Bus Rider’s Union

Tomorrow the Metro Board will meet and is widely expected to finally pass the Long Range Transportation Plan, which just like the city's Draft Bike Plan, was the subject of public hearings in the early winter of 2008 and hasn't been subject to much public scrutiny since.  Many Board Members are already offering amendments to the plan to protect and advance their preferred local projects.  The goal of moving projects in the plan is to better position them to receive federal funds to hopefully get them off the design table and on the ground, or under the ground, as quickly as possible.

Last month, the Bus Riders Union quietly opened its own blog to further push its advocacy efforts online.  While there's nothing that is technilogically amazing about the blog, if anyone remembers what the BRU's website looked like two years ago when I first arrived or last year during the "No on the Six" campaign, it's nice to see a more professional looking website with regular updates.

The Bus Rider's Union gathered signatures outside of the Wilshire-Western Subway stop this morning, joining advocates around the country in building support for Federal Legislation H.R. 2746, which would allow transit agencies to spend more of their federal funds on day-to-day operations. Nationally, efforts were organized by Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRPT) a national coalition focused on bringing "environmental justice and civil rights priorities to the upcoming federal surface transportation act."

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. 

There were a lot of highlights from last Friday's "21st Century Transportation for Los Angeles" conference sponsored by CalPIRG, but many of them will require more research before I can write a full story on them.  From Asm. Mike Eng's channeling of Gavin Newsom when he declared that the 710 Tunneling Project is going to happen "whether we like it or not" to a discussion of pedi-cabs downtown, there was a lot of interesting discussion.

This morning, the Bus Rider's Union, including members from South and East L.A., and civic leaders from Koreatown gathered to ask the MTA to support the BRU's Clean Air and Economic Justice Plan.  Their plan calls for increased funding and expansion of Metro's bus fleet and a rollback fo the 2007 fare hike by using Measure R and federal stimulus dollars over time.  They also pointed out that while Metro staff had released a report earlier in the week that called for some short-term improvements, there was also language in the report that called for fare hikes in the next couple of years and long-term cuts in bus service as different rail projects come online.