New Service Campaign - History & Analysis

Civil Rights Consent Decree Calls for MTA New Bus Service
One of the main components of the 1996 civil rights Consent Decree signed by the BRU and MTA mandates MTA to develop a New Bus Service Plan that would expand the overall mobility of the transit dependent and increase low-income people’s access to major centers of education, jobs, and health care throughout L.A. County. As court-appointed class representative of 450,000 daily bus riders, the BRU has worked to implement the New Service provisions of the Consent Decree, to begin to break down the barriers of transit segregation that impact passengers from Black, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American communities and working class communities in particular.

BRU Does Grassroots Urban Planning
In 1997, through the Joint Working Group, the BRU and MTA held community hearings in the San Fernando Valley, East L.A., South L.A., and Mid-Cities to survey the transportation patterns of hundreds of transit dependent people. Unfortunately, however, the MTA rejected initiating an integrated plan, so the BRU New Service team continued to conduct thousands of hours of interviews with bus riders and worked with professional transit planners to develop our own proposals. As a result, we have initiated an advanced proposal for at least 576 buses and 50 community circulators (smaller buses and jitneys) for countywide new bus service.

Our proposed New Bus Service Plan was based on an innovative methodology. We began by plotting all the major medical, employment, and educational centers on a map of Los Angeles County and then overlaid all the existing transportation routes and schedules. What we found was that the level of transit segregation (existing, of course, for more than a century, but highlighted in particular in the 1965 McCone Commission report) was still operative. Los Angeles county’s racially segregated residential patterns and dispersed jobs, schools, health care centers and personal mobility needs throughout the county combine with a non-viable transportation system to create the isolation and segregation experienced by the transit dependent. For example, people living in South Central cannot get to jobs in the San Fernando or San Gabriel Valleys in less than two hours each way (and that amount is based on scheduled service, not the far less dependable actual service). Welfare recipients trying to move from “welfare to work” cannot possibly work the swing and night shifts (where new jobs are often more plentiful) not only because there is no childcare at night but also because nighttime bus service is so bad that a person often would have to sleep at their workplace after the last bus left. This grassroots transit analysis has led to our transit policy proposals.

Freeway Service and Land Use Patterns
In researching for the BRU’s New Bus Service Plan, we increased our understanding of L.A.'s development as a freeway city, with a fundamentally suburban/urban land use plan. Much of our work focuses on encouraging the improvement of a large and contiguous inner-city area in which we organize—South L.A., East L.A., Pico Union, Koreatown, and Hollywood. But we also realize that many employment centers lie far from the urban core and any options for the low-wage urban working class to get better jobs require far more efficient transportation. Along with dispersed job centers there are dispersed health care and educational sites as well as personal mobility destinations. In order to improve access for transit dependent communities a system of fast and efficient long-distance service is necessary. While expanded Metro Rapid and Local services are a key part of long-distance travel, even with significant improvements they alone are fundamentally incapable of traveling far enough and fast enough to meet this objective. Only a freeway bus network—using the long-distance and high-speed freeways as a seamless part of MTA’s grid system, along with effective coordination with other MTA bus services—will meet the needs of LA County bus riders. The personal auto has the advantage of using the freeway system to expedite its process of travel between varied destinations, why shouldn’t the bus system take advantage of this same system? The BRU New Bus Service Plan calls for a high-quality integrated freeway bus network that would significantly reduce long-distance travel times by giving bus riders multiple exit/entry access to the county’s most well-traveled cross-county roadways.

BRU Files Big Ticket Item: 5-Year Plan for Countywide New Bus Service
In 1998, Special Master, Donald T. Bliss ordered the Bus Riders Union and the MTA to work together in the Joint Working Group to develop and implement a plan to provide additional bus service to bus riders across Los Angeles County. The two parties could not agree on a plan, however, and in 1999 and 2005 the BRU and MTA submitted separate plans to the Special Master.

The Bus Riders Union’s most recent Five Year Plan for Countywide New Bus Service was submitted to the Special Master, Donald T. Bliss on January 14, 2005. (Download BRU New Service Plan) The BRU Plan calls for an integrated three-tier bus service program with 576 new buses and approximately 2.4 million additional annual hours of bus service. It consists of a freeway bus network, expanded Metro Rapid bus and neighborhood and general service improvements, including an accessible discount student bus pass (Click for more info on the Student Pass). The BRU understands that high quality service levels are a key component of a viable public transportation system. As a part of its guiding principles the New Service Plan calls for frequent service, sufficient daily hours of operation, low fares, and effective advertising. The result will be an accessible countywide network of high-quality, interdependent, long-distance and local service that provides fast, reliable bus service during the week, in the evenings, and on the weekends.

In contrast to the BRU’s New Service Plan, the MTA’s recent “New Service” submission to the courts included almost no expansion of the bus fleet over the next five years! ! While it has stalled implementation of a New Bus Service Plan, MTA has spent more money on suburban municipal bus operators, more money for the Pasadena Gold Line (a 13.5-mile train with very few riders), and has continued to cut countywide bus service, including many freeway bus lines.

The Order Is In – BRU Strikes Blow at MTA Policies of Transit Segregation
After reviewing both plans, on April 14, 2005, Special Master Donald Bliss ruled that the MTA has not yet met Consent Decree requirements for countywide new bus service and that MTA must develop a New Service Implementation Plan that meets Consent Decree requirements by July 31st, 2005. In the ruling, Bliss ordered the MTA to add a minimum of 134 new buses to its Metro Rapid Fleet as a first step toward full implementation of a 5-year New Service Plan. (Download Order). This is a significant victory for the transit dependent community of Los Angeles and the Bus Riders Union and means, at minimum, $170 million in bus improvements for bus riders countywide.

Additionally, the order states that “Only 33% of the service provided by the Metro Rapid network may be diverted or converted from existing local or limited service in Metro Rapid corridors or other service system wide (New Service Order, pg.25).” This means that the MTA must change its policy of cutting Local and Limited service and substituting it with “new” Rapid Bus service. This means that thousands of Local bus service hours that have been cut by MTA will need to be restored throughout the county.

The order also obligates MTA to reallocate bus-eligible funds from non-bus projects (such as rail projects) to pay for new bus service. The MTA can no longer claim it has no funds for additional bus service and steal the hard-earned money of bus riders through fare hikes, all while building multiple new rail projects with bus-eligible funds. Instead, MTA must make the bus system the first priority for funding before all other projects, including rail.

The order also requires MTA to safeguard funding for 11 pilot project bus lines and to seriously consider BRU’s plan for Freeway Bus and Community Shuttle services. But the fight doesn’t end here. Over the next year, the Bus Riders Union is going to have to fight both legally and politically to win implementation of the ruling made by the Special Master.