MTA Agrees to Add Buses

After $1 million was spent on appeals and after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2002, the number was lowered to 248.

The MTA bought the buses.

This January, Bliss sought 145 new buses. The MTA insisted it did not need to buy any because it had already ordered enough buses to meet Bliss' required 290,000 hours of added service in the next year.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter sided with Bliss.

The Bus Riders Union, arguing that the agency was spending more time fighting the court order than implementing it, filed for a six-year extension of the consent decree in March. That case is pending.

"They wasted all this money on attorney fees instead of complying with the decree," said Connie Rice, the civil rights lawyer who filed the case. "It could've been over by now."

Rice said the Bus Riders Union is not asking for much of a remedy.

"All this decree will do is, if you take the average bus rider who does this every day, out of seven trips, instead of having to stand all seven trips, she gets to sit down during three or four of these trips," Rice said.

"Everything we've been asked to do, we've done it," said Rod Goldman, who oversees consent decree service for the MTA.

The agency refrained from raising fares until this January, has put about 70 buses on new routes to schools, hospitals and job centers since 1997, and has cut overcrowding in half from about a year ago.

Goldman said the agency has beefed up service every six months.

Although the agency is buying only 75 buses, Goldman said, it will meet the 145-bus requirement by next June by pressing other recently purchased buses into service, and using older buses until new ones arrive.

The board did not appeal the latest court order on buses, but it did vote unanimously to appeal a ruling from Monday that nullified an environmental impact report for the proposed busway across the San Fernando Valley.

The agency plans to move forward with the $330-million separate track for buses, while simultaneously launching a new study to determine whether a network of rapid buses on Valley streets might be more desirable.

"We don't want this project to slow down," said Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky, one of the biggest proponents of the 14-mile bus corridor now called the Orange Line.

Residents who filed the suit called the board's plan disingenuous.