These new metal benches began appearing late last year. In some cases they are replacing the old plastic benches, and in other cases are coming to stops that have had no benches at all. Photo: L.A. Urban Soul/Flickr

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.”

When new Sharrows are painted, or new safety signs are put up, Streetsblog asks you to tell us when and where you see them.  There’s no reason we can’t do the same for bus benches.  If you see a new bench or shelter being put up, please let us know in the comments section.  If you can get a good picture, email them to damien at streetsblog dot org.

Martin Outdoor Media’s contract with the city runs for ten years from October 2011 to October 2021.

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.

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the city
There was talk of some news that was really really @_($*@
The stockings of some were stuffed full of gifts
But the state gave us a bucket of @)_@
I teach little children
I don’t mean to cuss
But How the @)$( can kids get to school
Without their bus?
When I was a child my school was diverse
Through the effort of many it took money and work
To build a school where children succeed
Through special services meeting their needs
But now it will all vanish in the blink of an eye
If we fail to speak up, we merely comply
From coast to coast, across the nation
We witness an increase in school segregation
Oh no, not here.  Not without a fight.
Because Education for all is a civil right.

Photo of yesterday's rally outside Metro Headquarters via the Bus Riders Union

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.

Pointing to the somewhat anemic response of Bay Area Rapid Transit to Civil Rights Complaints, the Bus Riders Union wants to be involved in creating the solutions to the problems revealed by the FTA report.  That the Board was presented with a 47 page action plan the day the FTA report became public doesn’t speak to a process that allows for a lot of community impact, even if the agency is promising a series of hearings after the report is near finalized.

“We don’t want a public input process after the decisions are made,” said Sunyoung Yang, a lead organizer with the Bus Riders Union.  At this point, there has been no signal from any Metro Board Member that they would support a different public process than the one outlined by staff, but the elected officials on the Board and their staff have had less than a week to process all of the information in the report.

Streetsblog will have more on the FTA report on Monday with comments from some of the other leading advocacy groups including The Transit Coalition, Southern California Transit Advocates, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club.

Photo:Tejana/Flickr

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:

“Since this was an opinion survey, not an observational one, perceived differences may not be real. Those who are more frequent and/or dependent users of the system are likely to be more critical than occasional riders. Differing perceptions may be a reflection of the extent to which users care about the system and its quality.”

Other “highlights” from the FTA report include:

• The FTA is going to want more information than that.  Other highlights from the report include: requirements that important Metro documents and announcements be translated into more languages than just English and Spanish since nearly 1 in 12 Metro riders doesn’t speak either of these languages,
• The FTA requires consistent standards for bus and rail programs for evaluation.  Metro is seeking to address this issues at this week’s Board Meeting
• Metro has not completed consistent and increased analysis of environmental justice issues in environmental documents for rail expansion projects.

Metro has officially responded to the document with statements on The Source, a Civil Rights Corrective Plan, and a report to its Board of Directors that cast the FTA report as a minor hiccup and not a major indictment of the agency. Metro argues that many of the issues identified are just minor communication errors and the rest will be addressed by improved policies by March of next year.  Metro even blames the FTA for confusing policies that led Metro astray.

Meanwhile, the Bus Riders Union sees a lot of things in the report that sound familiar, because they have been saying them for years.  Federal officials noted that bus loads were higher and quality of service was lower in communities of lesser means, which is boilerplate for the BRU.  BRU has argued for years that Metro was not making a case that its service changes were “a business necessity,” an argument embraced by the FTA report.

“The real question now is whether FTA will insist on an honest and fair corrective action plan from Metro,” explains Sunyoung Yang of the Bus Riders Union looking ahead to future FTA action.  ”We believe such a plan would have to restore the nearly one million hours of bus service that Metro cut the last four years, cuts that rolled back transit service that was originally added as part of BRU’s lawsuit against Metro.”

The most recent service changes were passed by the Metro Board by the slimmest 7-6 margin earlier this year, but at this point it is too soon to know if the FTA report will cause for Metro to voluntariy roll back some of its service cuts.  Staff for Metro Board Members apparently don’t have the same access to FTA reports that Ari Bloomekatz at the Los Angeles Times does.  While Bloomekatz was writing on the report last week, political staff members didn’t see the FTA report until shortly before it was available on The Source yesterday afternoon.

