Free Rides for the Needy on MTA’s Chopping Block

Elizabeth Spitz, an 85-year-old Santa Monica resident who is legally blind and uses a walker, takes a cab whenever she needs to get to the doctor.

Spitz, who lives on a $930 monthly Social Security check, relies on taxi vouchers that she picks up each month from the Center for the Partially Sighted.

“It’s a great help,” she said, explaining that taking taxis makes her feel more independent and secure. “I know where to get on the bus, but I don’t know how to get off the bus and I cannot read the letters.”

But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority program that provides Spitz’s taxi vouchers, which was put in place after the 1992 riots, may be threatened.

In its 2005 budget proposal, the MTA staff cut the $5-million initiative, called the Immediate Needs Transportation Program. That proposal drew sharp criticism from community groups and Spitz’s daughter at a public hearing on the MTA’s $2.9-billion budget Thursday, and Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and two other MTA board members introduced a motion to reinstate it.

“Some of the most needy -- and we’ve heard from some of them today -- are always on the chopping block whenever we look for budget cuts,” said Los Angeles City Councilman and MTA board member Antonio Villaraigosa, who is co-sponsoring the motion. “I can tell you this is a very much needed program.”

After the 1992 riots, several cab companies and local organizations started ferrying people in South Los Angeles for free. When they sought more funding, the MTA stepped in and expanded the program to include bus rides. Originally called Operation Food Basket, the program provided free travel for needs such as shopping and medical visits.

The program distributes free bus tokens and vouchers for taxi rides to at least 30,000 people a month who need to get to senior centers, hospitals and after-school programs, according to the MTA.

The First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Los Angeles and the International Institute of Los Angeles in Boyle Heights administer the vouchers, keeping 20% of the funds -- about $500,000 each -- as a fee. The groups said they distribute the vouchers to about 800 nonprofit agencies in the county and reach more than 60,000 people a year.

The MTA’s chief financial officer, Richard Brumbaugh, said the program was slated for elimination because the agency needed the money for new security measures and improved bus service to comply with a 1996 court order.

“We had to reduce costs to free up money to fund additional security and the consent decree,” he said.

The motion Burke presented at the public meeting states, “The issue before this board should not be a choice of funding needed security versus funding for the most needy in our society. We must do both, and we can.”

The motion suggests three other possible sources of funding and recommends studying the administrative fees and temporarily limiting them to 15%.

After the meeting, Burke predicted her motion would pass the 13-member board. “I believe there are enough people with a direct impact in their districts that there will be acceptance,” she said.

MTA officials said they would look at other possible program cuts and present those June 7, when the board is scheduled to adopt a final budget.

Eva Woodard, who directs the free-ride program at First AME Church, said a cut in the administrative fees might force her to lay off one of her staff of seven. But she added, “You don’t want to lose the program, so you have to do what you have to do.”

“We have to save the program,” said Mary Weaver, executive director of Friends Outside in Los Angeles County, an organization that helps families of the incarcerated. She estimates that her organization gives out 1,500 bus tokens a month to help clients go to their Pasadena, Watts and Long Beach offices for case management, visit relatives in jail or go to drug-rehabilitation programs.

“It’s the glue that holds our services together,” she said. “We have homeless clients, for example, that we have to get to a job interview. We can find the job for them, but they may have no way to get there.”

Spitz said she was not sure what she would do if the vouchers disappeared.

She said friends who are blind have tried other transportation services for the disabled but found them unreliable.

“They had to wait two hours. On the corner,” Spitz said. “They had a cellphone and they kept calling and they would say, ‘We’re on our way’ or ‘We didn’t see you.’ ”

Losing the vouchers, Spitz said, “would really get me in the dumps.”