Published Thursday, December 1, 2005, in the San Francisco Chronicle

OPEN FORUM

End funding discrimination in public transit

By Juliet Ellis

Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery, Ala. Public transportation, and more specifically buses,
became the stage from which the civil-rights movement was launched.
This act of courage is fresh in our minds due to the recent passing of
Mrs. Parks. Viewed as a national hero, her body was placed in the
rotunda of the U.S. Capitol -- the first woman ever accorded such a
tribute.

The irony is that today, discrimination is alive and well in
mass-transit bus service. In the Bay area, for instance, a federal
civil-rights lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court in San
Francisco, charging that the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation
Commission -- which plans and allocates funding for the area's transit
needs -- supports a "separate and unequal transit system" that
discriminates against poor transit riders of color.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of African-American and Latino AC Transit
riders, states that public monies are spent to expand a
"state-of-the-art rail system" -- BART and Caltrain -- into relatively
affluent suburban communities, at the expense of a shrinking bus
system, AC Transit, for low-income people of color. According to AC
Transit's ridership survey, nearly 80 percent of its bus riders are
people of color, and more than 60 percent of them have no other means
of transportation. In cities across the nation, African Americans and
Latinos comprise over 54 percent of transit users, according to the
Harvard Civil Rights Project. Richard Marcantonio, an attorney with
Public Advocates, citing data from the federal National Transit
Database, noted: "As a result of MTC's knowingly discriminatory
funding practices, AC Transit riders receive a public subsidy of $2.78
per trip, BART passengers receive more than double that -- $6.14 --
and Caltrain passengers receive $13.79, nearly five times more than AC
Transit riders."

And it's not just AC Transit. Just last week, The Chronicle published
an article detailing the high cost of a commuter train in Marin and
Sonoma counties ("New debate over light rail for North Bay," Nov. 22).
A report prepared by an engineering firm and requested by the
Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District not surprisingly concluded
that the North Bay "is better off environmentally with a light-rail
system."

In 1999 in the South Bay, three weeks after SamTrans agreed to give a
$72 million interest-free loan to BART for the construction of the SFO
extension, SamTrans cut 15 percent of its bus service. SamTrans has
repeatedly cut bus service in the last several years, according to Bay
Rail Alliance, as well as increased fares in order to balance its
budget.

The issue is not solely buses versus rail. Public transportation
receives a fraction of the government funding spent on highways and
roads.

Buses are the backbone of our transportation system. The majority of
bus riders are transit dependent; that is, they rely on public transit
for all of their essential trips -- unlike rail commuters, who rely on
BART (according to its rider survey) for 25 percent of their essential
household trips. BART, light rail and commuter-rail systems depend on
buses to get people to and from stations. Without an effective bus
system, the rail system will not work. Buses also mean less
congestion and less pollution on our roads.

Why buses over rail? If funded properly, technology exists to make
buses fast, clean and quiet. Buses are cheaper to run and can be more
flexible in terms of routes. Buses are like gigantic car pools. They
do the best job of getting people to their destinations. Buses work
within existing road structures, and local and express routes create
time efficiencies.

MTC's own analysis in 2001 indicates that a minimum of $109 million
per year is needed to fund the transit needs of low-income riders. It
also found that 80 percent of AC Transit's safety-net or "Lifeline"
routes were served too infrequently and/or were not served from
midnight to 6 a.m. Since then, it has gotten worse. For instance, AC
Transit cut 14 percent of its service in 2003. (MTC said it was
important to update the Lifeline gap study, but has not done so.)

Transportation-justice advocates do not oppose BART or rail; however,
we do support equal access and mobility for all. Funding and service
cuts in bus service disproportionately affect youth, the elderly,
people with disabilities and low-income communities. The MTC must
change its discriminatory practices by treating all transit riders
equally and subsidizing bus transit at the same level as rail.
Everyone in the Bay Area deserves equal access to a first-class, safe,
dependable public-transit system.


Juliet Ellis is the executive director of Urban Habitat, an
environmental justice organization in Oakland
<http://www.urbanhabitat.rpejournal.org>