Further complicating matters, it was Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who has led the fight against most bus service cuts, but his office has yet to comment on the report while the Mayor is in Asia stumping for Los Angeles’ business community.

Streetsblog will continue to cover the FTA report and the created fallout.  As advocates and politicians have a chance to dig in to the report and Metro’s response, there will doubtless be more breaking news as the week, and month, continues.

The Bus Riders Union hasn't always given high marks to Metro. What marks with the FTA give?

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.

What has changed at Metro as a direct result of the review is that the agency hired a full-time Civil Rights Compliance Officer earlier this fall to review Metro policies and work closely with the FTA to make certain that Metro and the FTA are in harmony on any future fare or service changes.

Metro also shrugs off criticism that recent fare hikes and service cuts were in major violation of federal law.  Littman writes, “The federal Civil Rights guidelines require equity analysis to determine if there are impacts on low income people and minorities for service improvements and fare reductions like the recent dollar drop in the day pass cost as well as cuts in service or fare hikes. The regulations have been recently clarified by FTA for the transit industry.”

Attempts to control the message on the FTA’s findings have already begun in earnest.  On one hand, you have Metro suspending service changes, hiring Civil Rights Compliance Officers and claiming past violations are “minor.”  One transit advocate, speaking on background, scoffs at the notion that Metro isn’t worried about the FTA’s report noting that, “MTA wouldn’t just hire a full time Civil Rights Compliance director just in good faith ‘to be in compliance’ out of the blue—why now versus in 2006, or 2007, 2008 or any other time?”

When the FTA releases its Final Report, Streetsblog will post it as soon as we can.  A complete story might have to wait until the following day so that we have time to really sink our teeth in before we post some detailed analysis.

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.

So I call the number on the back of the TAP card.  A very weary customer service type tells me that no, there is no way to claim a refund, and it’s not her problem that Metro haven’t trained their bus drivers how to add a day pass to aTAP card. Apparently it happens a lot. There is no training schedule.  No idea when the problem will be fixed, if ever.  She has no interest in helping me or suggesting a workaround for this problem in future.  Thank you and good bye.

Obviously, I’m pissed, because I spent $12 on bus fares when I only intended to spend $5.  I’m also pissed because there is no way of preventing this ever happening again, other than walking to the subway station and buying a day pass at the machine – which adds considerably to my journey time.

I’d be pissed too!  I talked to Matt Raymond, Metro’s Chief Communications Officer, who is directly overseeing the TAP program after the earlier rollout follies.  Raymond responded that complaints about Metro’s bus drivers and TAP is way down because they have been trained in selling and charging TAP cards since we last checked in on the program back in February.

When forwarded KW’s letter, Raymond expressed confusion because the agent should have been able to help KW get a refund, and it should have taken about two minutes.

The good news for bus riders is that it is still possible to purchase TAP cards on the bus simply by buying a day pass.  While the cards will only have one days value at the time, it’s a simple matter to either visit one of the Metro ticket counters or visit the TAP website where you can load value on to the card.  Raymond reminds us that going through the website takes a day for the value to load on to the card, but visiting a window does it immediately.  He also says that the number of people buying TAP cards on the bus has gone down from several thousand a day to several hundred.

While Streetsblog has received a lot fewer complaints about TAP in recent months, its possible that the reduced number of complaints is because of fatigue not that the system is running smoother.  Let me know your recent expereinces with TAP and Metro, has it been getting better?

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:

At Wilshire and Fairfax, image provided by Freewaves to KCET

“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.”

The poems will be triggered as buses enter five specific intersections:  Whittier/Atlantic and Whittier/Indiana in East Los Angeles, 5^th/Broadway in Downtown, Wilshire/Western in Koreatown and Wilshire/Fairfax in Mid-Wilshire. Norte wrote her poems with these intersections in mind as they relate to her daily commute and the people and places she observes along the way.  The poems began running on Tuesday and will continue through the end of the month.

“I’ve chosen public transportation and my own two feet as my preferred means of navigating the city. Every day I make it a point to venture out with my camera and a small notebook and just take in this landscape that is Los Angeles,” Norte says, explaining her project. “It can be a short tour around the neighborhood, a visit to the Shoe Repair man or a six mile walk. I take a personal object along with me to leave at a bus bench or atop a newspaper vending machine and try and imagine who may have come across it; might this be something they were looking for or had lost? Will they carry it home? Will it remain there for me to find again? Questions posed, and there begins the writing.  I have received many, many beautiful gifts on the sidewalks of the city; this is my thank you.”

