Bus Feud: a Smoother Road

The last time the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Bus Riders Union agreed on anything was 1996, the year they signed a federal consent decree to improve bus service for low-income and minority riders. The MTA has been fighting the decree ever since. The time is ripe to settle the dispute.

For starters, the MTA board now includes Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, who promised in his campaign to drop the legal appeals and who appointed to the 13-seat board three members who presumably share this view. The MTA also has a new chief executive, Roger Snoble, who comes to the debate with fresh eyes--and no history of head-butting with bus advocates.

As a third promising sign, Eric Mann, the usually combative head of the bus riders group, acknowledged last month that the MTA had added enough new buses to satisfy the federal mandate to ease overcrowding. Mann later explained that he meant the MTA had met only the first of several targets and was years late doing that. But the rare compliment was nonetheless intended as an olive branch and signaled the bus riders’ willingness to work with Snoble to determine how many more buses are needed.

And work they have. Once-a-week meetings between MTA officials and bus advocates have been stepped up to twice a week, and Snoble himself attends. Speed is critical because this window of opportunity will last only another six weeks. Despite all the promising signs--and despite losing at every legal turn so far--the MTA board has not ruled out an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court; it has until Jan. 14 to decide. To appeal would turn the two sides into adversaries again, squandering any progress gained.

The wrangling dates back to 1994, when the Bus Riders Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a civil rights suit alleging that the transit agency discriminated against poor and minority bus riders by neglecting the bus system and pouring money into costly rail projects. The MTA board agreed to the consent decree to avoid a trial but has been contesting the decree’s interpretation and the courts’ authority to enforce it ever since. A special mediator, a U.S. district judge, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the entire 9th Circuit have rejected the MTA’s appeals.

Despite its record of victories, the Bus Riders Union does not want to risk a hearing before a Supreme Court that recently made it harder to sue under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So bus riders too have an incentive to find common ground. This is an opportunity the MTA must not squander.