly to bus service improvements, not to rail.

Taken together, these undertakings represent progress. They indicate that the MTA is beginning to focus on customer service and trying to meet the current demands of its bus passengers.

Continued actions to resuscitate the MTA’s bus program are critical. By voting today to support the $10.4-million investment in bus system improvements, the board will send the long overdue message that bus service should no longer take a back seat at the MTA.