Bus Riders Organization Asks That MTA Be Fined

A bus riders advocacy group, charging that Los Angeles County buses are still overcrowded, has asked a federal court to find the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in contempt of an 8-year-old court order to improve bus service.

In a motion filed Friday, the Bus Riders Union asked the court-appointed mediator, Donald T. Bliss, to levy a $100 fine on the first day he finds the MTA in contempt and double the fine each day thereafter.

The Bus Riders Union held a news conference Tuesday to announce the motion, while the MTA denied the charges.

“Since the signing of this consent decree, we knew that this was going to be an uphill battle,” said Bus Riders Union spokesman Manuel Criollo. “It always seems like a broken record on noncompliance.”

The dispute began 10 years ago, when the Bus Riders Union accused the agency in court of favoring rail projects in wealthier areas over bus service in poorer ones.

As both sides were preparing for trial in 1996, the parties signed a consent decree in which the MTA agreed to limit fares, reduce overcrowding and add new bus service to areas with concentrations of schools, hospitals and jobs.

Representatives from the group praised the MTA on Tuesday for buying new buses, but said the MTA was not doing enough to alleviate overcrowding or maintain its fleet.

Outlining its complaints on Tuesday, the Bus Riders Union said the MTA:

* Added some of the newly scheduled service hours during off-peak hours, not at the busiest times.

* Put new buses on new lines or ones that were not crowded.

* Paid for the new buses and additional service by dipping into money for future bus purchases.

* Failed to plan for enough new buses by 2007 to replace those that will be “over-age.”

* Hired too few mechanics in proportion to its new bus purchases.

Lawyers for the Bus Riders Union asked the court to inflict financial penalties on the agency and put that money into an escrow account to pay for bus improvements.

The MTA, however, believes it is fully complying with the most recent order Bliss issued in January that called for 145 new buses, 381 replacement buses and 290,000 hours of expanded service.

“I’d be shocked if he issues a contempt citation,” MTA legal chief Steven Carnevale said. “At best, what we’ve got here is a difference of opinion about what the order means.”

MTA officials said Bliss gave them the discretion to schedule and plan routes and said they have already submitted a plan for replacing old buses.

Carnevale added that Los Angeles, when compared to other bus systems in the country, had a younger fleet with a “very high” ratio of buses to mechanics.

At a bus stop across the street from the Bus Riders Union’s headquarters, people waiting on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue had mixed reactions to the group’s complaint.

Cecilia Ramirez, who regularly takes the No. 28 bus across Olympic Boulevard to Los Angeles High School at 7 a.m., supported an aggressive push for more buses. “It’s very crowded,” said the 16-year-old. “There are 20 people standing when I go to school.”

Bernardo Torres, 40, said Rapid buses often get so crowded that people start fighting. But he isn’t sure that more buses are the answer.

“There will be more traffic and the congestion will be even worse,” he said. “I think they need light rail.”