Have you noticed these poems on your commute?  If so, let us know what you thought and what reaction, if any, they brought out from your fellow riders.  For more on Norte and the GPS Poems, visit KCET.

Westbound on the 720. Photo:Faria!/Flickr

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. 

After the first year, we are allowed the flexibility of matching service with demand.  During the past few years, we’ve conducted an evaluation of the Rapid program and right-sized service levels to match demand.  As a result, many of the rapids do not follow the 10 min peak frequency.  Therefore the standard was reset to 20 minute to be consistent with current operations.”

The Bus Riders Union contends that changing the headways is part of a self-fulfilling plan that reduces bus ridership.  For example, if bus headways are increased in an area, it will reduce the people riding that bus service, which will lead to reduced ridership.  The reduced ridership will lead to increased headways, that will again reduce the ridership.  To the Bus Riders Union, Metro is basically practicing the reverse of the induced demand theory that applies to highway widenings.

Metro’s Rapid Line 720 on Wilshire Boulevard is one of the most used rapid bus lines in America, and thanks to some unfortunate problems earlier this month, it provided a window into what a 20 minute headway on that rapid line would look like.  Streetsblog reader Elizabeth Huff wrote her sibling Herbie Huff about a two night period where there was a 20 minute headway on the 720.  Metro staff claims that there was no plan for this change, but that sometimes mechanical problems, traffic and other variables collude to create a mess for transit riders.

The Huffs write of the early November experience:

Both times it has been a crisis of full buses passing crowds of dozens. At her stop at Beverly, tonight she counted over 50 people waiting for the bus. It is usually 10-15 people; and the 720 bus is posted to run on 5 minute headways normally. She usually waits 5-10 minutes for a bus, and the past two nights she has waited 30 minutes and 45 minutes respectively. Something very fishy is going on.

She has observed the bunching of buses, which is a normal occurrence and can screw up headways, but the sheer number of buses running right now only adds up to a fraction of the usual.

By the end of the week, the bus headway was back to normal.

One of L.A.'s less attractive bus stops. Photo: Fred Camino/Metro Rider

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.

The Bus Riders Union did not appeal the FTA’s decision not to do a Title VI review in addition to the review the FTA is currently undertaking.  In their own words,

 Our appeal to the FTA was a procedural request, based in the complex FTA guidelines, to shift our role in the review process and did not raise any substantive issues. Likewise, FTA’s decision not to grant this request has nothing to do with the substantive issues we raised in our original complaint.

The people at FTA empowered to speak about these complaints are not available by phone this week, they’re at a training conference.  Likewise, statement from Metro staff was basically the same as Leahy’s letter.  The FTA did confirm that the BRU’s recent request was procedural and not substantive.

While the two sides in this drama, the BRU and Metro continue to tell different stories, (the BRU is acting as though this is the major transit story of the year, Metro is acting like it’s routine) there’s no escaping that the last chapter will be written by the FTA.  Their final report isn’t due out until the end of this year at the earliest, and it will quickly become apparent which version of this story is correct.

As soon as we hear anything on the FTA’s decision, we’ll let you know.

Happy Halloween, transit riders. All charts via: Transit Civil Rights & Economic Survival in Los Angeles

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.

Some of the numbers in the report are a result of timing.  Much of the increase in Metro’s budget comes from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax passed by L.A. County voters in 2008 to fund transit and road improvements.  While most of the funds in these projects are “locked in” to certain projects and can’t be readily moved to fund transit operations, other sales taxes dedicated to Metro are more fluid.  One of the reports arguments is that some of those funds that are going towards rail expansion ought to be used instead to protect bus service and fare costs.

The result of all these cuts and increases is reduced ridership in an era where people have less disposable income to spend.  As a result, people’s ability to care for their families is reduced or their dependency on an expensive automobile is increased.

“When bus service cuts make it hard for people to get to medical appointments, jobs that feed their families, and schools, it’s an attack on their health and their rights,” explains Martha Arguello, Director of the Los Angeles chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. ”And in the worst-polluted city in the US, Metro’s policies have driven down mass transit use, and the health effects of more cars on the road are devastating for low income children and families. ”

The report concludes with a series of potential fixes to the bus cuts/fare hikes crisis outlined in the report.

