MTA Faces a Major Fork in the Road

The directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will go behind closed doors today to debate whether to abide by or fight a federal court order that may reshape mass transit in Los Angeles County.

The recent ruling directing the transit agency to buy 532 new buses in addition to those it already plans to purchase as part of a massive upgrade of its troubled fleet has placed the federal court squarely in the middle of the MTA’s decision-making. As the board prepares to deliberate privately about how to respond, the loss of power has angered, frustrated and divided many members.

At one extreme is Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who sharply criticized the decision of a court-appointed special master. “It’s outrageous,” he said. “Either we [or the courts] should be given the responsibility . . . to run the transportation system. I think it’s ridiculous.”

Alatorre protested that the order to buy buses doesn’t “take into consideration the economics of it all.” And he expressed concern that buses are not a substitute for building light rail or subway lines.

At the other end of the spectrum, county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky wants his colleagues on the MTA board to quickly follow the order to buy more buses. “The first call on our dollars needs to be our bus system,” he said. And that could mean an immediate halt to commitments to help pay for a light rail line from Union Station to Pasadena.

Echoing the rhetoric of the Bus Riders Union, Yaroslavsky is calling on the MTA board to improve bus service and stop behaving--as he describes it--like white Southern governors of the 1950s and 1960s resisting court-ordered desegregation.

After all, Yaroslavsky points out, the order to buy more buses is a result of a federal civil rights lawsuit, which alleged that the MTA’s emphasis on costly rail projects discriminated against poor and minority bus riders.

There is a growing tendency at MTA headquarters to make Special Master Donald T. Bliss the agency’s nemesis. Yet Yaroslavsky said the MTA set itself up by failing to comply with a consent decree it signed to settle the case with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Bus Riders Union.

The pact, reached in October 1996, set specific goals for improving bus service and reducing the number of people forced to stand on MTA buses during peak periods.

“We [on the MTA board] are the ones who have our head deeply ensconced in the sand,” Yaroslavsky said. “We are the problem.”

So what does the agency do now?

Does the board vote to comply and implement the order? Or do defiant directors vote to appeal, either by asking Bliss to reconsider or clarify his ruling or by taking the agency’s case directly to federal Judge Terrence J. Hatter? It was Hatter who in 1994 issued an injunction blocking the MTA from raising bus fares and eliminating its popular monthly passes.

County Supervisor and MTA board member Gloria Molina said she will oppose any effort to appeal the ruling. “I know I don’t wish to,” she said. “It’s clear marching orders, and I’m willing to honor them within the framework that I can.”

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who chairs the MTA board, said last week that the decision to appeal is not a black or white matter. “It’s more complicated than that,” he said.

Riordan said the directive from Bliss to add buses to each of the lines where overcrowding exceeds the limits set in the consent decree poses serious problems for the MTA. “It’s a very artificial [way] of trying to do things that are not going to help enough in relation to what they are going to cost,” the mayor said.

On the other hand, Riordan sees a positive side to the court order. “Since the board of the agency has not really been willing to come up with substantial increases in improving bus operations, maybe you have to force them to do things artificially,” he said.

By all accounts, the price tag of compliance with the order is huge. Preliminary estimates placed the cost at about $250 million to buy the new natural-gas-powered buses and $82 million a year to operate them. This is in addition to the MTA’s commitment to spend $817 million to purchase 2,095 new buses over the next five years to replace most of its fleet.

MTA chief executive Julian Burke declined to offer an in-depth assessment of what the order means for the agency until he briefs the board members. But for more than a week, he has been openly warning directors not to make any new financial commitments until “the board makes up its mind as to what it wants to do.”

Indeed, the federal court order comes as the agency is pushing to complete the Metro Rail subway to Hollywood and North Hollywood and is being called upon to help pay for the Pasadena light rail line.

“If Bliss goes through with this and we are not able to appeal and change his mind, it’s going to send a shock wave through the agency,” said MTA board member Larry Zarian, a Glendale councilman. “We will become a bus company rather than a transportation company. It’s unfair to put all of the onus on us,” he said.

Zarian and other MTA officials raise the specter that the financial demands of the bus system will leave the MTA unable to pursue future rail projects or meet the needs of motorists for road and highway improvements, carpool lanes and freeway sound walls.

But civil rights attorney Constance Rice said the MTA board needs “to stop fighting this consent decree and start implementing it.”

She said the board agreed to bus system improvements to avoid a trial on the civil rights case. “They signed the decree. They bargained for this thing,” she said. “This didn’t just drop out of the sky.”

If the agency decides to appeal, it will be guaranteeing “more court wars” rather than “getting serious about saving its bus system,” she said.