Civil Rights Groups Indict Metro for Discriminatory Practices

By Ryan Deto Thu., Oct. 27 2011 at 12:47 PM

thestrategycenter.org

Maybe metro just wants poor people to walk more and stay healthy...

Only 10 percent of Los Angeles County Metro's ridership is white, according to a report authored by L.A. civil rights, labor, environmental, and public health organizations. To complete the very simple arithmetic, that means 90 percent is made up of everyone else in the amazingly diverse salad bowl that is Los Angeles (and, no, that does not include white kids who think they might have a great-great-grandmother who is half Navajo Indian).

At a 1 p.m. press conference today outside the Metro headquarters across from Union Station, the coalition, which includes the Bus Riders Union and Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, will release a "scathing indictment" against the Los Angeles Metro of what they deem discriminatory treatment.

According to the report, fare increases and cuts, over $100 million, in services have hit the working class and immigrant communities the hardest because the they ride public transit the most. In essence they are "paying more for less."

Bus Riders Union lead organizer Esperanza Martinez believes that the money taken from the bus services is being transfered to the highly publicized rail projects.

"If you look at these last set of cuts," says Martinez, "you can see the hours they cut from the buses and then see how they added hours to rail."

She believes the additional bus-related funds accrued from Measure R are being used as "back fill," like a savings account, for an operating deficit. That "back fill" money then, in theory, could be used towards rail projects.

And Martinez says the rail does not serve the a large sector of Los Angeles' native community and that Metro does not "place black, brown, and working class people at the center."

The report says that since these working class communities rely on public transit, mostly buses, to get around, buses should be Metro's priority.

Here is another juicy excerpt from the report:

In fact, Metro has reduced bus service and increased rail service in spite of evidence that Metro Bus, as a system, enjoys a higher capacity utilization, a lower operating cost per boarding, and a lower subsidy per boarding than light rail as well as comparable capacity utilization to heavy rail.

It goes on to show that rail lines have a higher proportion of white riders, including the gold line at 28 percent caucasian ridership. The gold rail-line receives almost $6 million in annual subsidies while the entire bus line, excluding the orange rapid bus line, receives less than $2 million.

On top of all this, Metro continues to pour hundreds of millions into rail projects, such as Villaraigosa's "Subway to the Sea," which needs an extra $60 million to move away from an earthquake fault at Century City.

Maybe some separated bus lanes, like the one OK'd for Wilshire Boulevard, would be better for L.A. (even if that means white people sharing space with their black, Latino, and Asian brethren).

The coalition is hoping the report will help shed light on these discrimination issues because the Metro is currently experience a mandatory civil rights review by the federal government.

Martinez hopes "that the federal government intervenes and forces [Metro] to correct their civil rights wrongs."

Tags:

African American, civil rights, immigrant, MTA, reports, transportation, unions

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What a clear, concise, valuable post.

LAofAnaheim

Fact: FTA has ruled this claim to be untrue: http://thesource.metro.net/201...

Will you run a story on that, LA Weekly?

JS310

I wonder if the Weekly editors will ever call a staff meeting and put on the agenda, "How do we regain our credibility?" I'm not holding my breath. Somehow the onslaught of bias seems to be working for them.

Derek Law

Why is the LA Weekly so anti-rail/anti-Metro? What other choice do we have? From 1963 when the last Yellow Car line closed until 1990 when the Blue Line opened, Los Angeles transit was 100% bus. We tried that, it didn't work.From the 1940s until 1990s with the 105/Century Freeway, we demolished and divided neighborhoods for new freeways that became jammed with traffic shortly after opening day. We tried that, it didn't work.Now we have the beginnings of a new rail system, heavily patronized by Angelenos of ALL RACES, especially younger generations, and the BRU says it's a bad thing!! With over 10 million people in LA county, we need options other than gridlock.Given a choice between rail and a bus, which would you take? For example, the 60 bus between downtown and Artesia Station... 1 hour 25 min (if it comes on time). The Blue Line over the same distance...28 minutes. The BRU is just trying to bring in more attention (and money), enriching themselves while at the same time "claiming" to help some of the economically disadvantaged residents of our city. That's a shame.Besides, why is anyone reading this paper still? Oh that's right, they don't. I mostly see the LA Weekly being used by homeless bums to sleep on, or to pick up their dog's poop when people go for a walk... not far from irrelevancy. Let's stop complaining and start building more trains.

CarltonGlub

"It goes on to show that rail lines have a higher proportion of white riders, including the gold line at 28 percent caucasian ridership. The gold rail-line receives almost $6 million in annual subsidies while the *entire bus line,* excluding the orange rapid bus line, receives less than $2 million."

What "entire bus line" are you talking about, Mr. Deto. Metro operates hundreds of bus lines costing a $1 billion dollars annually (http://metro.net/about_us/fina.... Metro assumes that only 30% of those funds come from riders' fares, so we're talking about $700 million in subsidies for the entire Metro Bus system.

I give a lot of credence to what the BRU does; they're indispensable advocates. But it's the Weekly's job to make sure if what they say makes sense and to not write random figures so sloppily. Did you mean "average bus line?"

Alexander the Great

Gee,what else could we expect from the anti-transit (and anti-common sense) LA Weekly! They have always supported the racist organization "Bus Riders' Union" (or BRU). The BRU have always been involved in frivolous activiites and been brainwashed by their leaders just to receive moneys for the membership dues. The reality is, BRU is actually an ANTI-transit group because they are campaigning to destroy transit (being anti-rail is virtually destroying reliable transit service). The hypocrisy of BRU is astonishing: they claim to be anti-rail, yet they've been spotted many times riding the subway (go figure, where's the logic?). BRU don't realize that transit is for everybody (their notion that "rail is for whites, buses are for minorities" is laughable and senseless); and without any metro-rail Los Angeles public transportation would cease to exist; BRU have yet to learn that having only buses in a big city will never work and will never be competitive. BRU needs some serious education about mass transit and about common sense in general.And as for LA Weekly - they need to be more objective and stop kissing-up to the BRU racists!