• Reinvest resources in the bus system and keep resources in neighborhoods: Any changes to the bus systems made in the name of efficiency should be invested 100% back into the bus system.
• Open an honest debate about Metro’s funding allocation decisions based on transparent accounting of the availability
• of operation eligible funds.
• Decisions about service changes should protect civil rights and be based on fair and balanced analysis of modes and
• efficient use of resources.
• Ensure minimum impact of service changes through strict standards for alternative service.

Joining the Bus Riders Union in the release of the report are the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Communities for a Better Environment, East Los Angeles Community Corporation, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles, Public Advocates Inc., Restaurant Opportunities Center – Los Angeles, SEIU-United Service Workers West, SEIU-United Long Term Care Workers, Southeast Asian Community Alliance, Strategic Action for a Just Economy, and Urban Habitat.

The impact of the Gold Line Eastside Extension on local bus options is one thing that Eastsiders have complained about at recent meetings.

Recall the language in the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution about “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances?” Keep it in mind as you read this overview of the recent interaction of Metro, a group of disgruntled riders, and a local politico. If nothing else it illustrates what American Democracy in action looks like.

When I wrote about Metro’s February 1st ‘all regions’ public hearing for the June service change proposals, I mentioned that among the attendees were “a vocal contingent from East L.A. Their message was to reverse the truncation of lines 30/31 by instead having them again extended to Atlantic Ave.”

By April the residents with the aid of the Bus Rider’s Union held a rally to press their case that the changes had left many residents stranded and was causing hardship.

When I spoke to some of the eastsiders attending the February meeting they shared frustration about their concerns receiving a lack of attention from L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina and her staff. By May the Eastside Sun was reporting that Molina’s staff had gotten the message and attempting to assuage constituents’ complaints by proposing a re-routing of the El Sol community shuttle to address access issues along 1st Street.

By August Metro’s San Gabriel Valley Service Council was holding a public workshop “to listen to the concerns of East Los Angeles Metro bus patrons”along with presenting proposals to address the complaints.

Transit activist Ken Ruben attended the Workshop and afterward reported about 80 people attended with about 16 of them making comments. Besides asking for Metro’s route 30 to resume operating east of Indiana, a few of the speakers also expressed displeasure with the Gold Line eastside extension that opened in 2009.

Taking the input received at the workshop Metro staff have come up with what they term “Proposed New Service on East 1st Street” to be presented at a Special Meeting of the Council being held Monday, October 17th, 5:00 p.m. at the East Los Angeles Public Library, 4837 E. Third St. (adjacent to East L.A. Civic Center Gold Line station).

If anyone has a chance to attend the meeting please post in the comments what reception the proposal gets from the attendees–whether they feel their concerns are being addressed or that what Metro is offering falls short.

“The films are meant to be shown on the bus,” explains Heidi Zeller with Freewaves.   “People who may live in the Valley and commute to South L.A.  might pass through 20 different neighborhoods but they never get off the bus to experience them.  Out the Window’s goal is to encourage them to get off the bus and into these neighborhoods.”

When Out the Window was running on Transit TV  this Spring, the series focused on student films about their unique communities.  Often times these films focused on how to make the communities safer and healthier.  This time, the focus is a little different. Each day, a new video will be featured highlighting a different place, event or community in Los Angeles.  The series runs from the start of October until the end of November.  When Out the Window.

If you don’t ride the bus, but want to see today’s film, and all the ones that have come before it, visit the Out the Window website.

Freewaves started with a loose idea of collecting films “about, by and in Los Angeles” and ended up with a pretty diverse group of films.  Some artists focused on neighborhoods or meaningful spots in the community.  Others looked at the history and background of city sites and what’s being done to preserve it.  Still other videos show public performances and how art, artists and the public interact in an open space.   To show the diversity of the films, and to show where they need to recruit film makers in the future, freewaves has mapped what communities are featured.

Interactivity is important to the Freewaves team, so each film asks viewers a question at the end of the presentation.  Riders can text an answer to the team.  Every text gets entered into a raffle drawing where the winners receive a DVD showcasing 20 years of art and films curated by Freewaves.

Picture from today's rally courtesy of the Bus Riders Union

Earlier today, the Bus Riders Union, Transportation for America and a host of other urban advocates rallied at the corner of Wilshire and Vermont, a hot intersection for both bus and rail riders to make the case that clean, safe and efficient transit options must be a priority for the federal government.

