Another Eye on the MTA

There’s at least one good way to view Wednesday’s salvos between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its aggrieved bus riders. The issue of whether the agency has met the terms of its agreement to greatly reduce bus overcrowding is now in the hands of the special master appointed by the federal courts to oversee the case. With an impartial third party making some decisions, maybe the level of hyperbole will subside.

This long-running dispute reached a crucial phase in 1996, when the MTA decided to settle the bus riders’ lawsuit and agreed to meet clear deadlines and standards for service. The first deadline, at the end of 1997, passed without a determination. In the months between the decree and that first deadline, MTA bus service actually declined on a number of fronts, according to the MTA’s own documents.

Oddly enough, the standard that is now in dispute is a marvel of legal art in its simplicity. If there are more than 16 people without seats on an MTA bus, the MTA is out of compliance. If there are 15 or fewer standing, the MTA is on the mark. Got it?

Well, the MTA would have you believe that it is far from a simple matter. The agency claim its own formula for counting riders shows that the MTA is in compliance more than 90% of the time. The bus riders say that 70 MTA bus lines are grossly overcrowded 90% of the time. Now, the MTA is arguing that the special master changed the crowding requirement in midstream and has made it unrealistically restrictive.

“Of course, every major city bus line in the country would also fail this test,” MTA Chief Executive Julian Burke said in commenting on the legal fight that began well before he came to the MTA. But Burke’s statement isn’t really relevant, since the MTA is the only mass transit agency in the nation ever to get itself into such a mess.

The next step is for Donald T. Bliss, the special master appointed by a federal court judge, to decide on the facts before him. There’s every likelihood that the court will end up giving its own spending orders on bus improvements, which would be an enormous mark of failure for the MTA. But it sadly might be the only way to speed up the changes.