Memo to One Gateway: This is a bus.

I understand Metro execs don't care about the bussses or the bus riders. I don't know why. Is it because most of us are women? Is it because most of us are mainly people of color? Is it because nearly all of us make a little bit less money than the average Angeleno?

In case you didn't know, I want you to know that we are people. When you see the bus trundle past your car as you drive to the freeway far from One Gateway's grand Italian marble tower, know that inside that bus are people. Perhaps not your definition of what people, but people nonetheless.

Remember when you see that behemoth which you put on the streets in a haphazard fashion that when you cut bus service, when you don't care that a bus stop is surrounded by trash and smells of urine, that when you sacrifice bus operators for your own poor budgetary decisions, that these actions impact people.

Maybe you might want to try to take the bus, just once, just to see—and I don't mean a ride around your back yard, or as Metro CEO Art Leahy put it: "I took the entire MTA executive staff over with me and I had them all drive a bus on our yard."

Comments

[Spokker]

"I understand Metro execs don't care about the bussses or the bus riders."

You would know what Metro executives care about.

"Remember when you see that behemoth which you put on the streets in a haphazard fashion"

Is there a better way to put it on the streets?

"when you cut bus service"

Metro doesn't even want to cut service. Ask the state for more info.

"when you don't care that a bus stop is surrounded by trash and smells of urine"

They shouldn't care. Bus stops are and should be the responsibility of the individual cities they are placed in. Ask your local city council for more info.

Metro knows less about local needs for bus stops than cities do. The city is the right level of government for bus stop maintenance. Cities can also operate transit, but regional transit is better served on the county level for regional travel.

You wouldn't have the county manage a city's bus stops any more than you would have the state manage a county's bus service. In that way, different levels of government are good for different types of things.

The same principle applies to highways and streets. Cities take care of local streets because they understand more than any level of government what those needs are. Highways, on the other hand, are overseen by the state and the county. Why? Because if you left it up to cities a continuous highway would vary widely in quality and possibly make it unusable. One city could also invest less in the freeway and freeride off the others' contributions to its maintenance.

Another problem occurs if bus stop maintenance were handled at the county level. How much do you invest in each city's bus stops? Is it done by number of stops? Amount of vandalism? Amount of litter? Amount of piss?

Not all bus stops cost the same to maintain, as some depreciate more than others. If we decide that $X amount of dollars is allocated per bus stop and a city comes to Metro and says, "Hey, we need more than $X amount of dollars for bus stops because of the abuse they endure?" how is that fair to other cities whose residents take better care of their bus stops?

No, the need is better understood at the city level. Metro should not be in the business of maintaining bus stops.

"when you sacrifice bus operators for your own poor budgetary decisions"

They were encouraged by the feds to make those deals. Officials from 11 transit agencies are working their asses off trying to get funding guarantees. They clearly do not care about bus service.

Even if Metro executives rode the bus, it would not change a thing. They would say, "Yeah, this is the bus. Big surprise." You could force them to take the bus as a condition of employment but then they would just quit. That same condition of employment would decrease the size of the pool of qualified applicants for those jobs.