Commuters Scramble on Strike’s 1st Weekday

The full impact of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus and rail strike hit the system’s 450,000 daily commuters Monday, the first weekday since drivers walked off their jobs rather than agree to concessions that included a sharp cut in income.

A state mediator persuaded the two sides to agree to a meeting today at which they will try to set a time for resuming negotiations. But that was the only sign of progress.

Commuters who rely on public transit scrambled across the Los Angeles area to find a way to jobs and schools without MTA buses, subways or light rail lines. Some walked for miles in the searing heat. Others spent their entire day’s wages on taxis to get to work.

Still others rode bicycles, hitchhiked, found rides with friends, relatives or co-workers or hopped aboard unmarked vans that began plying the abandoned transit routes, sometimes charging two or three times the regular $1.35 bus fare.

“Hasta la Westwood!” a woman yelled from an old van at Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. “Tres dolares.” (“To Westwood! Three dollars.”)

Three women jumped in, wedging themselves into narrow spots on the vinyl seats. But 15-year-old Sergio Siguenza couldn’t afford the fare, and despaired that he would ever make it to his classes at Fairfax High School.

“I think I’m just going to go home,” he said. “I just can’t get a ride.”

About 4,400 drivers, members of the United Transportation Union, went on strike Saturday, hours after a breakdown in negotiations with the MTA. The transit system’s management, facing a growing deficit, is demanding new work rules and a 15% cut in overtime costs.

The drivers, who earn between $10 and $20.72 an hour with overtime, say they are barely clinging to the middle class and cannot afford to give up any income.

About 45 activists, bus drivers and bus riders held a demonstration to demand that the five county supervisors who sit on the MTA’s board end the strike by meeting the union’s demands.

Marching with placards bearing photographs of the three Democratic supervisors on the MTA board--Zev Yaroslavsky, Gloria Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who chairs the agency--the members of the Bus Riders Union were joined by strikers outside the county Hall of Administration.

Among the chants that marchers read from yellow pieces of paper were: “Hey, Burke, stop the strike, this is our lucha [struggle], this is our fight,” and “Riders and drivers won’t pay for your rail, your racist plans are going to fail.”

Members of the BRU, an activist group pushing for better bus service, said they sympathized with striking drivers and accused the MTA of building expensive rail projects for the middle class on the backs of the agency’s working-class employees and riders.

“Most of them [bus drivers] are working-class people, much like the bus riders,” said organizer Shawn McDougal. “If the bus riders were wealthy white people, we wouldn’t see the MTA board treating us this way.”

McDougal scoffed at the MTA’s pleas of poverty, noting that the agency has found $200 million to help fund the Pasadena Blue Line and built what has been called a palatial headquarters downtown.

Traffic Slightly Heavier, CHP Says

The MTA runs the nation’s second-largest bus system, as well as a fledgling subway and rail network. Because most Southern Californians drive their own cars, most commuters felt the impact of the strike in subtle ways, if at all.

The California Highway Patrol said traffic on the region’s freeways was 5% heavier than usual, but not significantly more congested. Similarly, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation said that while traffic on streets was heavier than usual, there were no extraordinary jams.

Still, along some stretches of Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley, people were walking faster than cars were moving; some carried dress shoes slung over their shoulders and had a businesslike focus to their stride.

Rochelle Omg, a 24-year-old legal assistant, found a half-full way of looking at it.

“Hey, walking is good exercise, right?” said Omg, who usually takes the bus from her home in Van Nuys to her office in Encino.

Most of those who usually depend on mass transit managed to find alternative ways to get where they needed to go. It just wasn’t always easy.

On the Eastside and in southeast Los Angeles, many regular bus riders hit the streets on foot. Cooks, factory workers, textile employees and others awoke at least two hours before they were expected to be at work to make the long trek. They wore comfortable shoes, packed their lunches in easy-to-carry grocery bags or backpacks and brought bottles of water to keep from dehydrating in the unusually hot weather.

