In Los Angeles, Transportation Options for the Working Class

There are three main thoroughfares in Los Angeles proper that used to be boulevards of beauty and grace. They traverse neighborhoods with distinguished Craftsman houses, elegant mansions, and stylish duplexes. The names of those streets are Washington, Adams, and Jefferson Boulevards. Yes, the names of our first presidents. Therefore, very deserving of the distinction they earned in years past. They're also the streets that serve up the MTA bus lines 35, 37, and 38 that start at Washington and Fairfax at the west terminal and twine their way east to somewhere past Figueroa, then into Downtown.

Time tends to bring with it change and so it was with those neighborhoods. Although some of the grace is still visible, now these are the neighborhoods where the working class live, not the upper middle and upper class. Current residents are the people who comprise the lower middle and middle class. These are the immigrants who hold back office and support positions. These are the people who work evening shifts while using their daytime hours to attend to the children's many needs and demands, and focus on other issues that need business-hour attention.

A couple of months ago, a rumor started. It emanated from drivers who made an over-the-shoulder comment about the changes that are coming for the three lines by the next shake-up on June 26. The hours of service for Lines 35, 37, and 38 will be cut so that there will be no service in these areas after 11:30 PM.

What this means is that those who live in these areas and work late at night, will no longer have a means of getting home unless they carpool, take a cab, or develop some other strategy for safely returning home at the end of the work day. Likewise, those who need to start work on the "graveyard" shift significantly increase their likelihood of being affected. Those who start or end their shift at 10 PM (but more those who start at 10 PM) will not suffer. But those who need to pass through these working-class neighborhoods in order to reach their destination by Midnight may find themselves in a bind. The only option would be get to work (or in the vicinity) early.

Whatever the options, whatever the affirmative advocacy in relation to maintaining the lines, the matter of curtailment of service and viable alternatives needs to be more closely examined. Actually, the dynamics of the situation impact more than just the passengers. It also impacts the neighborhoods and businesses along those corridors. They thrive or suffer based on the amount of use made of the thoroughfares. Let us consider these ramifications separately.

The Neighborhoods and Businesses

The neighborhoods along these three corridors are at a tug of war over which influence will prevail. The grandeur and elegance that was once taken for granted in these areas is being displaced physically by (1) the lack of space for housing development and (2) the need for more and improved facilities of all types. Mansions that once served as sorority and fraternity houses as well as class annexes are gone. They ceded their spaces to student housing and multi-family developments.

Other parts of the corridors have retained the stately duplexes and community gates. But age, even with cosmetics, has a way of exposing itself. With the telling signs of age are also the visual effects of a lowered income level of the residents who are unable to make repairs in a timely fashion.

Perhaps some of these deprecations are due to the types of businesses that now proliferate the boulevards. Unmaintained industrial services such as car and machinery overhauls, carpet services, and services for reworking various goods are what can be easily found. Liquor stores and convenience markets grow at an increasing rate. They're more a spontaneous addition to the environment than part of a planned increase in the development of the community and services to a target market or economic segment.

Simply put, these are no longer scenic routes to travel in order to see the best parts of Los Angeles. These are routes to gain a sense of what used to be and what is about to overtake the landscape if allowed to take its own steam in a downward trend.

The Passengers

The demographics of the neighborhoods has skewed in a new way. From the 1950s to the 1980s, it was made up of adults with at least one car who lived in a 1500 to 2500 square foot house with a well manicured yard. People systematically put money in their savings accounts, made certain the children followed the rules and got homework completed and returned home when the street lights came on.

However, two wars enveloped these areas and others like them. These wars were the impact of gangs on the heretofore quiet areas of growth and beauty and the drug wars. Although it appeared for a long while that both of the oppositions were going to prevail and caused a preponderance of the desired population to flee to safer areas, the communities did not cede. They now teeter between being pulled into the depths that can be gang and drug influenced areas compared with rising back to the stature they enjoyed a few decades ago.

The previous inhabitants grew weary of watching their offspring turned into walking zombies, incapable of doing critical thinking on their own initiative and unable, therefore, to achieve any means of caring for themselves because of the ravages of substance abuse or being taught by the gangs that they should not care about these things. The previous inhabitants also grew weary of walking through the filth that began to litter their previously well-manicured neighborhoods and that began to turn pleasantness into eyesore deteriorated sties. Many fled to safer, healthier environs.

They've been replaced by immigrants seeking something better than back home. They've found it. Their neighbors are also students living on limited incomes with high tuitions and expenses.

It isn't a lot but it is a resting place. They seek a place to live that has easy transportation to and from work and school. The cost of living is too high to afford a car and all of the responsibilities that accompany ownership, so the next best alternative is commuting. And that is where the continuance of the Lines 35, 37, and 38 after 11:30 PM becomes important to the community at large.