Current proposals put forward in the House of Representatives by the Republican Majority would slash 37% of federal funding for public transportation and all surface transportation programs.  In response, transit riders and advocates have dubbed today, “Don’t X Out Public Transit” Day.

It’s not news that Metro has cut over 1,000,000 hours of service in recent years, and if the Republican leadership’s plan becomes federal law, further cuts would certainly be coming even as Mayor Villaraigosa and the Metro Board of Directors is scrambling to maintain and even in some cases restore bus service.

“For the millions of Americans and 100,000s of Angelenos without cars, public transit is the difference between having and not having a way to go to the market, the doctor, to school, to a job interview,” said Crystal McMillan, Organizer of the Transit Riders for Public Transportation. “The buses are our legs. Where can we go without them? Now is the time for our government to be investing in public transportation and our infrastructure, not cutting.”

A recent report by the Brookings Institute rated Los Angeles as one of the best places to be car-free as far as access to transit is concerned.  While over 90% of transit riders have easy access to transit, the same report showed that the transit they have access to didn’t take them to job centers.

Nationally, the American Public Transit Advocates (APTA) has been making the case for years that investing in transit is a great way to boost the economy.  According to APTA for every one dollar invested in public transportation, four dollars in economic returns is generated- and every $1 billion invested in public transportation creates or supports 36,000 jobs.  The House Republican proposal would result in California losing 83,000 transit jobs and $2.2 billion in federal transit funds delaying job creating transit construction projects and straining the ability of transit agencies to provide the service transit riders need to get to their jobs.

Nationally, over 84% of transit agencies are already cutting transit lines or raising fares even as transit ridership, and transit dependency increase.

Source: Keeping Rural Communities Connected

Buried in the FAA extension passed last week was a line item for air service to connect rural communities to major airports. These are usually tiny flights, leaving from remote airports. All together, they use annual subsidies of over $163 million.

In July, when Republicans forced a temporary shutdown of the FAA, this “essential air service” was one of the major sticking points. The House wanted to end the federal subsidies funding the service (even though Republicans disproportionately represent rural districts) except for routes in Alaska and Hawaii, which would still be eligible for federal subsidies.

The Reason Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Bus Association, and Taxpayers for Common Sense – groups with wildly divergent missions – have come together to figure out if those communities could be connected more sustainably by using buses instead of planes.

Of the 153 communities served by what’s known as essential air service, many are long distances from major airports, especially the large proportion in Alaska. But M.J. Bradley and Associates, which was commissioned by the four groups to write the study, “Keeping Rural Communities Connected,” found that 38 of the 153 airports served – about a quarter of the total – were within 150 miles of a hub airport [PDF].

They found that 79,000 one-way flights leave each year out of those 38 airports, carrying 615,000 passengers, at a total cost of $131 million. Of that, about $60 million is government subsidy and $70 million comes from fares. M.J. Bradley found that equivalent bus service could be offered for just $41 million, for a savings of $90 million. Average passenger costs would go down by as much as $285 per round trip.

The switch from airplanes to buses would also save nearly 6 million gallons of gas annually and cut carbon pollution by more than 63,000 tons.

Source: Keeping Rural Communities Connected

The libertarians in the group like the plan because it gives private bus companies a chance to provide the service, and even Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association adopted that rhetoric. “The government needs to get out of the business of making selections by passing dollars around on who the winners are and who the losers are in transportation,” he said, “and they need to look at what makes the most sense, not the stovepipe approach we’ve seen in Washington for so many years.”

They think that bus service between these remote areas may require subsidies at first, but that once the market grows, the private sector can take over.

I’d be interested to see some evidence to back up that claim – it’s not in the report. After all, it was just a few years ago that Greyhound was forced to make major cutbacks to its money-losing routes in rural areas.

Just because bus service is cheaper, for the government and for the passenger, it won’t necessarily attract customers. The study found that in most cases, the trip took longer by bus, even taking into account the security lines and extra hour built in to plane travel. On average, researchers said it increased the trip by 43 minutes. Will people be willing to spend an extra 43 minutes getting to their destination, even to save themselves — and the government — some money?

Maybe. Without making too many generalizations, rural Americans tend to have a libertarian streak, wanting government out of their business. They — or maybe it’s just their members of Congress — often complain about subsidizing urban mass transit systems with their gas tax dollars. But in this case, the rest of the country subsidizes their decision to live far from services and amenities by providing tiny turboprop airplanes to shuttle them back and forth. Perhaps the recipients of those subsidies would embrace the free-market nature of the bus service (if it ever launches and turns a profit) and prefer that to dependence on government largesse.

