MTA Board Agrees to Buy 297 Buses Ordered by Court

After years of battle with bus rider advocates, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors took a major step Wednesday and agreed to buy 297 clean-fueled buses to relieve overcrowding and improve bus service.

Emerging from a closed-door session to announce the decision, Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said the agency nevertheless will appeal aspects of a federal court order to buy the buses.

Chief U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. last week ordered the purchase. Although the agency voted Wednesday to comply, it simultaneously moved to keep its legal options open.

One reason for the appeal, said Burke, who is chairwoman of the MTA board, is that it is “literally impossible” to acquire 248 temporary buses within 30 days, as Hatter ordered, while the new ones are being built.

The agency also will appeal the crucial question of whether the federal courts can dictate how the MTA complies with a 1996 consent decree. That decree requires the MTA to make further reductions in overcrowding and improvements to bus service in future years. “We have to protect our rights,” Burke said.

Despite the MTA’s intent to appeal Hatter’s order, Burke said the board considered it fair, and the transit agency is “going to do most of the things he’s saying.”

She said the MTA is “trying our best” to provide safe and efficient bus service for predominantly poor and minority bus riders.

Although the MTA board does not know how or where it will raise the $97 million needed to operate the additional buses during the next four and a half years, even the agency’s longtime adversary, the Bus Riders Union, praised the decision.

“MTA finally is not in defiance, but is coming into compliance,” said Richard Larson, attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The appeal is unfortunate [and] has no merit whatsoever as a matter of law or fact,” he said.

Ted Robertson, an organizer with the Bus Riders Union who has been sharply critical of the agency, called the board’s decision to buy buses “a good step forward.”

The MTA board directed Chief Executive Julian Burke to begin the purchase process immediately. The agency pledged to buy 195 of the buses for delivery as soon as possible and the remaining 102 to be delivered no later than June 30, 2002. The later date is significant because the MTA must reduce the number of standees on its buses from no more than 15 today to nine by that deadline.

The decision to buy the extra buses is significant because the MTA for many years neglected the bus system used by 90% of its passengers, while it poured billions of dollars into the Metro Rail subway and two light rail lines.

The MTA board’s promise to buy the additional buses is in addition to the 2,095 clean-fueled buses that the agency previously promised to put on the streets of Los Angeles County by 2004. The new buses powered by compressed natural gas will replace MTA’s aged and trouble-plagued fleet that breaks down and contributes to overcrowding.

MTA Chief Operating Officer Allan Lipsky said the new buses will cost $115.8 million. He said the MTA board was told the agency has not found the funds needed to operate them.

In his order last week requiring the new buses, Hatter affirmed the power of the federal courts and the special master he appointed to oversee compliance with the consent decree. MTA voluntarily signed the consent decree to avoid a trial on a civil rights case brought by the bus riders.

In the five-page decision, Hatter suggested that MTA move buses from less heavily traveled lines to those with the most overcrowding. He also urged the agency to consider reducing or eliminating MTA bus service on routes where it duplicates that of the county’s municipal bus lines. To avoid friction with the municipal operators such as Foothill Transit, Long Beach Transit and Santa Monica Municipal bus line, the MTA board pledged that it will not take funds from the city lines to pay for the new equipment. MTA controls the distribution of the county’s transit sales tax dollars.

Civil rights attorney Constance L. Rice said the MTA board’s decision was confusing, particularly on the appeal issue. “I am hopeful it doesn’t mean another full-bore attack on the court’s power to enforce the decree,” she said.