Team of Bus Riders, MTA Calls for 18 New Routes

For one side, the conference was about wasting three hours on the bus to get from Lawndale to Long Beach. It was about poverty, bureaucracy and frustration. On the other side, it was about fiscal responsibility, efficiency and taxpayers’ money.

At its sixth public session Saturday, a joint working team of the two groups--the Bus Riders Union, a coalition of passengers, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority--unveiled a plan calling for the MTA to create 18 bus lines with 150 new buses.

But bus riders and MTA officials were skeptical about whether the plan will be approved by the MTA board of directors.

“I know under the current budget that there’s not enough to fund 150 new buses,” said Ellen Levine, executive officer of the agency’s transit operations. Levine added that to create 18 routes without determining whether a sufficient number of passengers would use them would be financially unsound. What might work best, she said, would be to phase in the new routes.

But members of the Bus Riders Union, who have long fought to lessen crowding, reduce fares and expand service, said they have waited long enough. They said the MTA has failed to abide by a consent decree signed in September to settle a lawsuit brought against the agency by the riders group.

“Those who promised the buses to us are violating” the agreement, said Josephina Garcia, speaking at the meeting in Spanish as applause erupted from the crowd of more than 100. “[It’s] because we the poor are the ones who need the buses, not the rich.”

Bus Riders Union leaders have accused the MTA of failing to purchase new buses and of merely recycling older ones. MTA officials counter that the bus fleet has grown by 106 since December and that because two major manufacturers have gone out of business, it takes 18 months to obtain new vehicles.

Rick Hittinger, a regional general manager for the MTA, acknowledged that some buses are kept in use longer than the agency would like. “That was the quickest way for us to respond to the consent decree,” he said.

The two sides signed the consent decree to settle a lawsuit that accused transit officials of neglecting its mostly poor and minority riders while steering billions of dollars into rail line construction in more affluent areas.

The agreement called for putting 51 more vehicles on the street by the end of 1996 and 51 more by June 1997. The MTA was also required to add 50 more buses over two years for those who need to reach employment, educational and health centers.

Some at Saturday’s session had other concerns.

Several blind and disabled people complained about ramps that don’t always work properly to provide wheelchair access and bus drivers who don’t call out the stops for the visually impaired. El Sereno residents complained that Wilson High School students have to walk great distances and up a steep hill to get to school because there is insufficient bus service in the area.

“We have been fighting for this for three or four years,” an El Sereno man said. “You haven’t ordered any new buses.”

An MTA official promised that changes will be made by December to solve the problems.