Because there are so many pressures on outside talent, these new residents take all manner of work opportunities - sometimes far away from home, sometimes starting late at night until morning hours or getting off work late at night. There are not too many choices in the options that are available. Hours of available transportation services can diminish limited options even further.

Still these people strive to live complete and intentional lives while stretching the limited resources they have. Sometimes they come up short and it's necessary to rely on the Samaritan nature of their fellow humans in order to get to the end of the day - or month.

Sprinkled among the new mix of residents is also a population of those who have fallen from a better life and now find themselves living in what can be considered a ghetto. They suck in their breath and square their shoulders, determined to outlast their personal social or economic depression until things can be righted and they can move back into their usual circumstances while maintaining or bettering their present locality, leaving it somewhat improved because of their having passed through.

At some level in the spectrum are the "new" inhabitants of the community who are those still in one or both of the wars. They have given up on everything and spend their days in hopelessness, fighting ennui and anger that they have not reached a door of Opportunity and most likely will never do so. They spend their days sitting on bus stops chatting with friends. If not thus engaged, they waste away in wheelchairs. If they are not seniors or people who are 30 and older, then they are youth who have no concept of what responsibility or duty is. They feel a sense of entitlement to everything they see because they do not own it, think they need it, and want it. They feel they should not have to pay a price for what they desire. Rather, it should be given to them. They owe no modicum of respect nor discernment to anyone in any manner if they are youth or gang bangers; they feel proper words and deportment are appropriate in their small circles for others but not elsewhere. These "new" inhabitants make commuting difficult for all who use the transit lines because of their rowdiness and disrespect, in addition to their frequent lack of funds to pay the fare.

The Drivers

Commuting along any of these lines provides a view of what each day is like for the drivers. In many instances, they're driving along routes that are no longer safe, especially at night. The youth are rude and challenging. Many of the adults are likewise because of the various challenges that confront them. It's easy for resentment toward these "flat liners" to build up. Attitudes of the drivers, the ones who provide the actual services along the routes, are a mixed bag.

Some drivers are able to develop good relationships with several "pet" passengers and provide the amiability that we would like to have on all of our bus rides. These drivers are human and suffer from the grind of driving these routes that wind their ways through deteriorating neighborhoods, slipping in and out of Skid Row, and then repeating the process. They're human. They mentally attempt to tune out the ugliness.

While some will attempt to protect their regular passengers from the vagaries of the night by watching for them on their regular stops, there are other drivers who envision the entire population as the same. Some seem to be on some sick evangelistic jihad to rid the Earth of the foulness of anyone who comes from these neighborhoods. They question the passengers about where their money is, interrogate about how they managed to buy alcohol, accuse of unsavory behavior, deliver slipshod and untimely service, fail to pick up passengers, thereby leaving them stranded if it's in the late hours of the night.

Two of these three lines run approximately every 10 to 15 minutes. But the Line 38 runs every 30 minutes. After 8:45 PM, it runs once per hour. During the day, there are times when the wait for a bus is interminable. Thirty minutes turn into 40, and then 45 or 50, but no bus shows up. Interviews, medical appointments, and various other forms of business are delayed or lost because of the unreliability of the service.

Some Solutions

While the crisis raised its ugly head, it abated. The shake-up came on June 26 but service was not curtailed on the three lines after 11:30 PM. Instead, a night owl service was implemented for all three. The routes are too complicated for me to attempt to outline them here. Suffice it to say, all three lines continue to provide limited service throughout the night along all three routes.

Passengers have changed their riding habits in order to prepare themselves for further threats to their means of getting to and from work. In order for re-gentrification to occur, reliable service through these neighborhoods is mandatory. Reliable service will mean allowing those who commute to work to continue to earn the revenue to pay the fares as well as bring those disposable dollars into the community to support the businesses that exist. Those disposable incomes can also demand additional services that are presently missing but needed so that residents and others who use the community may find those products and services locally rather than having the necessity of leaving the community for the remote item or doing without it.

This crisis became a type of urban legend or myth. It was a rumor on the bus lines. It was talked about at length by the passengers. It brought unification for a time and a small amount of planning. But there was never a formal statement nor notice of public hearings regarding the matter of the service on Lines 35, 37, and 38. No one knew when the public hearings would be and no one knew whether they would be held. There was no public request for commuter input about the lines. It was as though the MTA said to itself and the public, "Good luck folks. We don't care about you. You have no relevance to us."

This attitude shows in many ways, whether it's true or not. In addition to looking more carefully at the schedules and routes of Lines 35, 37, and 38, consideration needs to be given to how service can be built up. Improvement of service can only help the neighborhoods improve in terms of quality of life and quality life produced from the place. The residents should not feel as though they've been sold out to something more lucrative or attractive.