Bus Solutions Are Needed Now

A bill debated in the waning days of the California Legislature was all too typical of efforts to solve the San Fernando Valley’s transportation problems: lots of talk, little agreement and, ultimately, no relief in sight for bus riders.

Valley Democrats and their labor allies squabbled with Valley Republicans and business leaders over legislation that would require any newly formed transit zone to honor the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s labor union contracts.

Republicans and their business allies argued that forcing union contracts on a new transit district would only propagate the MTA’s unresponsive bureaucracy and stifle efforts to increase economic efficiency. For a while, they managed to deep-six the bill.

But Democrats and their union allies countered that not honoring union contracts meant cutting costs on the backs of bus drivers. When they won, pushing their bill through the Legislature and on to the governor’s desk, they called it a victory for working families.

Never mind the working families who ride the buses. And never mind that a so-called San Fernando Valley transit zone and its hypothetical efficiencies don’t even yet exist--and may not any time soon, what with the MTA’s ongoing battle with a federal special master over spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new buses.

While politicians of both parties fiddle, bus riders get burned. Rather than arguing over a hypothetical system, why not look at simpler solutions, ones that can be put into place now?

Mayor Richard Riordan and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, for instance, are keen on a bus system they saw on a trip to Curitiba, Brazil. Curitiba, a city of 1.8 million, uses triple-length buses that carry as many as 270 people on routes made faster by timed traffic lights. The buses stop once a mile.

Riordan and Yaroslavsky have floated the idea of building such bus lanes here on a variety of broad streets and the Burbank-Chandler railroad corridor. Yaroslavsky predicted that the first such lanes tying the Valley together could be built within two years.

Of course, it would take some intense study to be sure that Curitiba-style buses would operate safely and well in Los Angeles. But could a Valley transit zone, with or without union contracts, be established, up and operating--actually doing something--in so short a time?