Mayor Opposes Shifting Funds to Buy Buses

While promising to push the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to buy as many buses as it can afford, the agency’s chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, said Thursday he opposes any shift of money away from the Alameda Corridor or the North Hollywood subway line.

Advocates for bus riders have urged U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. to order such a shift as a way of relieving overcrowding. The MTA, which admitted this week that its buses remain overcrowded, is subject to Hatter’s authority because it entered into a consent decree to settle a lawsuit alleging that its ramshackle bus system violates the civil rights of bus riders, who are overwhelmingly members of minority groups.

In a City Hall interview, Riordan said it would be irresponsible to “mortally injure” the Metro Rail subway and the Alameda Corridor projects to find the money needed to put more buses on the streets.

The mayor said that the transit agency has been “bending over backward to improve bus service,” but the MTA is “stuck with relatively little resources” to improve the backbone of mass transit in Los Angeles.

“We inherited a flawed strategy where billions of dollars were put into subways and fixed rail,” Riordan said. “We started from scratch. We’ve come a fair ways.”

The mayor declined to comment on what steps the MTA board should take in the wake of the agency’s admission to a court-appointed special master that it has failed to comply with the federal court order to reduce chronic overcrowding on the nation’s second-largest bus system.

Riordan, a prominent attorney before his election to public office, said any statement he might make could interfere with the litigation that led to the court order requiring the MTA to reduce the number of passengers forced to stand on board its buses.

The MTA has refused to release its filing to the court-appointed special master, Donald T. Bliss. However, in a copy obtained by The Times, the transit agency states that the “MTA has not met the load factor reduction target” set by the federal court nearly two years ago.

Indeed, the MTA’s own filing shows on virtually all of the 79 bus lines that carry the vast majority of its passengers, the transit agency exceeded the overcrowding limit numerous times between Jan. 1 and Aug. 22. The limit, which will get progressively stricter in coming years, is an average of 15 people standing during any 20-minute peak period. The violations occurred regardless of the method used for calculating compliance.

In a letter to the special master, MTA chief of staff Habib F. Balian said the transit agency reserved the right to appeal recent decisions by Bliss to tighten the standard for determining compliance. The MTA also objected to the special master setting an Oct. 2 deadline for the agency to file its appeal to Hatter.

The agency’s admission of noncompliance is expected to lead to a formal process by the special master and Hatter to determine an appropriate remedy for overcrowding. Such a remedy could involve a court order to buy more buses.

Riordan said he has a lot of confidence in Hatter, who along with the special master presides over the consent decree that requires marked improvement in the MTA’s bus service. “We are acting responsibly and in good faith,” he said. “We’ll be able to work things out with the court, maybe not totally to our satisfaction, but in a reasonable way.

But the mayor flatly rejected demands by leaders of the Bus Riders Union that the MTA free up funds to purchase buses by halting work on the subway to the San Fernando Valley and the building of the high-speed Alameda Corridor linking the county’s ports to railroad yards east of downtown.

“The Bus Riders Union ought to be happier than they have ever been in the last 15 years,” he said, because the MTA is committed to improving bus service used by more than 90% of the agency’s riders.

Instead of demanding that the MTA buy 1,600 buses during the next two years, Riordan suggested that the Bus Riders Union “step back and cooperate with us.”

The mayor’s remarks come just days before he heads to Washington to fight for more federal funds to continue building the subway to North Hollywood.

In a preview of his approach on Capitol Hill, Riordan said he intends to tell lawmakers that Los Angeles is growing and needs additional federal funds to meet its transportation needs.

It is in the interest of the country to assist the Los Angeles region because of its importance to foreign trade, Riordan said. In addition to the mayor carrying that message, he said, Los Angeles business leaders will also make calls to key senators.

The mayor acknowledged that it is going to be tough to get Senate members of a conference committee to increase the $30 million set aside for Metro Rail subway construction in a transportation funding bill.

Both the mayor and MTA Chief Executive Julian Burke are pressing for adoption of the House version, which contains $62 million for MTA subway construction, $6 million for buses and $8 million to study alternatives to extending the subway to the Eastside and Mid-City. The Senate version would provide no money for new buses or to study alternatives to the subway.

Riordan supported subway and light rail projects for most of his five years on the MTA board. But after sending his budget team in to examine the MTA’s troubled finances and recruiting Burke as transit chief last summer, he joined in voting to halt the Eastside and Mid-City subway projects and a light rail line from Union Station to Pasadena.

The mayor was a lone voice encouraging resistant members of the MTA board to buy more buses to replace the agency’s aging and road-worn fleet before the consent decree’s deadlines for reducing overcrowding.

“Clearly, I would be in favor of buying as many buses as we can afford,” Riordan said. “I believe the board will back it.” But he added: “We have to be fiscally responsible.”