Judge Sets Strict Rules for Better Bus Service

Siding with bus rider advocates, a special judge has ruled against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and imposed a strict standard for determining if the transit agency has complied with a federal court order to reduce overcrowding on its buses.

After considering arguments filed by both sides, Special Master Donald T. Bliss ruled last week in Washington that the MTA will have complied with the court order only when no more than 15 passengers have to stand on any of its buses during a 20-minute period.

Bliss said this approach favored by bus rider advocates offers a more accurate assessment of the overcrowding conditions on the bus routes being measured.

In his ruling, Bliss noted that he has “repeatedly emphasized that one of the central purposes of the [consent] decree is to improve service and reduce overcrowding for the transit dependent of Los Angeles.”

The ruling establishes a framework to formally evaluate whether the agency failed to meet a December 31 requirement to reduce overcrowding on the nation’s second largest bus system.

Civil rights attorney Constance L. Rice said the next stage in the bus riders’ long-running legal battle with the MTA will be to determine how many more buses the agency is going to have to buy to actually meet the requirement to reduce overcrowding.

“It has been clear for months to bus riders that MTA is nowhere near meeting this first overcrowding reduction goal,” Rice said. The MTA’s bus system remains “overcrowded, dilapidated and unreliable,” she said.

Based on the data, Rice said, MTA’s top 20 bus lines are out of compliance at least 70% of the time during peak periods.

The decision was not well received by MTA Chief Executive Officer Julian Burke, who called the ruling not helpful. “I don’t particularly like his writing and I propose to have him understand why we don’t like it,” Burke said.

He said Bliss has “flip-flopped between his last writing and his current writing” in ruling on what standard should be used to judge compliance.

“We understand some of our lines are overcrowded,” Burke said, adding that the agency is trying to improve its long neglected bus operations.

Burke complained that the standard Bliss adopted is so strict that “everybody’s bus service would be out of compliance” if it applied to them.

But Rice said “the ruling is a very clear and fair reading of the language in the decree.”

Bliss directed a joint working group of the MTA and bus rider advocates to report back to him by Friday on whether MTA is in compliance. Bliss also asked the parties to notify him if they reach an impasse.

The language of his ruling suggests that the special master, appointed by federal judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. is moving from a preliminary measurement phase to determining what remedy will be necessary to achieve the required reduction in overcrowding.

Depending on the extent of that remedy, a final ruling could force the MTA to buy more buses at a time when it is trying to complete the Metro Rail subway to North Hollywood.

Although the agency has ordered hundreds of new buses, the Bus Riders Union contends that MTA must replace a total 1,600 buses to reduce overcrowding and improve service.

The group is stepping up its “No Seat, No Fare” campaign. Transit chief Burke called that effort “totally unnecessary” and asked: “Why are they trying to make this more difficult.”