Get a Recount in Bus Dispute
There is a fundamental problem that must be resolved before there can be real progress in a legal dispute between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and advocates for bus riders. The case needs an independent finding on whether the MTA has significantly reduced overcrowding on its buses.
In 1994, the MTA was the subject of a lawsuit brought on behalf of the 90% of MTA riders who rely on buses. The bus riders argued that the MTA was building a lightly used rail system at the expense of an overcrowded, dilapidated bus system. The suit generated a landmark federal consent decree in October 1996, requiring the MTA to gradually reduce overcrowding with specific targets in 1997, 2000 and 2002.
The two sides are clashing again in a federal appeals court today over whether the judge in this case, Terry J. Hatter Jr., overstepped his authority in ordering the MTA to buy 248 more buses than it had already agreed to purchase to reduce overcrowding. But a good deal of the current problem comes from critical flaws in the original consent decree. These include failure to establish an independent body to conduct the head counts that determine the extent of overcrowding--currently the two sides conduct competing counts--and the lack of a mutually agreed interpretation of what the numbers would mean.
In the absence of that, the special master in the case, Donald Bliss, and then Judge Hatter were forced to come to their own conclusions, leading to the bus-purchase order that the MTA is contesting in court today.
Lawyers will argue that there is little that can be changed at this point without turning the consent decree on its ear and losing the club that the bus riders have held to force change. But it seems clear that an independent panel acceptable to both sides could conduct a more definitive count that would provide a common statistical foundation.
The MTA may still question Judge Hatter’s authority to interpret those numbers and order changes to rectify overcrowding, but a better count would at least ensure that remedies could be debated with a firm footing. Surely that’s part of what the lawyers are paid for: to test whether such a plan could work, given the lack of progress to date.
