Streetsblog Los Angeles

At the end of last year, the emails started trickling in.  ”There’s a new bench at my stop.”  ”They replaced the crappy plastic bench with something more durable.  Yes, after months of witnessing the dismantleing of the old network of bus benches after the City Council voted to replace their old bench contractor Norman Bench with Martin Outdoor Media.

As before, the benches will be installed by Martin Outdoor Media who will take care of the upkeep of the benches.  Instead of being paid by the city, Martin Outdoor Media makes their money off the advertisements on the benches themselves and pays the city for the right to put the benches down.  At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Under Norman Bench, many of the most popular bus stops didn’t have benches because they were in lower income areas that attracted fewer advertising dollars.

“6,000 new benches will be installed, which include benches that are replacing the older, existing plastic benches and new benches at bus stops that currently do not have any bus patron amenities,” Paul Gomez, a spokesman with the Department of Public Works, writes.  ”All replacement and new benches, are to be installed over a 24 month period that started in Oct. 2011.” Read more…

A pair of LAUSD teachers has taken to YouTube to rally the troops against the Governor’s plan to cut funding for school transportation. Read to the cadence of “The Night Before Christmas” the narrator rips a political culture that will sell out children’s education instead of raising the funds to do it right.

Brown must really like the idea of children being driven to school. First, he vetoed a law that would make it safer for children, or anyone, to ride a bike. Now he’s cutting funds for school buses. What’s next, cuts to the Safe Routes to School fund?

The full text of the teacher’s plea can be found after the jump. Directions on how to make your voice heard on this issue can be found on their YouTube page.

Better get those messages in soon, the Governor’s proposed cuts to the school bus budget go into place on January 3.

Read more…

Yesterday, the Metro Board of Directors discussed the recently released FTA Report detailing Title VI Civil Rights violations at Metro.  The Source called the discussion “by far the liveliest part of the meeting,” but it also showed ongoing confusion about what the report means and what is the best way to meet the complaints.

Mayor Villaraigosa, whose plane from Asia had landed just over eight hours before the meeting began, spoke for the entire Board that they were “very concerned” about the report’s findings.  While other members expressed some particular issues with items raised in the report, the strongest complaints came from other non-white members of the Board.  City Councilman Jose Huizar complained about the lack of translated materials outside of English and Spanish and Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was perhaps most blunt when he called the entire affair “rather embarrassing” in the Los Angeles Times.

Despite their concerns with Metro actions that led them to yesterday’s discussion, the Metro Board did back the basic plan to get the agency back on track.  While Metro staff has told anyone willing to listen that these are minor procedural complaints that will be addressed by March or April or June (depending who is speaking for Metro) of next year, critics with the Bus Riders Union and other civil rights groups protested Metro Headquarters throughout the afternoon.  Their message was simple, the FTA report is a big deal, and the BRU doesn’t trust Metro to do handle the complaints fairly without an empowered citizen oversight committee.

The Bus Riders Union has long argued that Metro should restore the over 1 million hours of service cuts from the past three years and restore fares to their 2007 levels.  They believe that the FTA’s report, coupled with strong civilian oversight of Metro’s response is the key to start making these positions a reality. Read more…

Yesterday, the Federal Transit Administration publicly released its Title VI Civil Rights Review of Metro that was completed earlier this year.  The FTA outlines a series of deficiencies in almost half of its twelve civil rights categories.  Metro insists these are minor issues that can be easily fixed while critics of the agency call the report “a crushing indictment of the MTA.”  The document is available as a word document off the FTA’s website and a pdf off Streetsblog’s Sribd Page.

The FTA identified deficiencies in five of the 12 requirements of the Title VI Circular applicable to urban transit agencies that receive federal funds.  The five deficient areas are:

• Notice to the Public of Rights
• Language Access to LEP Persons
• System-wide Service Standards and Policies
• Evaluations of  Service and Fare Changes
• Monitoring Transit Service

Despite the strong critique of Metro policies, the FTA report stops short of requiring that Metro roll back any of its recent fare increases or service cuts that led to the Bus Riders Union to call for a Civil Rights Review in the first place.  BRU spokespeople noted that the report doesn’t rule out making such a determination in the future, but for now the agency has time to answer the FTA’s complaints, create and implement a Civil Rights Corrective Action Plan, and fill in some gaps in its reporting.

For example, when a Metro policy is shown, by its own analysis, to have a “disparate impact” on a minority or disadvantaged community  Metro is required to prove that the policy is absolutely necessary and there is no other less discriminatory alternative available.  In the case of its 2009 and 2011 service cuts, the agency did show a “disparate impact” in over three fifths of its service changes, but didn’t show that cuts were a “business necessity” in its own documents explaining the cuts and there were no other “less discriminatory alternatives.”

In plain English, Metro didn’t sufficiently prove that its service changes, cuts and improvements, were a business necessity after determining that they had a systematic negative impact on minority and disadvantaged communities.