Not all of them realized at first that there was a strike. For three hours, starting at 5 a.m., Marianna Molina and her uncle Uriel Barrieto, both immigrants from Honduras, sat at an MTA bus stop on the corner of Atlantic and Washington boulevards in Commerce waiting for their regular bus to take them to Bell, where they work at a warehouse packing novelty items.

“A lady told me the strike is over,” Molina told a reporter. “So where are the buses?”

Informed that the strike was still on, Molina looked up Atlantic Boulevard in desperate hope that a bus--any bus--would nonetheless arrive. They were already two hours late for work. Molina hoped her boss would understand.

Finally, offered a ride by a motorist, she smiled. “We pray to God that this strike will end soon,” she said.

There were similar scenes of early morning confusion at the San Fernando Valley’s two subway stops.

Patricia Abila, a 22-year-old fashion designer, got out of a car in front of the North Hollywood Red Line station, started walking toward the plaza, took in the deserted parking lot and then whipped around and tried to chase down the car that dropped her off. The car left before she could stop it.

“At first I didn’t realize why so many cars were missing,” she said as she leaned against a pay phone, out of breath, calling home for a ride to work. “I heard about the strike last week. I just didn’t think they’d go through with it.”

Most People Do Make It to Work

Employers of transit-riding workers had braced for the worst, but found that most of their staff made it to work one way or another.

“We have 100% attendance today,” crowed downtown knitting contractor Jackie Bender. “A lot of white-collar workers might not have made it.”

It was the same across a variety of industries that employ low-wage workers, most of whom don’t get paid if they miss a day. In fact, it was a lack of customers, not employees, that bedeviled some Southland companies.

Foot traffic on Huntington Park’s normally bustling main drag dwindled to a trickle with the double whammy of high temperatures and idled buses. That translated into sluggish sales for retailers such as Dearden’s furniture store, which targets working-class immigrants with $700 living room sets.

“It’s empty out there . . . and slow in here,” said store manager Frank MacLean. “Pacific Boulevard is normally busy any time of day with people walking or waiting at the bus stop.”

The strike disrupted life for more than 16,000 students in Los Angeles and thousands of others across the region who rely on MTA buses to get to school.

Many hitched rides with aunts, uncles, friends, strangers--anyone they could tap. Some paid a few dollars to hop in “gypsy cabs” operated by motorists who were ferrying passengers around Los Angeles for the right price.

Some parents rearranged work schedules to shuttle their children to school and pick them up afterward. But students whose families don’t own cars bore the brunt of the problem. Many rose before dawn, removed the heaviest books from backpacks and set out by foot or bike.

“My shoulders hurt,” said Cody Bailey, a seventh-grader at Virgil Middle School in the Pico-Union district as he approached his campus. He had just walked a mile and a half and was sweating profusely. Cody was late, and he feared the repercussions.

“I think they are going to give me detention,” he said. “They’ll probably say I should have walked faster.”

The strike also was felt at community colleges, where many classes were one-third to one-half empty. Administrators at some colleges estimated that at least half of their students depend on public buses.

The strike had a modest ripple effect on counties surrounding Los Angeles, as L.A.-bound commuters lost their ability to transfer into the MTA system.

For instance, Metrolink trains, operated by a regional consortium called the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, serve the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura.

While Metrolink was not affected by the MTA strike, many of its passengers are used to transferring onto MTA buses or subways at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. They had to find other means of transportation Monday.

There was, for instance, super-commuter Andy Gonzales, who demonstrated the resilience of the mass transit rider. The Moreno Valley resident usually takes Metrolink to Union Station and then takes the Red Line to the Blue Line to the Green Line to get to his job in Torrance. Since his car broke down two months ago, Gonzales has mastered public transportation.

He said he knew he might have to take a Torrance city bus from downtown Los Angeles if there was an MTA strike.

