MTA Officials Shift Gears to Talk With Riders at Bus Stops

By MATEA GOLD

Sept. 21, 1997 12 AM PT

Maria Delgado was supposed to be at work, but at 8 a.m. Tuesday she was still waiting restlessly on a bus bench in East Los Angeles.

Late buses are typical during her early morning commute, she said. But today she could take her complaint to the top without even leaving the bench.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority official Michelle Caldwell stood next to her and listened as Delgado described her morning.

“My first bus was late, so I missed my connection,” said Delgado, 24. “They need more buses on this route.”

Caldwell, finance director for the agency’s transit operations, nodded sympathetically and jotted down notes. Up the street, other MTA officials chatted with people waiting at bus stops, queried riders getting off and leaned into each vehicle to give drivers a hearty handshake.

The morning experiment, dubbed Meet the Metro Family, took managers out to the streets to quiz riders about their bus service.

“This is the best way to let people know we care,” said Ellen Levine, executive director of MTA transit operations. “Getting out to the people is something I think we desperately needed to do. Out here, we can see what works, see the frustrations and get a sense of what it’s like to stand on this corner.”

The bakeries and mercados in East Los Angeles were still shuttered early Tuesday morning when the MTA team took positions at Whittier Boulevard and Arizona Avenue.

Clad in bright yellow shirts and armed with bags of bus schedules, almost 20 of the transit system’s top managers worked the slowly awakening streets.

In the two hours they walked the busy boulevard, Levine and other officials found people with common complaints--overcrowded buses and long waits--and others who expressed general satisfaction with bus service. Mostly, they encountered surprise from sleepy commuters taken aback to find cheery transit officials asking them about the quality of their ride. Many just looked at the group warily and muttered that everything was fine.

“I think it’s going to take some getting used to,” said Jon Hillmer, a regional general manager, after encountering several riders reluctant to talk to him. “We kind of look like a religious group out here to recruit people.”

The managers’ early morning convergence on this stretch of East Los Angeles, where about 7,000 riders daily board buses within a two-mile radius, is the first in what officials hope will be a series of monthly events. The next one is planned for the Mid-City area in several weeks, Levine said.

The agency came up with the idea after some MTA officials appeared on a Spanish-language radio talk show and were bombarded with call-in questions from the community.

“We heard some people were unhappy, and we wanted to find out for ourselves,” Levine said.

The managers didn’t encounter any large-scale ire from bus riders Tuesday, and some warmed up at even the chance to complain to upper management in person. Other passengers pointed out fresh graffiti on a bus, and the officials quickly jotted down the vehicle’s number.

Some commuters suspected that the management flesh-pressing was more about good publicity than tangible changes.

“I think they’re doing it as a result of pressure to improve service and put more buses out there,” said Raul Perez, 24, as he waited for the bus to take him to work. “I don’t know if it will change their service, but it will probably change the way the community out here looks at them.”

And not every rider was pleased with the officials’ response.

“Hey!” yelled one rider, leaning through the door of a bus as it pulled up to a stop packed with people. “Why is this bus always late? I was waiting for 20 minutes back there, and it’s supposed to come every five.”

Peering into the crowded bus, Hillmer did not answer the question. “It looks like this bus is a little backed up,” he said. “So if you step inside, you’ll get on your way.”

As the doors closed, the bus rider muttered in disgust: “No kidding, man.”

The team of officials acknowledged that many problems won’t be instantly solved.

“These kind of specifics help us,” Levine said. “Will we be able to go back and change our service in one day? No. But down the line, we can take this into consideration.”

The agency is working on plans to better manage buses so they won’t bottleneck when one runs late.

Listening to passengers helps develop solutions, said Hillmer, who regularly consults an advisory group of about 20 passengers on the subject of service.

For many morning bus riders, the sight of the inquisitive officials Tuesday was enough to change their image of the MTA. “So what do you think of the bus service?” Richard Monroy, a public affairs officer, asked rider Jorge Alejandre as they sat at the back of a bus traveling Whittier Boulevard.

“It’s good,” said Alejandre, 27, as Monroy began to turn to another passenger. “No complaints.”

“I just can’t believe they’re here doing this,” Alejandre said. “I never would have expected them on the bus.”