MTA, Riders Union at Odds Over Funds to Boost Bus Service

An enormous gap--more than $600 million over six years--separates the views of bus rider advocates and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority over what is needed to reduce chronic overcrowding on the nation’s second-largest bus system.

The sharp difference about the number of new buses that must be put on the street just to meet a federal court order on overcrowding emerged Wednesday from documents filed with a court-appointed special master.

For four years, the Bus Riders Union and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund have been at odds with the transit agency about the troubled state of the bus system, which is used by 91% of all MTA riders.

Under pressure to comply with a consent decree the agency signed two years ago, the MTA board last fall promised to buy more than 2,095 new buses over the next six years to replace most of its aging and breakdown-prone fleet.

But attorneys for the Bus Riders Union argue that is not enough, that 553 more buses are needed for the MTA to comply with the federal court order to reduce the number of passengers forced to stand on buses.

MTA Chief Executive Julian Burke said the agency cannot afford to buy hundreds more buses and “throw that much money at one mode of transportation.” The MTA is finishing the Metro Rail subway to the San Fernando Valley and operates two light-rail lines.

But Bus Riders Union leader Eric Mann said the only way to ensure that the system serves the needs of the transit-dependent--mostly poor and lower-income residents--is a massive infusion of new buses and service, including freeway express buses.

Ultimately, the protracted dispute on overcrowding and service will have to be resolved by Special Master Donald T. Bliss, a Washington lawyer who oversees compliance with the consent decree. Bliss was appointed by U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr., who presided over the federal civil rights case brought by bus rider advocates.

The MTA reported to Bliss last fall that the agency failed to comply with a Dec. 31, 1997, deadline that no more than 15 passengers be standing on a bus during any average 20-minute peak period. Data collected by both the MTA and the Bus Riders Union showed massive violations of the overcrowding limit on virtually all MTA bus lines.

Bliss held a closed-door meeting with both sides in Los Angeles last month to see if the parties could settle their differences without his intervention.

To allow room for negotiation, Bliss imposed a restriction on release of any documents until legal briefs are filed next month. But at the request of The Times, he lifted the restriction.

The court filings show the two sides are so far apart that responsibility for resolving the dispute will inevitably fall to Bliss and Hatter.

The MTA contends that it does not need to buy any more buses--above and beyond the 2,095--during the next six years to comply with increasingly strict overcrowding standards. The agency acknowledges that it needs 160 more buses on the street at peak periods to reduce overcrowding. That would cost $150 million.

The Bus Riders Union and the NAACP take a decidedly different tack, arguing that the MTA needs to buy at least 553 new buses, lease buses until the new ones arrive, and expand the fleet by immediately purchasing an additional 333 vehicles. The cost of buses and operators to drive them is $829.7 million over six years.

Mann said the MTA’s fleet is “too old and too small” to provide enough service to cut overcrowding. Only by adding more buses can the MTA cut the number of standing passengers.

But MTA chief Burke said the new buses will improve reliability and reduce breakdowns. Restoring more supervisors in the field, combined with new radio and electronic equipment, should improve on-time performance and reduce overcrowding.

The huge differences on overcrowding do not include the costs of a five-year program to improve bus service, also required by the consent decree. It required the agency to improve access to jobs, schools and health care for the transit-dependent.

The Bus Riders Union submitted to the court an extremely ambitious plan to essentially redesign the region’s bus service. The MTA filed a four-page letter arguing for a very limited pilot program.

“The parties currently have very differing views as to the scope of any bus service required by the consent decree’s five-year plan provision,” wrote MTA official Habib F. Balian.

Burke said the “massive, unbelievable” plan submitted by the Bus Riders Union could cost more than $2 billion over the next six years. “Their approach is to start a massive expansion of our bus operation without any clear testing of whether it is needed, will be economically useful, or whether it will carry enough people to make it sensible.”

Burke said the rider advocates had “just thrown a huge number of buses” at the problem “without knowing if it is a solution to anything.’

Mann said the Bus Riders Union has concluded after years of study that the only way to make the bus system work is to provide local, intermediate and express bus service across the region.

He complained that negotiating with the MTA is “a lot like negotiating with a Southern school board. The MTA signed this agreement and having signed it, they have not lived up to it.”