“I thought I’d take that bus if all else failed,” he said. “Well, all else failed today.”

*

Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Elise Gee, Jeffrey Gettleman, Duke Helfand, Meg James, Annette Kondo, Jill Leovy, Hilary E. MacGregor, Hugo Martin, Joe Mathews, Joe Mozingo, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Nicholas Riccardi, Kristina Sauerwein and Douglas P. Shuit, and correspondents Catherine Blake, Grace E. Jang and Richard Fausset contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Transportation Options

During the MTA strike, there is limited MTA bus service and no subway trains are operating onthe Red Line from the San Fernando Valley and Mid-City to Union Station. No service is planned on the Blue Line from Long Beach to Los Angeles or the Green Line from Norwalk to El Segundo. Here are some transportation options:

*

MTA BUSES: The MTA operated 40 buses along five lines Saturday through contracts with private bus companies. The lines in operation were: Line 218, from West Hollywood to Studio City via Laurel Canyon Boulevard; Line 603, from Rampart to Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena; Line 605, from Grande Vista Street to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center; Line 96, from Los Angeles to Sherman Oaks; Line 167, from Plummer Street to Coldwater Canyon. The MTA said its ability to maintain a limited schedule would depend on strike developments.

In addition to the regular customer service number, 1 (800) COMMUTE, the MTA has added another, (213) 626-4455. Customers can also check the Web site at https://www.mta.net.

A consumer group set up an all- purpose information website to provide information on different bus lines. The Web site is https://www.socaltip.org.

*

NON-MTA BUS LINES: Foothill, Long Beach, Torrance and Norwalk Transit, Metrolink, Santa Monica Big Blue Bus and the City of Los Angeles (DASH, Community Connections, Commuter Express and Smart Shuttles) will honor MTA bus passes.

Los Angeles County Municipal Operator’s Coalition’s (LACMOC) 16 bus agencies will provide additional service: Foothill Transit will add five morning trips to its service to downtown Los Angeles originating from the Pomona Fairplex and four evening trips originating from 9th and Figueroa streets in downtown; Torrance Transit will add additional service to and from downtown Los Angeles; Gardena Municipal Bus Line (GMBL) will operate additional services on its line 1 and 2 and will accept MTA tokens; Montebello Bus Line will provide additional service to East Los Angeles on Line 10 and will also add trips on Lines 40 and 50 to downtown Los Angeles.

*

METROLINK: Metrolink, the commuter rail service that runs trains into downtown Los Angeles from Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, will add eight trains to serve more passengers.

Metrolink trains will honor MTA monthly, semimonthly and weekly passes, as well as passes for seniors, disabled riders and students.

“Red Line Special” buses provided by Metrolink will operate weekdays from the Metro Bus Plaza at Union Station. The bus stops will be at each Metro Red Line Station from Union Station to Westlake/MacArthur Park, with two additional stops at 4th and Hill streets and at 9th and Hill streets, marked with special signs (see map). Signs and Metrolink personnel will direct passengers to the bus plaza area at Union Station to board the buses. One set of buses will operate to the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station. The other set will operate to the 7th Street/Metro Center station. A limited number of buses serving customers on a first-come, first-served basis will operate all day, from the arrival of the first train each morning until the departure of the last Metrolink train in the evening. Waiting time is unpredictable and passengers are encouraged to give themselves enough extra time to complete their commute. Although bicycles are normally allowed on trains, because of space restrictions, bicycles will not be allowed on the buses.

Metrolink commuters can call 1 (800) COMMUTE for information on ridesharing options. Commuters can obtain updates by calling 1 (800) 371-LINK, or visit Metrolink’s Web site at https://www.metrolinktrains.com.

*

OTHER TRANSPORT: Call your local municipal bus lines for more information.

*

* ROOTS OF THE STRIKE

The MTA has boxed itself in with costly contracts, ambitious plans and debt. A24