Los Angeles County's Metropolitan Transit board voted 9-4 (Hahn, Yoh, Paul Hudson, and Yvonne
Braithwaite Burke were the dissenting votes) to raise the cost of monthly bus
and rail transit passes from $42 to $52 (+$10), semimonthly passes from $21 to $27 (+$6), and weekly passes from $11 to $14 (+$3). The cash fare price will be lowered 10 cents from $1.35 to $1.25. A $3.00 day pass will replace the 25 cent transfer. Student, senior, and disabled passes will remain the same. The current 4 fare zones will be consolidated into 2 zones, and price of tokens will be increased from .90 cents to $1.10 and be phased out when the Universal Fare System (UFS) is implemented. The hikes, which take effect Jan. 1, are expected
to provide about $40 million in additional revenues annually.

Before the Vote, Bus Riders Union (BRU) members with bright yellow tee-shirts and BRU headbands
huddled outside MTA headquarters at Cesar Chavez and Vignes in Los Angeles Thursday 22May2003 to coordinate their activity prior to entering for the
meeting of MTA board members. They passed out a flyer with chants such as:

You can’t vote
You don’t even ride the bus
You can’t vote ‘till you listen to us

Mayor James Hahn Don’t hide behind Hal’s chair
$20 dollar passes and 50 cent fair

The B the R the U is in the fight
We want our public comment
We demand our civil rights

The (BRU) press release available outside urged board members to vote down the
proposed fare hike claiming that it would “steal $50 million from the lowest
income residents in LA County. On the table Thursday is a 25% increase in the
price of bus passes and tokens and the elimination of transfers.”….“As of now,
MTA Chair Hal Bernson has said that the public will be barred from speaking at
the Thursday vote on the fare increase. Our right to speak is inviolable. The
BRU will speak on the fare increase at the board meeting. Similarly, the BRU
will not take a fare hike lying down.” Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers
Guild, who was present at the board meeting, said that he thought that what the
board was doing was “shameful because not only because we know the result of today’s vote is going
to harm the financial well-being of hundreds of thousands of low income people
of Los Angeles, but they [MTA board] don’t even have the courage to face people
and allow them to have a hearing today. They want to hide behind some
technicalities that they had some hearing before when only 3 of the 13 [MTA board members] were present. If they’re going to do this shameful thing you’d
think they would at least have the decency to face the public and allow the public to comment on it before they do it. So they ought to be ashamed of
themselves. But it won’t stand. The BRU has proven before that it can beat back these uncivil attacks and I’m sure they’ll beat back this one too.”

As the 930am-scheduled meeting began Cynthia Rojas of BRU got up to speak but
was told to sit down. She refused and continued to demand that the public be
allowed to speak. When the board continued to refuse, the BRU and supporters
took up the chant “Let her speak.” Then the whole board got up and left the
room. Another chant during the hiatus as “The B the R the U is in the fight…etc.) as above. When the board returned ½ hour to 45 minutes later they
said they would allow ½ hour of input from the public. Each speaker was allotted one minute which was counted down on a large projection on the front
wall. At the end of each minute the mike was turned off.
Most of the speakers were opposed to the fare hike citing the hardships it would create for them.
Some used dramatic visual aids. One lady showed us diapers she would have to forgo. Another lady took clothes out of a bag and threw them around her to show the kinds of clothes she would have to do without if proposed fare hikes were voted in. And another, John Walsh, actually ate a bus pass to
demonstrate his opposition to the fair hike.

We spoke with BRU representative Cynthia Rojas the day before the vote: The fare hike represents a “big change” she said, because “most of the people who
ride buses are very low income working class people from predominantly Latino, Black, Asian immigrant communities, and in addition many seniors and many
students ride the bus. These are folks with fixed incomes that will be the most
impacted by these changes. So even though the $10 increase in the monthly pass
might not sound like a lot to the average person, to the garment workers,
domestic workers, security guards who are supporting families on minimum wages
or less, this is a dramatic shift in their finances. So we at the BRU are
opposed to the MTA’s proposals knowing that there are alternatives to charging
bus riders more as a revenue source which is what they claim they are trying to
do. So we’re looking to take many actions against the fare increase if it is to
pass tomorrow including legal, political. There are!
many members on the MTA board that represent these very communities which will
be impacted and who need to be held accountable for their actions.”

Rick Jager, a media relations spokesperson with MTA, commented: “the reason we
are proposing to restructure the fare is because we’re facing a 64 million
dollar deficit next fiscal year because of the state budget crisis. We haven’t
raised fares in nearly 9 years. We haven’t raised the cost of the monthly pass
since 1989. But inflation in the price of goods continues to rise. So we need
to restructure our fares.” When asked about relations between MTA and BRU,
Jager said “…we have a joint working group with the BRU that meet regularly to
discuss services that we provide. We spend about 100 million dollars a year in
increased services as a result of actions taken by the BRU. And this next year
we’ll spend and additional 30 million dollars to implement some of the programs
that are needed to improve the bus system. Our budget allocates over a billion
dollars to operate the bus system. We think we’ve come a long way, but we also
have to face realities that the state bu!
dget is in a crisis here. Funding is slim, and we have to generate some
additional funding so that we have a balanced budget.” When we mentioned that
the rail system might be using up much of the resources, Jager commented: “Our
budget has allocated over a billion dollars to the bus system and about 400
million for the rail. You do the math.”

Commenting on MTA’s lack of funds, James Lafferty said “everybody is strapped
for funds if you’re constantly trying to support city services on the backs of
the poor. If you had the kind of corporate taxes, if you had the kind of
property taxes, if you didn’t have all these give-aways to major
corporations--the city, the county and the board would have the money that it
needs to provide decent bus service to people without jacking the fares up and
making the bus service be paid for in essence by the poorest people in town.
That’s why they don’t have any money--because they’re constantly giving breaks
to the fat-cat corporations.”