RTD Board Member Says Crowded Buses Are Illegal, Dangerous

A leading defender of the troubled RTD has charged that the transit agency regularly violates state laws by allowing too many passengers aboard its buses.

Southern California Rapid Transit District board member Marv Holen said Friday that bus riders are packing into every available inch on many lines and blocking the side view of drivers in violation of the state Vehicle Code.

Particularly in heavy ridership areas of the city, “most (of the time) at peak hour (the driver’s) view is obstructed,” said Holen, an attorney who has repeatedly and strenuously risen to the RTD’s defense during nearly a year of reports of safety problems and mismanagement.

RTD General Manager John Dyer admitted that crowding on buses, to the detriment of the driver, is a problem but he denied that repeated violations of state vehicle codes are occurring as a result.

Vision Obscured

However, two veteran Los Angeles Police Department traffic officers told The Times that they regularly see RTD buses crowded to the point that the drivers’ vision is blocked.

“I’ve seen buses so crowded that I’ve ridden on the right hand (side) of the bus and I can’t see the driver,” said Eugene Foster, a motorcycle officer in the Rampart Division west of downtown. “If I can’t see him, he can’t see me, and he should be able to see me.”

Foster said he never cites RTD drivers for the violation because “why should you punish a driver for something he has no control over?” But he added that he is hesitant to pass an RTD bus on the right side because the driver often cannot see.

Officer Michael Partain, who is assigned to the South-Central area, said enforcement of the law on obstructed view is simply “not a high priority-type citation” because it has not been the cause of a large number of accidents.

But he too said the violation is common on RTD buses.

“I’ve seen people standing right where you enter the bus on the passenger side. I don’t see how (the driver) is able to see around a lot of the time,” he said.

Coming just weeks after a blind Hollywood woman passenger was pummeled in a fracas apparently tied to crowding on an RTD bus, Holen admits that his remarks are intended to dramatize the transit district’s claims that it needs additional funds from outside agencies. Bus crowding is not new, but public assertions by an RTD board member that it is causing regular safety violations is.

Budget Problems

The district, which carries 1.5 million passengers a day, says it needs $9.5 million from the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to balance its $513-million 1987-88 budget. If the funds are not provided, the board may have to take more buses off the streets or increase the basic 85-cent fare to as much as $1, RTD officials say.

Even if the budget can be balanced, however, it does not allow for any significant increase in bus service on the streets.

Some RTD board members and outside critics have suggested that the district could cut other areas of the budget or thin out little-used routes in the suburbs to place more service on the most heavily traveled routes. But Holen said the safety violations and crowding problems show demand for public transit in the county far exceeds what can be provided by the RTD with the funds available.

In either case, if more buses are not dispatched to spread out the load of passengers in some areas, there will be no easy solutions to the safety violations that are occurring, according to district officials, bus driver representatives and police officers.

If police began enforcing laws against overcrowding, large numbers of people waiting at bus stops would have to be passed up, resulting in more pushing and shoving to get on rush-hour buses, Holen said. In the loading turmoil, buses would be delayed and “basically it would bring the system to a halt,” he said.

Gotten Worse

Earl Clark, general chairman of the union representing nearly 5,000 RTD drivers, agreed that crowding is causing safety problems, which he said has gotten worse in recent years.

“But the driver really has no control over it,” he said.

Passengers force their way on to the bus on many busy routes because they are fearful the next bus will also be crowded, Clark said.

“Some of the areas the drivers drive in, they are lucky to get home in one piece,” Clark said.