Bernson Assails MTA’s Proposed Bus Cutbacks

Public transit officials should either maintain current bus service in the San Fernando Valley or provide more shuttles, Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson said Wednesday.

Bernson, who has outspokenly criticized proposed cutbacks by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that thousands of bus riders in the Valley would suffer if off-peak bus service on various routes is reduced as planned by the MTA.

“I am very unhappy with some of the proposed cutbacks,” Bernson said in a statement. “It looks like the Valley is taking a particularly hard hit and this is unacceptable.”

Bernson, who is also a member of the MTA board, plans to submit proposals to the City Council on Tuesday and to the MTA board Dec. 18 to maintain current bus service or increase so-called smart shuttles.

The MTA last month announced plans to reduce off-peak bus service on some routes, including about a dozen in the Valley, and raise rail fares 50 cents to help improve the agency’s bottom line. The agency has a $50.6-million deficit in its operating budget.

MTA officials have said the proposal concentrates mainly on lightly used routes. It involves fewer than half of the MTA’s approximately 180 bus lines and only about 10% of all riders, they said.

The transit agency claims more than 1 million bus boardings on an average weekday, about 119,000 of them in the Valley.

Transit officials said many of the changes would probably go unnoticed by riders. In addition, alternatives would include shuttles with flexible routes. Riders would not be expected to walk more than a quarter mile from their normal stops to find a parallel route or some other measure that would meet their needs, officials said.

But many bus riders and their supporters say the changes, some of which would begin in April with further adjustments coming in June, would be too harsh.

The proposed cutbacks include eliminating Saturday or Sunday service on some lines and increasing the amount of time riders will be required to wait for buses.

In some cases, the changes will be slight, increasing waiting periods by only one minute. But on Line 166 for example, which travels along Nordhoff Street, the proposal calls for increasing the waiting periods from 30 minutes to 60 minutes between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Bernson, who has a field office at Nordhoff Street and Wilbur Avenue, finds such changes unfair to riders. “If the smart shuttle cannot accommodate these riders, then the current service should remain,” he said.