Hopeful Signals

Sure, No. 4552 looks like any other MTA bus moseying down Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. It’s when you ride a mile or so, hitting green lights all the way, that you begin to wonder if No. 4552 is charmed.

But it’s no magic bus.

What you don’t see--a hockey puck-shaped device nestled in the undercarriage--is the secret to why all the reds seem to miraculously change as it approaches.

In the real world, every speed demon in L.A. would kill for a device that trips the lights green.

But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is proposing this technology for Los Angeles’ most sloth-like road beasts: city buses that bumble along, block by block, engorging and disgorging passengers.

“Anything to speed the system. Especially if it works,” said Clin Johnson of Inglewood, a recent passenger on No. 4552.

“I would like it fast,” said another passenger, Ana Martinez of Los Angeles, whose daily trip from Western Avenue in Los Angeles to her job in Encino usually takes an hour.

The MTA and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation are testing the technology behind the proposed signal-beating rapid bus system on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.

Officials plan to introduce a demonstration project this summer on regular bus lines along three corridors: Ventura Boulevard, Whittier and Wilshire boulevards, and Pico Boulevard-Cesar Chavez Avenue via Broadway and East 1st Street.

When the six-month demonstration project gets underway, the faster-moving buses will replace some regular lines that stop every sixth-tenths of a mile to pick up and drop off passengers.

“We want to accomplish about 15% to 25% savings in travel times,” said Rex Gephart, MTA project manager for transit planning.

Under the rapid bus system, a trip from Warner Center in Woodland Hills to Universal City, which now takes about an hour, would be pared down to about 45 minutes, Gephart said.

The plan relies on fairly simple technology to achieve those longer green lights or shorter reds: Each bus is fitted with a transponder that triggers data wire loops embedded in the street at regular intervals.

Each time a bus passes over a data loop, information about the bus location and speed is sent to controller boxes at intersections, then zapped by fiber optics to a Department of Transportation computer deep in the basement of City Hall.

The data are processed, then shot back to the controller box to change signal lights. It all takes about a second, said Sean Skehan, senior transportation engineer for the Transportation Department.

Hundreds of such loops are embedded in Ventura Boulevard, and some regular MTA buses have been fitted with transponders for testing.

On a recent day, No. 4552 moved smoothly along Ventura, the subtle light changes virtually unnoticeable to passengers and cross traffic.

“We want to speed buses, but we don’t want to affect the general traffic,” said Kang Hu, a city transportation engineer.

The estimated cost of the Ventura Boulevard and Whittier-Wilshire projects is $4.5 million, including sleeker bus shelters and real-time speed and location displays to let passengers track their bus’ progress, Gephart said. A cost estimate for the Pico-Cesar Chavez corridor was not immediately available.

Gephart said the MTA would have to prove to its board of

directors that the demonstration project worked by achieving faster times. If approved, the rapid bus system would be expanded to 13 other lines, including those on Santa Monica Boulevard, Vermont Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard.

Across the nation, the concept is being studied as a way to create a “bus system that looks and feels like a rail system,” said Bert Arrillaga, chief of the service innovation division of the Federal Transit Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The federal government’s own rapid bus project is evaluating 10 cities with innovative plans to upgrade their service, many of which rely on bus-only lanes. Los Angeles is not among the 10 cities, but it is participating in the federal project in other capacities, Arrillaga said.

Technology is available to vastly improve bus service, Arrillaga said, including “smart” fare cards, which eliminate the slower process of handling cash, and the signal-changing transponders.

In Los Angeles, where transportation issues have fueled bitter debates between activists and government agencies, the rapid bus concept has received cautious support from the Bus Riders Union.

But organizer Martin Hernandez said the group would oppose such a plan if it meant scrapping bus lines that stop every sixth-tenths of a mile. He said that would cause too much of a hardship for the elderly and the disabled.

“We don’t want them eliminating the choices for people,” he said.