Photo: Fire Monkey Fish/Flickr

Last week, the Brookings Institute, one of Washington’s oldest think tanks released, Transit Access and Zero Vehicle Households, a report that looked at transit access for the country’s most dependent populations and ranked each major American metropolitan area on how well they provided bus service to this population.

Los Angeles ranked second in terms of providing access to car free households.  99.1% of car-free Angelenos live in a neighborhood with some access to transit, a higher percentage than New York, San Francisco or any American city east of Honolulu.

This announcement led to some pretty heady headlines such as Los Angeles Tops List of Cities For Carless Residents in LAist, Los Angeles Public Transit Access Top Among Major Metropolitan Areas, Besting Even New York in the Huffington Post, and Car-loving L.A. may actually be a public-transit paradise in the Los Angeles Times.

Sounds great, the only problem is that the Brookings Report doesn’t actually say any of those things.  There’s a reason Saturday’s Bus Riders Union event wasn’t a victory party.  What the report does say is that L.A.’s transit system has service in a lot of different residential communities, more than every major city outside Hawaii.  Here are other important notes from the study.

• In the greater Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana car-free residents only have access to 34% of the jobs within a ninety minute transit ride.  In other words, the bus may come, but it doesn’t provide access to the major job centers in a quick and reasonable way.  That’s good for being ranked fifty third amongst the top 100 metro areas, settled snugly between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, both in Pennsylvania.
• The study looks at only number of routes, not service levels, when deciding whether a community is served by transit.  In other words, someone living within walking distance of Union Station and someone living near a Big Blue Bus stop that comes once an hour would both be considered “served” by transit in their community in this report.
• The report is based on data from 2008.  While that’s not long enough ago to call the entire report into question, L.A. Metro has seen some pretty severe service cuts since 2008.  The Bus Riders Union estimates that 12% of the bus service hours have been cut in the past couple of years.  That has to impact the number of communities that are served by transit.
• One major conclusion of the report is that transit agencies need to do a better job providing service to the emerging job centers in America’s exhurbs (think the Westside or Valley), suburbs, or wherever jobs are concentrated.  Given L.A.’s rather poor ranking in providing that service, it’s clear that there’s still a lot of work to do in the City of Angels.

None of this is to say that the report doesn’t have value.  It does.  That there are 700,000 car-free families without access to transit is a disaster, and Brookings rightly calls America out for that lack.  But by looking at selected data to paint an overly cheery picture of Los Angeles’ transit circumstances doesn’t do anyone any favors, and could indeed to quite the opposite.

Mugging for the Streetsblog camera is irresistible. BRU Organizers Sunyoung Yang and Francesca Porchas smile at the VA Hospital Rally for the Wilshire Bus Only Lanes.

Tomorrow morning, the Bus Riders Union and a large coalition of sponsoring organizations will host a “Transit Justice Town Hall on MTA Cuts to Bus Service Lifelines.”  The event begins at 9:30 A.M. at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown.  The “Town Hall” will feature both a chance for community members to testify about the impact that recent bus service cuts and fare hikes have had on their lives.  You can read the BRU’s press release, here.

Combined with the surprising news that bus benches are disappearing around the city, BRU Organizer Esperanza Martinez claims, “From bus benches to bus lines, people are being stranded at the bus stop.  This is their chance to tell their story.”

In addition to the public testimony portion of the event, there will be a panel discussion featuring BRU leadership, public health experts and Dr. Robert Bullard, hailed by Newsweek as one of the top 13 environmental activists in the country and the “Father of Environmental Justice.”  A full list of panelists and short bios can be found at the end of the article.

Coming on the heels of the Federal Transit Administration’s visit to Los Angeles to conduct a civil rights audit of Metro; the Town Hall’s goal is not only to shine a light on the impact of Metro’s bus policy in recent years, but to place the local struggle of bus riders in a national context.

Yesterday, Transportation Nation reported that 80% of transit agencies across the country are experiencing hardships as a result of the national budget crisis.  At the same time, 700,000 Americans live in families without cars or access to transit.

“Really give people a sense how big this transit crisis is,” explains Martinez. “We need to build a national movement that fights for people’s civil rights”

Another reason that the event is being held in the dog days of August is that many elected officials are back in their districts instead of in D.C. or Sacramento.  Martinez closes, “We’ve invited a lot of elected leaders.  We hope they show up and take what they hear back with them.”