In addition to studying the impact of its fare policies, including the reduction in cost for the Metro Day Pass that went on the books this summer, Metro is required to do a study of the cumulative impact of the changes to bus service that have occurred since 2009.  But it’s not like Metro is just ticking off a series of studies that it has to do, pending the findings of these studies, the FTA could require changes, including a requirement to roll back past policies, service changes and fare changes once Metro concludes its reporting.

Some of the other findings in the report were just strange.  For example, by its own standard, Metro has to examine why there is a significant difference, 3% or more, in survey answers from different demographics when completing its bi-annual survey of riders.  However, when their rider surveys showed that difference, there was never any examination of why, just a blanket statement that: Read more…

On Friday, Metro abruptly announced that it would be suspending changes and cuts to its bus service originally planned to go into effect yesterday until further notice.  The about-face on the most recent round of proposed cuts and other changes happened so quickly that just the day before Metro announced the changes via press release and it didn’t have time to forewarn members of its local Service Councils that approved the service tweaks of the change in plans.

Anyone wondering why the change of plans happened so suddenly had to wait only for a couple of hours.  Late Friday afternoon, The Source wrote that the Federal Transit Administration will announce this week that, “that Metro did not fully follow federal regulations and guidance when the agency made service and fare changes. The review dates back to 2009.”  The FTA has been reviewing Metro’s policies and decision making processes as the agency has scaled back its bus fleet in the past couple of years.

Not surprisingly, the Bus Riders Union was thrilled with the dual announcements.

“Metro’s decision to suspend another round of service cuts is clearly an indication this agency is treading carefully and is feeling the heat of the FTA civil rights review, which has been in progress since the summer,” writes Sunyoung Yang of the Bus Riders Union in a press statement.  ”We hope that it’s the start of a new direction for this agency, with a renewed commitment to civil rights and first class service for its low income majority Black, Latino, and Asian riders. We eagerly await the findings of the FTA report and a robust plan on how Metro will clean up its civil rights act.”

But it appears that the BRU’s hopes for major policy changes at Metro will be dashed.  The Source article calmly states, “It is important to note that the compliance review does not call for any service changes or fare changes to be rescinded,” and a statement from Metro spokesman Marc Littman ends with a promise that the proposed changes will occur soon.

“The bus service changes suspended for Sunday were mostly minor but there were some significant improvements planned that the community sought.  Consider Line 30,” writes Littman.  ”The suspended service changes should go into effect within a few weeks once we do analysis on a couple of lines.”  Part of the service changes included a large expansion of service on bus line 30 serving West Hollywood and the Pico/Rimpau area along San Vicente Boulevard. Read more…

Wednesday, Metro experimented with locking the gates at the North Hollywood Red Line station and unlike previous experiments with locking the gates, outside of an article on The Source, nobody seemed to notice.  As with previous gate-locking experiments, there was little confusion among commuters.  Most “Tapped” their way through the gate while those with paper or Metrolink tickets were aided by staff.

Based on a sharp reduction of email complaints about TAP, the program seems to finally be rolling smoothly with the only confusion still coming from bus drivers.  Some drivers are still having trouble selling and properly charging TAP cards.  Every couple of weeks, I receive an email complaining about TAP, and everytime, they come from a bus rider.

The most recent letter came from “KW”:

I get on the bus.  There’s $5 in my hand, and $12 on my TAP card.  “I’d like to buy a Day Pass please.” The driver gestures to the machine and can’t take my cash because there is more than $5 on the card already.  I tap my card in good faith, assuming that $5 has been subtracted and that I am now good to go with a day pass.  Several hours later, after zig-zagging round town running errands, I am horrified to find that my TAP card is now empty, with a full fare (no transfers) being deducted each time I got on a bus, and that I am stranded a couple of miles from home without any change (you can bet I’d spent that $5).  Luckily, this all happened before dark and I was able to walk back in relative safety.  It would have been an entirely different story a couple of hours later.

While this is a pretty awful story, the good news is that with her card number, Metro could fix the financial problem and refund KW’s money. Read more…

When one thinks of TransitTV, those ubiquitous television boxes on Metro buses, there’s many things that jump to mind.  Poetry is probably not one of them. However, thanks to a new project by Freewaves’ Out the Window series, a little bit of poetry is coming to a bus near you.

When triggered by a GPS, TransitTV will be briefly taken over by a short poem by long-time Metro rider Marisela Norte.  Along the routes she regularly rides, five intersections were chosen to host Norte’s poems.  Here’s how it works, a GPS system in the traffic signals triggers remotes inside of the televisions.  For 1,000 feet, 500 before and after the signal, whatever Transit TV was broadcasting is replaced by this:

“We wanted to expose people to something different,” explains Anne Bray with Freewaves.  In the past, Freewaves had sponsored video contests for students and local artists with winning videos shown on all Transit TV’s at the same time.  But, “We were drawn to using the GPS technology.  Any bus rider that rides past certain intersections will see the poems.” Read more…

Every year, the Metro Board combines its December and November meetings into one giant meeting in mid-December.  One item, passed by the Board’s Safety and Operations Committee in November is already raising concern from bus advocates and riders who are worried that a change in bus’ headway times could lead to more crowded conditions.

