MTA Trying to Decentralize Bus Service

Harbor-area activists want to break away from Los Angeles. So do their counterparts in the San Fernando Valley. Others hope to cleave chunks from the city’s oversized school district, which last year divided itself into subdistricts in an attempt to raise test scores and reduce red tape.

Now comes the giant transit system, which announced last week that it is drawing up plans to split into regional sectors to improve bus service.

The move by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is the latest in a trend toward decentralization among Los Angeles County’s large public agencies.

Managers at the MTA are moving full throttle toward creating four transit sectors, with the first to begin operating by July 1 in the San Fernando Valley.

“It’s the flavor of the month,” USC professor Michael Dear, director of the university’s Southern California Studies Center, said of the government fragmentation proposals. “You are seeing movement like this--toward local autonomy--all over the country.”

The sector plan mirrors much of the blueprint created over the last two years by the board of the San Fernando Valley Transit Zone--a coalition of business, government and community leaders that has been looking at ways for the Valley to wrest control of local bus service from the MTA.

Like the civic secession movements, the Valley push to create a separate school district, and the school system decentralization, the two transit approaches share the same principle: The most responsive government services come from close to home.

The transit proposal is also an acknowledgment by the MTA’s new director that the agency’s bus system--particularly route planning and responsiveness to riders--is deeply troubled.

“The biggest critics have been our customers,” Chief Executive Roger Snoble said at a recent community meeting. Many have “been complaining about our buses. I agree. I’d say the [bus] system just does not work.”

But for Snoble’s plan to be effective, it must clear several hurdles.

Funding issues and union fears must be resolved. The MTA must ensure that the plan doesn’t end up adding layers of bureaucracy and that it isn’t just symbolic. And the agency must accomplish the tricky task of balancing the sector plan with more complex regional transportation needs.

“It has to be done wisely,” Dear said, “and it has to be tempered. Splitting up something that big is never done easily.”

The MTA is still fleshing out details of the sector plan, the first widespread change from Snoble and new Deputy Chief Executive John Catoe since they took over the nation’s second-biggest transit agency in October.

Snoble came from Dallas and Catoe led Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus line. The two say they immediately saw that the MTA’s sheer size makes it virtually unmanageable. “It’s just too big to effectively deal with,” Snoble said of an agency with more than 2,000 buses, a growing rail system, responsibility for shaping the entire county’s approach to mass transit, and an annual budget of more than $2 billion.

Smaller Downtown Operation Proposed

Snoble proposes beginning his plan in the San Fernando Valley. The other sectors would most likely be in the San Gabriel Valley, the Harbor area and cities in southeast Los Angeles County. The MTA would still directly oversee large areas, including Central and West Los Angeles.

In each sector, a general manager and a governing board would oversee the bus system with help from a marketing and planning staff.

Each would have its own dispatch center and be able to sign contracts with private operators to run short-hop shuttle services. And each sector would form partnerships with the county’s myriad mid-size bus lines to help them give better service.

Under the plan, the MTA’s 25-story headquarters would be far less crowded, with scores of employees forced to shift their jobs to the sectors. Headquarters would continue to oversee the longer, regional bus routes, draw countywide transit plans, run the new Rapid Bus express system and control all commuter rail lines.

“We want a much smaller operation downtown, with many more people out close to our customers,” said Snoble, adding that he will streamline the MTA, reducing staff by not filling some positions lost through retirement or job changes. If “downtown gets out of the way, [and] local managers have the responsibility and will be held accountable, our bus service gets a whole lot better.”

The MTA plan has been received with cautious optimism in the San Fernando Valley, where transit service has not kept pace with rapid shifts in demographics and commercial development.

“I’m pleased by the idea,” said Bart Reed, head of the Transit Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. “We’ve got a bus system that is like something from the Third World. I’m ready for change.”

Bus service in the Valley often fails to adequately serve the area’s new shopping malls and job hot spots such as Warner Center, Snoble said.

The problem is particularly acute in northeast Valley communities such as Sylmar and Pacoima. Serviced by a fleet with many of the MTA’s oldest buses, the area’s service is often infrequent, sometimes nonexistent.

Even during off-peak periods, bus travel to and from the area can be a nightmare. Hot, overcrowded buses often take more than an hour to go from Van Nuys to San Fernando, a trip that takes about 20 minutes by car. Many would-be riders find themselves unable to cram aboard.

“The buses are awful out here,” said Candido Gonzalez, an unemployed Sylmar man, as he rode a 13-year-old, graffiti-marred bus recently. He expressed a common sentiment. “It’s almost like they don’t care. The MTA is downtown in its nice office. They don’t come out to see how we suffer.”

For the last several years, Valley leaders have studied implementation of a transit zone, an entirely autonomous operation. It is modeled loosely on Foothill Transit, a bus operator in the San Gabriel Valley praised for its efficiency.

Proponents of an independent Valley bus system have long claimed that the area could get better service while saving millions. However, those prospects look less likely after recent legislation shielded union jobs and a recent financial analysis cast doubt on savings projections.

Many of the zone proponents softened their stance after hearing Snoble’s idea, though none were quite ready to fully embrace the MTA concept.

“The rhetoric is good, but we need to see a lot more details,” said former Assemblyman Richard Katz, a secession advocate.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member who is also on the panel planning an autonomous Valley bus line, said he generally supports Snoble’s proposal, though he has reservations.

Valley Zone Board Studies Separate Line

“It’s really intriguing,” Yaroslavsky said. “But if you don’t have adequate funding and real autonomy, if the Valley does not have real flexibility to totally change [bus] lines, this thing is not going to work.”

The Valley zone board is pushing forward with its study of a separate transit line. Members could decide to see how Snoble’s plan works, then angle for a transit zone if the sector approach fails.

Snoble said his agency will have financial and other details ready by early next year. He and Catoe offered their word that funding would be ample and equitable. “We will be judged by our actions,” Catoe said.

Watching those actions warily will be the MTA’s unions. “We’re just going to have to see,” said Goldy Norton, spokesman for the bus drivers union. “The important thing to us is how the sector is managed,” he said, adding that the union is concerned about how service changes would affect bus drivers.

Others mentioned potential pitfalls. Brian Taylor, professor of city and regional planning at UCLA, said local bus routes could be improved under the plan. But he wondered how regional planning would be affected.

“It makes a lot of sense to decentralize,” Taylor said. “But transportation in Southern California has a real need to have regional solutions. That’s going to be the challenge; it’s going to be a real balancing act.”

Some observers also worry that the sector plan might merely create new bureaucracies. They point to Los Angeles Unified School District as a cautionary tale.

Schools Change Added Layers, Report Finds

Last year, the district split into 11 subdistricts, giving area managers responsibility for schools. The move was prompted in part by a Valley drive to break away from the district. As they announced the reorganization, officials praised the plan as a way to streamline operations and be more responsive.

One year later, the reshuffling is being panned in many corners. A county grand jury report last summer said the change only added extra layers of administration at local levels and made teachers’ jobs more of a headache.

“What we’ve seen happen is this has brought a bloated bureaucracy closer to you,” said Steve Balzak, spokesman for United Teachers-Los Angeles. “It has not at all been effective in trimming fat. If the bus system ends up looking like this, look out.”

Snoble said he was confident that he could avoid the pitfalls that the schools have encountered, but said it will take time to judge whether his plan works.

“Even after two years, there are going to be some problems, some things we need to work out,” he said. “There will also continue to be critics. But we have to press forward with getting better service. I mean, what other option is there?”