Buses

Earlier today the Orange County Transit Authority's Board of Directors voted, by a 14-1 margin, to cut 150,000 hours of transit service by early next year.  Believe it or not, the plan was actually an improvement from an earlier draft of the cuts had 300,000 hours of service.  The Register describes the cuts:

When Vice President Joe Biden visited Minnesota's New Flyer bus company to tout the economic stimulus law's $8.4 billion investment in transit, hopes were high for a boom in cleaner-burning vehicle production -- which made for some bad press when the nationwide transit funding crunch forced New Flyer to lay off 13 percent of its workers.

(editor's note: For more of a blow-by-blow from today's meeting visit the twitter feeds for LA Streetsblog, Soap Box and I Will Ride)

(editor's note:  A couple of weeks ago Joe Linton wrote an update on Los Angeles' support for the Wilshire Bus-Only Lane.  A City Watch Columnist, Harold Katz, responded with an article attacking the project.)

Yesterday's full Los Angeles City Council meeting ran extraordinarily late due to a potential lawsuit between the Controller and the City Attorney. The council's Transportation Committee meeting, previewed last week here and here, was scheduled for 2:00 P.M. but didn't begin until after 4:30 P.M. By then, most of the Department of Transportation (LADOT) staff had left. Remaining were a little more than half of the initial 30+ yellow-t-shirt clad Bus Riders Union members, a half-dozen Comstock Hills homeowners, and a couple of bicyclists.

Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported yesterday that the U.S. DOT would end a Bush-era mandate to reward new transit projects for using private contractors -- but a similar pro-privatization rule for bus service remains in effect, preventing local transit agencies from competing with private charter companies.

Even with Measure R, not even Metro is immune to bus service cuts.

Yesterday, a federal appeals court ruled in the case of the Bus Rider's Union (BRU) v. MTA over the matter of whether or not to extend the 1996 "Consent Decree."  At issue was whether or not Metro was in "substantial compliance" with the standards set out in the decree: i.e. whether Metro had expanded bus service, held down fares, and reduced overcrowding in poorer areas of the city where people were reliant on transit and service was sub-par. 

Following up on Sarah's post about transit funding woes in Illinois, this CNN segment from earlier in the month brings home the effect of service cuts and fare hikes in St. Louis. Similar scenarios are playing out all over the country. According to the latest tally from Transportation for America, 85 transit systems serving 22 million riders are facing some combination of shrinking service and higher fares.