Bus Riders Can’t Stand the Jams

There’s one thing that makes Hilda Lumin’s heart sink during her daily bus commute between Boyle Heights and Compton: the sight of a packed bus lumbering past without stopping.

Forget the San Diego Freeway during rush hour. This is bone-aching frustration.

“Sometimes two full buses will pass by, and it’s cold and windy, and I’ve got to get the kids home, make dinner and take care of things,” said Lumin, 32, an office clerk who rides two buses about an hour each way to take her three children to school and go to work. “I’m already tired as it is, and I just think, ‘Oh, man.’ It’s really stressful.”

When the bus line she takes home from downtown Los Angeles is too crowded to board, she sometimes picks up her bags of groceries, gestures to her young children and walks with them several miles through the dark evening back to their Eastside apartment.

Many bus riders say this is an all-too-familiar experience, an exhausting and spirit-grinding daily battle against overcrowding. They stand at corners in Hollywood, Pico-Union and Boyle Heights and watch jammed buses roll by, too full to let more people on. When passengers can clamber aboard, many fight a jostling crowd loaded down with heavy bags, bulky jackets and backpacks.

“It’s pandemonium,” said Ron Hardcastle, 54, who has watched as many as four crammed buses in a row pass by as he waits downtown on Pico Boulevard during rush hour. “You get on the bus and everyone is packed into the aisle with their heavy coats. People push their way on through the back door and stand in the stairwell. It’s a real nightmare. There’s been times I’ve thought, ‘Any way but this.’ ”

Crowded buses are now under intense scrutiny by advocates for bus riders and by Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials, who are considering whether the current passenger load violates a federal consent decree to improve bus service.

The decree gave the MTA until Dec. 31, 1997, to reduce the crowds to no more than 15 people standing during any 20-minute period in rush hour.

The Bus Riders Union, which won the decree in October 1996, said the majority of the most heavily used lines exceed that load at least once a day.

“When you look at any 20-minute period, you see violations all over the place,” said Constance L. Rice, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the plaintiffs’ lead attorney in the court case. “The board has done nothing substantial to comply with this decree. People are waiting longer than ever and are desperate to find other ways to get to work. They’re driving people off their system.”

MTA officials say that 97% of the time the buses are at an acceptable passenger load.

“We believe, by and large, we are consistently meeting the criteria set forth in the consent decree,” said Dana Woodbury, MTA deputy executive officer for operations planning. “Never exceeding that standard is an impossible goal. There are things that happen that are beyond our control.”

Woodbury said that mechanical problems and traffic jams can impede service, causing crowding and backups on the lines.

However, he acknowledged that the MTA’s ongoing count of passengers has revealed too many crowded lines, some with an average of 30 standing passengers in a 20-minute period.

“We’re still observing instances in which loads are high,” he said. “Clearly, there’s still a problem with crowding.”

In a survey of the 20 most heavily used lines from October through February, the MTA found 574 instances in which bus lines averaged more than 15 people standing.

Although those crowded buses made up only 3.6% of the time periods monitored, advocates for bus riders said that the MTA is violating the decree every time a line exceeds the 15-person maximum.

“It’s got to be understood that any violation in a 20-minute period is an unacceptable abuse of the consent decree,” said Eric Mann, director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, the union’s parent organization. “Our position is that this [passenger load count] is in stone and in blood. They’re kidding themselves if they think there’s anything in the consent decree allowing them a violation a day.”

If the union and the MTA cannot agree on the level of overcrowding and solutions to improve the service, the matter will go before special master Donald T. Bliss, a Washington attorney appointed by U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. to oversee implementation of the decree.

The union maintains that the only way to reduce crowding is to buy hundreds of buses that would replace the aging fleet and eventually add more service.

“They just don’t have the buses [to meet the decree],” Mann said. “That’s what [MTA Chief Executive] Julian Burke doesn’t want to face, and that’s what the MTA board doesn’t want to face.”

Woodbury said purchasing more buses would not necessarily alleviate crowding.

“We have enough buses,” he said. “The bigger problem is the age of the fleet and mechanical issues. We need to improve the reliability of equipment being used and improve schedule adherence.”

Many regular passengers say they have little hope that the system will improve. Instead, riders say they carefully choreograph their days to avoid the crowds, getting up an hour early to beat the rush hour, or walking to more distant bus lines that have fewer passengers.

Doreen Gee, 63, catches the 31 Bus in Montebello every day for a 45-minute ride to her receptionist job downtown.

“By the time it gets to [Boyle Heights], it’s completely jammed up,” said Gee, who has ridden the line for more than 10 years. “It’s not fair that they don’t consider that and put new buses on the line. I complain all the time, but they never do anything about it.”

In the evenings, Gee takes a downtown shuttle and catches the bus seven blocks before her stop so she can get on before the crowds. “If I don’t get on there, I miss my last chance to get a seat,” she said. “It’s like a circus. If it’s crowded and the bus jerks, you have to hang on for dear life.”

For these riders, dealing with the crowds exacts a tiring emotional surcharge on their already exhausting day.

In the evenings, Angela Diaz, 65, waits with about 50 other people to catch the 204 Bus on Vermont Avenue during her three-bus trip from her housekeeping job in Inglewood to her Koreatown home.

“I depend on the bus to get to work, and it makes my life so complicated,” said Diaz, who has been riding the bus for 17 years. “Sometimes I’m late to work because I can’t get on, and then I have to stay extra hours to make up the time. When I come home, we are packed in and falling on each other. We could get hurt. It’s horrible.”

On a recent afternoon, Maria Cristano squinted against the bright sun as she peered down Pico Boulevard, hoping to see a bus headed for her stop. She had been waiting at another stop on Venice Boulevard for 30 minutes, only to watch two packed buses pass her by. Frustrated, she walked to Pico to try a different line. There, a full bus trundled by without stopping.

“It makes me so angry,” said Cristano, 32, a factory worker who lives in Pico-Union. “I want to get home. I need to cook dinner, bathe my daughters, clean the house. It’s not fair that they keep us waiting.”

A little later later, about 30 people tried to push onto a loaded-down bus that pulled up to the stop. “Move to the back,” passengers called. But it was clear not everyone would fit on.

Reluctantly, Enrique Alfaro, 43, stepped off the stairs and leaned against a tree as the bus pulled away without him.

For Alfaro, the delay just added more time to the long commute between his job fixing carburetors in Santa Ana and his Pico-Union home.

“You just have to be patient,” he sighed. “You have to wait it out. What choice do we have?”