Co sponsring the event is an impressive group of community and advocacy groups including: Acción Westlake, Association of Communities United in South Los Angeles, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice-LA, Coalition for Clean Air, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Comite Pro-democracia de Mexico, Comunidad Presente, Communities for a Better Environment , East Los Angeles Community Corporation, Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, Green LA Coalition, HOLA – Hispanos Organizados en Los Angeles, Inner City Struggle, Inquilinos Unidos, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, Korean Resource Center, Little Tokyo Service Center, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, Public Counsel, Reproductive Justice Coalition of Los Angeles, Restaurant Opportunities Center – Los Angeles, SEIU United Long Term Care Workers, SEIU-United Service Workers West, Southeast Asian Community Alliance, Strategic Action for A Just Economy, Unification of Disabled Latin Americans, Union de Vecinos.

Panelist Bios:

Dr. Robert Bullard. Named by Newsweek in 2008 as one the 13 Environmental Leaders of the Century and described as the “Father of Environmental Justice,” he is the author of 16 books on sustainable development, environmental racism, and urban planning policy, including the landmark book on transportation justice, Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity.

Martha Argüello is the Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Los Angeles. One of California’s leading voices for environmental health and justice, she co-founded the Los Angeles County Asthma Coalition and the Coalition for Environmental Health and Justice, and was appointed to Cal/EPA’s Environmental Justice Committee.

Guillermo Mayer is a leading transportation civil rights attorney in the US at Public Advocates. He co-authored the civil rights complaint in the landmark 2009 BART Airport Connector case and is a National Co-coordinator of the national civil rights and environmental justice campaign Transit Riders for Public Transportation.

Barbara Lott-Holland has been the co-chair of the Bus Riders Union for over 10 years. A mother and grandmother and a decades-long bus riders from South Los Angeles, Barbara is a leading voice for transit justice in Los Angeles.

Division 6 circa 1958. Photo:Metro Transportation Library and Archive/Flickr

My bus fan contacts have tipped me off that Friday some Metro buses that have been retired will be on display for inspection at Metro’s Division 6 in Venice from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.  This is a rare chance to enter a Metro bus yard and take a look-see, albeit ostensibly to inspect buses that are up for sale.

The actual sale will be Saturday morning, 9 a.m. at the auction houses’ Gardena facility.  The Metro buses will be sold in absentia.

Division 6 has been a transportation facility since 1901, when it was originally a carhouse and powerhouse serving the Red Car fleet. In 1951 a bus yard replaced the carhouse. Given its limited size and ongoing pressure from the surrounding residential neighborhood Metro has several times explored replacing it. The most extensive effort started in 2003 when the Metro Board approved a landswap where Division 6 would be developed in return for the developer providing Metro with a new larger bus yard in an industrial area on the westside.

Some of the local histories of Division 6 are in this draft environmental document and a 2005 certification of the final environmental document by the Metro Board. Shortly after the environmental documents were adopted the deal imploded. NIMBY opposition to both the new yard and to the scale of the proposed development in Venice killed the deal. The swap subsequently was even mentioned in the media as possibly being an element of the scandal that brought down Union bigshot and former L.A. Council member Martin Ludlow (no charges about the yard and Ludlow were ever filed). BTW, the Councilman who helped kill the deal by pandering to Venice NIMBYs? Bill Rosendahl. And so the neighbors in Venice killed the development but ended up still having Division 6 in their midst.

Recently I’d again heard rumors Division 6 might be closed soon. It has no Compressed Natural Gas fueling capacity so its fleet has to be fueled off-site for reasons why this is so are outlined in a 2009 staff report. But now I am hearing Metro CEO Art Leahy has said publically despite the challenging logistics that it will continue to be active. I imagine Leahy would agree with the reasons for doing so laid out in a 1997 analysis of the cost-effectiveness of Division 6 which in a nutshell says it is all about location, location, location.

I’d appreciate anyone who has a chance to attend the bus inspection session Friday to share their impressions in the comments section.

The 751 to Huntington Park wasn't on the chopping block, but the 611 "Huntington Park Shuttle" was. Photo:MetroBusRider/Flickr

I was still on the Carmageddon high on Monday afternoon when the press release rolled in to my Inbox announcing more bus service “changes.”

