Last week’s column calling for Metro bus riders to form a transit
riders’ union prompted a massive, supportive response from an
unexpected place—bus drivers.
Metro drivers and customers, I pointed out last week, are natural
allies—both have an interest in making the system better.
However, given that I also said riding the bus “can seriously suck,” I
was surprised by the deluge of letters from Metro drivers who wanted to
know how they could help. “Metro feels the ‘right to ride’ is more
important than the ‘right to ride right,'” one wrote. “Do you have the
pleasure of smelling shit, vomit, malt liquor, piss, and Old
Spice in your workplace? I don’t even have the privilege of
stepping off the bus by choice.”
Riders, like drivers, aren’t demanding that buses be as convenient
as driving or as private as taking a taxi. All we want is a bus system
that’s reliable, safe, and clean—one where we aren’t subjected to
harassment, aren’t forced into confront-ations we didn’t ask for, and
aren’t shoved up against people who smell like shit. A system, in other
words, where the rules are actually enforced—and where drivers
and passengers are comfortable and safe. But adding security,
installing ticketing kiosks, and buying more buses requires funding.
A transit riders’ union could advocate for that funding.
One of the largest and oldest transit riders’ unions in the nation
is the Labor/Community Strategy Center’s Bus Riders Union in Los
Angeles, which formed in 1992 in response to proposals by the L.A.
Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to raise fares and eliminate
discount monthly bus passes. The union sued the transit agency in 1996
on behalf of 350,000 riders. To nearly everyone’s surprise, they
won. The MTA agreed to freeze or lower fares, cut the price of
weekly and monthly bus passes, hire additional transit police, and add
new buses to its fleet. In 2001, a federal court ruled that the agency
had failed to live up to that agreement—spending 90 percent of
its money on commuter rail to wealthy suburbs while urban commuters
sweated on overcrowded buses—and forced the agency to buy
hundreds of new buses to make up the discrepancy.
None of this would have been possible if there hadn’t been a strong,
independent, and loud riders union pushing for improvements to the
system. In Seattle, bus riders have as much of a need in 2007 to
improve our system as L.A. riders did in 1992. I’d love to see some
smart, organized, ambitious folks get together and make it
happen. 