A LOOK AHEAD * U.S. appeals court will hear a long-running battle as . . . Much Is at Stake in Showdown for Bus Riders, MTA

The stakes could hardly be higher for bus riders and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Years of legal battles over the nation’s second-largest bus system are coming down to this: 40 minutes of argument Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The MTA, determined to protect its power to set Los Angeles County’s transit priorities, is seeking to overturn a federal court order that directed the agency to buy 248 more buses to reduce overcrowding.

The transit agency’s appeal is being strenuously opposed by attorneys representing the MTA’s predominantly poor and minority bus riders. They are equally determined to protect the gains won in a landmark consent decree, which requires that the transit agency reduce the number of passengers who are forced by overcrowding to stand while riding its buses.

The result of the coming showdown in a Pasadena federal courtroom could have far-reaching implications for mass transit in Los Angeles. Depending on which way it goes, the decision could limit the MTA’s ability to pursue new rail projects or affect the ability of bus riders to rely on the federal courts to enforce the consent decree that imposed strict standards for improving service.

“This is the culmination of a dispute that started two years ago,” said MTA legal counsel Steven Carnevale. The decision could be a “very strong” precedent for how the consent decree gets interpreted in the future, he said.

The MTA voluntarily signed the consent agreement in October 1996 to avoid a trial in a federal lawsuit alleging that the agency violated the civil rights of bus riders by allowing its bus system to deteriorate while it spent billions on subway and light rail lines.

To relieve overcrowding on MTA buses, the decree set targets and deadlines for reducing the number of passengers forced to stand. Those targets get stricter in three stages over the years.

But the MTA and bus riders’ advocates have been fighting since early 1998 over whether the agency complied with the first “target load factor.” The decree said that by the end of December 1997, there should be no more than an average of 15 people standing on MTA buses during any 20-minute peak period.

A court-appointed special master, Washington attorney Donald T. Bliss, and later Chief U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. in Los Angeles, concluded that the MTA had missed the target and violated the decree. Both ordered the MTA to buy more buses to remedy the overcrowding.

In a five-page decision released in September, Hatter concluded that the agency had the initial responsibility to devise and implement a plan to reduce overcrowding on its buses. “Since MTA failed to meet the obligations imposed by the consent decree, it is now up to the special master and the court . . . to enforce the consent decree,” he said.

The MTA appealed and won a temporary stay of Hatter’s order. The MTA’s legal team, including former 9th Circuit judge and Carter administration Education Secretary Shirley M. Hufstedler, argue that Hatter exceeded the federal court’s authority by ordering the transit agency to buy more buses.

The MTA’s attorneys contend that Hatter failed to consider the financial impact of his order. “The MTA has not been able to identify sources for the funds required to place in operation the court-ordered expansions of its permanent fleet,” they wrote in a brief. “A mandated increase in the MTA’s bus service would increase the MTA’s projected deficit to an unmanageable and irresponsible level.”

Lawyers for the Bus Riders Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund countered in court papers that “as framed by MTA, this appeal is primarily about whether a California public agency can be required by the federal courts to keep its word. . . .”

The legal struggle is not simply an esoteric fight over the number of standees and whether more buses are needed. It is a showdown between two sides over the amount of money that must be spent on a bus system used by nearly 90% of the MTA’s passengers compared with other forms of transportation, including the Metro Rail subway, light rail and highways.

From the MTA’s standpoint, the agency’s directors and not the federal courts should determine the transportation spending priorities for the nation’s most populous county. Indeed, the agency argues that “the MTA never agreed to expand its bus fleet whenever a load factor target was not met.”

Instead, agency lawyers say that “all that the MTA promised if a target was not met was to use its best efforts to meet the target as soon as possible.”

The bus riders’ advocates, led by civil rights attorneys E. Richard Larson and Constance Rice, are adamant in their legal brief that the “MTA’s commitments were far more specific and extensive” than the agency says. Larson and Rice declined to be quoted in advance of the court proceeding.

To say the two sides disagree sharply is an understatement.

While the MTA contends that it was in “substantial compliance” with the decree’s initial requirement to reduce overcrowding, bus riders’ advocates insist that the agency was in massive violation of the load factor target when the data were collected.

Indeed, the two sides do not even agree on the method for calculating violations, so they arrive at different conclusions.

The issue before the court does not involve the consent decree’s next target load factor. Beginning at the end of June, the target for the maximum number of standees on MTA buses during any 20-minute peak period drops from an average of 15 to 11. Two years later, the target shrinks to just nine.

In its appeal, the MTA argues that the targets are not absolute standards, but goals. Attorneys for the bus riders take the opposite stance, that they are, indeed, standards to be met. In short, the parties differ over what the decree they signed actually means.

To bus riders’ advocates, the case is still about the civil rights of poor and minority bus riders. Not to the MTA. The agency’s lawyers said in their brief that there was never any judicial decision on the civil rights issues alleged in the bus riders’ lawsuit.

“No constitutional violation is involved here,” the transit agency’s attorneys wrote. “The district court’s intervention in the management of the MTA’s complex obligations is prejudicially erroneous. The MTA never transferred the management of its public transportation responsibilities to the special master or to the district court. It never promised that it would meet the standee targets perfectly.”

The bus riders’ attorneys contend that the fact that the civil rights issues “were not finally adjudicated . . . does not limit in any way the district court’s [or the Special Master’s] authority to enforce the consent decree that made such adjudication unnecessary.”

The bus riders’ advocates said that, “contrary to MTA’s argument, a consent decree is not only a contract, it also is a judicial decree enforceable to the same extent as any other federal court judgment.”

Resolving these competing claims will fall to three federal appellate judges--James R. Browning of San Francisco, an appointee of President John F. Kennedy; Cynthia Holcomb Hall of Pasadena, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; and Barry G. Silverman of Phoenix, an appointee of President Clinton.

While not at issue in the proceedings, other MTA projects are reaching key stages at the same time as the federal court hearing. The agency is about to open the last six miles of subway from Hollywood to North Hollywood, to begin new rapid bus service across the San Fernando Valley and from the Westside to the Eastside and to conduct environmental impact studies of construction of new busways or light rail lines.

Although the record before the court is limited to a fixed period of time, the agency is savoring the prospect of a massive infusion of state funds for transportation projects recommended by Gov. Gray Davis. The governor’s package, which requires approval from state lawmakers and the voters, includes as much as $150 million for the MTA to buy as many as 385 buses.

But the prospect of additional funds from the state budget surplus and a possible statewide bond issue is not part of the record before the court. Nor are the latest data on the condition of the MTA’s bus fleet and the extent of overcrowding today.