I hate covering bus cuts, even when it’s a much more minor adjustment than what we’ve gotten used to seeing the last couple of years, and even when some advocated assure me the cuts and restructuring actually make sense; I can’t help but think how annoyed I would be if the bus line that runs outside my house was cancelled, or if the Expo Light Rail Phase II never comes to fruition.  A major reason we live where we live is because of the transit options (existing and future) near our house.

I read the release and began outlining my story.  Three bus lines, the 246 in the South Bay, the 611 in Huntington Park and the 612 in South Gate were going to be eliminated.  Two other lines would be truncated but three lines would be extended.

But then, two days later, Metro announced the cuts were being put on hold indefinitely.  One Metro official told me there were very few lines to do a costly outreach.  Last night, I got an email forwarded to me from a member of one of the service sectors that gave a different story:

As we have seen at our monthly meetings, Metro transit ridership has been increasing over the past six months.  Even though the regions unemployment rate remains very high, Metro is attracting more riders.  This is in spite of the fact that about 75% of the trips on Metro are historically work related.  This increasing transit demand should be taken into account.  Thus Metro staff will be analyzing the latest ridership data and travel patterns on these lines.  Staff may return with these proposals or modified versions next year for Service Council consideration.

So, there’s two pieces of good news for bus riders.  First, there’s no more bus cuts coming down the pike this year.  Second, an increase in ridership held off a relatively small service cut.  The big question is if ridership continues to rise, will Metro find itself restoring some of the 800,000 hours cut in previous years?

Dana Gabbard does not like the 902 service. Photo:MetroRider 14/Flickr

June 26 Metro will be implementing what are in some cases rather substantial service changes.

The Recommendations of the Blue Ribbon panel and remarks made late last year by Metro’s Deputy Executive Officer for Service Planning and Scheduling Conan Cheung signaled substantial trims in revenue service hours were in the offing. Also an evaluation of Metro Rapid service prepared last year outlined criteria for the “adjustments” of the Rapids network subsequentky undertaken last Dec. and this month.

In the face of public consternation Metro management have mostly defended the need to reduce service, with CEO Art Leahy issuing A message to our customers and taxpayers and authoring an op-ed in the Daily News, both of them justifying these actions.

The best extended critique deconstructing and deflating Metro’s assertions has been put forward by Thomas Rubin, Controller-Treasurer of the Southern California Rapid Transit District from 1989 until 1993 with an extensive background as a consultant on transportation finance to the public and private sectors and author of numerous papers on transportation issues. In a piece titled Los Angeles: the MTA’s Bus Stop Strategy Rubin provides a history lesson and some analysis. This includes thoroughly debunking Metro management’s claim that their buses operating at an average of 42% capacity means something is wrong:

The 42% figure is evidently derived by dividing Metro’s FY09 bus average passenger load – passengers-miles/vehicle revenue miles – by the average number of seats on Metro buses. The figure looks low, doesn’t it? Think about all those empty seats.

However, unlike an airline flight from LAX to JFK, Metro buses make many stops along their routes to pick up and drop off passengers. Bus scheduling is developed around the maximum carrying capacity of a bus at the peak load point of the route during the peak ridership period. This means that, for much of the day, and for most of even the busiest bus trips, there are a lot of empty seats. That’s the nature of the transit business.

While some of the worst ideas initially proposed (like having line 460 no longer serve downtown Los Angeles) were discarded or massaged to be less draconian there are still aspects of the changes that leave me shaking my head. For instance line 26 (Virgil) should have been retained a least during peak hours; now instead riders will face cramming onto the already overloaded parallel lines that serve Vermont. Or how about the 450X that in peak will now include selected trips that run from downtown Los Angeles to San Pedro while in mid-day and weekends it will simply run between San Pedro and the Artesia Transit Center as a connector for the Silver Line? Talk about a recipe for customer confusion!

Well, at least they are cancelling the idiotic line 902. The less said about that wrong headed demonstration line, the better.

And this isn’t the end of the service trimming as Metro plans additional cuts in December. A presentation Metro Budget Director Frank Shapiro made at the May 25th meeting of the Metro Citizens’ Advisory Council included among its assumptions the elimination of 61,000 revenue service hours during the Dec. shakeup. Public hearings for comments on the initial staff proposals to carry out the further cuts will be held in August, so mentally prepare yourself for a junior version of what we just went through.