MTA Cuts Some Express Bus Service to Downtown

Despite protests from San Fernando Valley bus riders, the MTA board voted Thursday to curtail some express bus service to downtown and instead reroute riders to the new Universal City subway station.

The changes, effective June 25, apply to West Valley express lines 424, 425 and 522. Those lines will terminate at the Universal City Red Line stop, where riders would connect with a downtown train.

“I think it will improve service,” said Hal Bernson, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member and City Councilman from Granada Hills. “It’s going to take a little bit of adjustment for people, but we have to make adjustments as we go along.”

At the same time, Bernson said, the MTA will inaugurate rapid bus service on Ventura Boulevard that uses technology to turn traffic lights green as buses approach intersections.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, another board member, also voted for the change, saying it will be an improvement.

“The subway is designed to take buses off the street,” he said. “If we can move more people faster and more cleanly underground, why would we continue to have bus lines that pollute.”

The board unanimously approved the changes, as well as adding stops at the two Valley subway stations for eight local bus lines, after an MTA study found that 15,000 of the 22,000 people who ride the express buses daily would notice no impact on the time it takes them to get downtown.

About 4,000 riders using line 424 would find their travel time reduced an average of 16 minutes, said Carol Silver, an MTA project manager. But 3,000 riders on the other two express lines would find their commute taking longer by an average of 15 minutes.

Bus riders told the board they are concerned that curtailing the express buses would lead to more overcrowding on regular local bus lines.

Jackie Campos, a Cal State Northridge student, told the board the change would complicate and very likely add half an hour to her commute from Silver Lake. She already has to leave home at 5 a.m. to make classes, she said.

“You are going to make many students angry,” Campos told the board. “If you cut the buses it’s a vote against CSUN students as well as their education.”

Of the express buses being curtailed, 522 originates in Northridge and 424 and 425 begin in Canoga Park.

Priscilla Vazquez, who rides the bus from Silver Lake to a job in North Hollywood, also said the changes would complicate her commute.

“These Valley lines provide an important service to the Valley’s poor and working class,” she said.

Other members of the Bus Riders Union opposed the reduction of the three express lines, accusing the MTA of trying to artificially drive up ridership on the $4.5 billion subway system at the expense of working people who depend on the buses.

“This board is so desperate to inflate ridership on the subway that it will sacrifice students [and] working people,” Deborah Orosz said. “That’s pathetic.”

Eric Mann, another member of the bus riders’ group, asked the board to wait six months to change the bus lines to determine whether there is more demand for the subway.

“Run the systems parallel to see if people get off the bus and voluntarily ride the subway,” Mann said.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills) also opposed the reduction in bus lines, saying, “I have no doubt that a cutback in service would cause a severe disruption” for residents of the Valley.

But MTA officials said they cannot afford to run both subway trains and buses on the same routes from the Valley to downtown.

“We can’t have that kind of duplication,” Bernson said, adding that the changes will add a new bus service along Parthenia Street in Northridge.

To introduce commuters to the new Valley transit systems, the board also voted to approve one week of free rides on the Ventura Boulevard Metro Rapid Bus Line.

In related action, the board agreed to seek $5 million in federal transit funds for environmental studies of a rapid bus system along the Burbank-Chandler rail right-of-way as an alternative to the discarded idea of extending the subway from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills.

The board also shelved a proposal that might have hindered creation of a Valley transit zone to provide local control over bus service. That proposal would have required the new zone to accept from the MTA its union contracts and workers that serve the Valley.

Instead of adopting the motion, the board directed its staff members to take up the issues as part of the regular labor talks that are about to begin with MTA unions.

* USC-SANTA MONICA LINE

Board also acts on a proposed bus or rail line from USC to Santa Monica. B4