The innocuously titled Agenda Item 45: Update Metro Service Standards and Policies proposes to increase the maximum headway time for rapid bus service to 20 minutes for peak service and 30 minutes for off peak service.  This doesn’t mean that there will suddenly be a thirty minute wait for all rapid buses in the middle of the day, but it gives Metro the flexibility to altar time tables for bus service on rapids and other lines that it doesn’t have at the moment.

“The new standards are unequal and biased, allowing buses to have slow 60 min headways versus 10-12 minute headway cap for rail service.  If these kinds of service standards get applied more buses can be slowed down and trip thinned by the MTA.  Bus riders will have to bear additional wait times and this will kill ridership on the buses,” explains Sunyoung Yang, an organizer with the Bus Riders Union.  ”If the same headway standards applied on any of the rail service even the Red Line, no one would ride it—imagine waiting 30 min to an hour for the next train to go to Union Station.”

For its part, Metro staff says that Agenda Item 45 is as innocuous as its title.

“We’ve been using 20 minute frequency for evaluating Rapids over the past few shakeups, so the standards are consistent with our informal guidelines,” writes Dave Sotero from Metro’s public relations division.  ”The original planning guidelines for Rapids were 10 minute peak/20 minute base.  We were required to operate Rapids at this level for a period of one year from each line’s implementation.  Read more…

Late last week, most likely in response to a report by the Bus Riders Union and their community allies, a letter from Metro CEO Art Leahy dismissing the Civil Rights complaints of the BRU appeared on The Source.  The letter basically announced that the Title VI complaints against the agency announced last Spring were dismissed, leading to much cheering from Metro supporters.

While there’s nothing in Leahy’s letter that is factually incorrect on its own, it paints a picture that the Federal Transit Administration has already ruled that Metro has not violated Civil Rights laws with recent fare increases and bus service cuts.  While the FTA may rule that way, they haven’t yet.

Here’s a timeline of the BRU’s complaint and where we are now.

Over the past four years, Metro engaged in a series of fare hikes and service cuts in the name of efficiency and stabilizing the farebox recovery ratio of the agency.  Thanks in large part to Measure R, fares on students, people of lower income and the elderly have not gone up as dramatically as they have on other people.  Despite a 40% increase in its base fare, with more increases to come, Metro has one of the lower fares in the country.  The agency has also cut almost 1 million hours of bus service including many of the “lower performing” routes completely.

In November, the Bus Riders Union wrote the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) asking for a review of Metro’s practices under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Executive Order 12898 and Department of Transportation Regulations.

In March, the FTA declined the request but announced that it would conduct an on-site compliance review of the agency.  The letter from FTA credited the BRU’s complaint to the Civil Rights Department as one reason for the compliance review.  This began a split narrative on what the FTA’s review actually is.  Metro claims its a routine review and that the BRU’s complaint was dismissed, which is technically true.  The BRU claims that they pointed out a system of decision making at Metro that further disadvantages the disadvantaged.  In fact, the BRU trumpeted the announcement of the compliance review in a major press blitz.  You car read the FTA’s decision letter, available exclusively on Streetsblog, here.

This summer, the investigators came to Metro and interviewed staff, Board Members and other interested parties including the Bus Riders Union.  Following their meeting, the BRU submitted a brief on the service cuts passed by the Metro Board since their initial complaint.  This was not a second complaint, rather an informational packet submitted to the reviewers. Read more…

Yesterday afternoon, the Bus Rider’s Union and thirteen allied organizations released “Transit Civil Rights & Economic Survival in Los Angeles: A Case for Federal Intervention in LA Metro,” a report detailing how service cuts and fare hikes have devastated working class families in the past four years.  Since the expiration of a court ordered consent decree which mandated levels of service, Metro slashed 12% of its bus service hours while approving a series of fare increases.

“The tragedy of the MTA policies over the last four years is that they roll back almost all of the transit improvements – namely more buses, more bus lines, and lower fares – that MTA implemented under federal court order in response to the BRU’s civil rights lawsuit and 10-year federal consent decree,” states Barbara Lott-Holand, the co-chair of the Bus Riders Union and a transit rider herself for the last 35 years.

Metro and the BRU are awaiting the results of a Civil Rights Audit conducted by the Federal Transit Administration at the request of the Bus Riders earlier this year.  Only transit agencies in Atlanta and Los Angeles underwent this review in the past year.

A lot of the facts and figures found in the report won’t be new to regular readers of Streetsblog and others familiar with recent Metro policy, but it’s still striking to see some of the figures laid out, showing the cumulative impact of the service cuts and fare hikes that have been a major part of Metro’s bus planning since 2007.  The BRU also rejects Metro’s argument that the cuts are about increasing efficiency noting that Metro’s buses carry more passengers per mile than any bus fleet in America except New York City’s.

The report goes on to argue that the cuts and hikes have a disproportionate impact on struggling minority communities noting the higher rates of unemployment and poverty facing many bus riders.  90% of all bus riders are from minority communities and over 70% of all transit riders are minorities in Los Angeles.  In Los Angeles county alone, African Americans are facing a 19% unemployment rate while Latinos face 14% unemployment. Read more…