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Byline: Susan LaTempa
It happens over and over again, says the Bus Riders Union.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (also known as MTA or Metro) responds to an abundance of demands for transportation projects and a chronic shortage of funds by implementing its budget in a way that discriminates against low income people of color.
Like some sort of wicked fairytale parent, Metro was instructed back in 1994 by a powerful wizard (the federal court) to distribute its treasures fairly to all its hungry children—buses, light rail, and subway. For 10 years, the powerful wizard made sure—via a federal consent decree—that Metro stopped depriving its weakest, hardest working child (the bus system) of its fair share. The consent decree was issued to make sure that Metro stopped violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and required Metro to rectify the harm it caused to L.A.'s poor working families by violating the Act.
As a result, the spunky hard-working bus system grew in stature and popularity and strength. With money to reduce fares, buy new clean-fuel vehicles, and start "Rapid" service on major streets, the bus system saw a spike in ridership and dramatic improvement in quality. L.A.'s was the largest clean-fuel fleet in the country.
But when the decree expired and the powerful wizard went away five years ago, the wicked MTA once again started favoring its subway and light-rail children and once again began to give them more than their share.
Fortunately for the working families of L.A., the Bus Riders Union, a Liberty Hill grantee, doesn't believe in leaving wicked deeds unchallenged. When the Bus Riders Union looks at the numbers, it sees that since the federal consent decree expired, Metro has been eliminating lines, cutting hours of service and raising fares. It sees that if the current round of cuts proposed by Metro are implemented, 100% of the court-ordered expansion of the bus service (in hours of service) will have been eliminated in just the last three years.
When promises are broken, the noisy members of the Bus Riders Union speak up in all sort of ways.
The latest way the Bus Riders Union spoke up was to submit an admnistrative complaint last fall to the Federal Transportation Administration Office of Civil Rights. With the help of Public Advocates, Inc., of San Francisco, BRU filed this detailed document complaining that in making service cuts in the past three years, Metro was in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In response, the FTA announced two weeks ago that it would conduct "an on-site compliance review of los Angeles MTA [Metro] this year."
An on-site compliance review is not a magic wand. "We see this as a small tactical victory in a broader civil rights struggle," says Esperanza Martinez, Lead Organizer for BRU. "These cuts are harmful, they impact real-life people. We're not just talking facts and figures." Or fairytales.
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