Bureaucratic Standoff Stalls Installation of Bus Shelters

A standoff at Los Angeles City Hall over the city’s bus shelter contract has stalled efforts to protect thousands of bus riders from the rain and sun, especially in the city’s poorest and most transit-dependent neighborhoods.

City officials have criticized the company holding the contract because bus shelters are disproportionately located along busy commercial strips and in more affluent sections of the city.

The reason is advertising. More affluent, busier locales--especially Santa Monica, Sunset, Ventura and Wilshire boulevards--are dotted with shelters because they are considered more likely to attract advertisers. Ads are posted on the shelters’ side walls, and provide enough revenue to pay for the shelters’ cost--and then some.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon, chairman of the council Transportation Committee, called it “a bad agreement from the beginning.”

He wants to rebid the contract, now held by billboard giant Outdoor Systems Inc., based in Phoenix. He is also seeking a larger share of the advertising revenues for the city.

“The purpose of bus shelters is to give shelter to bus riders,” Alarcon said. “They [the contractor] have not made a good faith effort.”

Outdoor Systems director of transit John Hall said his firm has offered to build 400 shelters right away to fill the gap--and even to renegotiate controversial elements of the contract. The company will go so far as to build smaller shelters with no ads for underserved neighborhoods with narrow sidewalks, he said.

But Hall said he met with little response from the city. “They haven’t asked us, but we are willing to sit down with them,” he said.

Hall said one reason the dispute has reached a stalemate is that the company won’t build new shelters without some assurance it will keep the contract. Alarcon wants the company to start building shelters without any guarantee, as a show of good faith.

The effects of the debate are felt at such places as the Budlong Manor in Lake View Terrace, a public housing project for senior citizens, few of whom have cars.

The project is surrounded by bus stops that boast few amenities save bare concrete and a post with a sign.

Josephine Williams, a 79-year-old resident, waits there almost every other day, in every kind of weather, giving her plenty of time to ponder why there are so many shelters elsewhere.

“I think they are neglecting us,” the retired nurses’ aide said. “It isn’t too comfortable here, you know, we are elderly people. Sometimes we go to the church and sit on steps, but you might miss the bus that way.”

Narvie Johnson, manager of the housing project, said he has long worried about residents’ standing unprotected outdoors. “If the weather isn’t right they could catch pneumonia or get sunstroke.”

Martin Hernandez, an organizer with the Bus Riders’ Union, said the lack of bus shelters has long been an irritant to bus activists, and questioned why the contract is in private hands at all. “It provides a good venue for advertising, but it’s not ideal for people waiting for a bus. What would be ideal would be a bus schedule on the shelters instead--or a map.”

There are 994 bus shelters in the city of Los Angeles, hardly enough to make a dent in the city’s total of 9,010 bus stops.

By a bureaucratic quirk, the shelters are overseen not by the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, which runs most of the buses, but by the city’s bureau of engineering, which manages sidewalks.

MTA transportation manager James Rojas called the bus shelter distribution “a terrible situation.” He said it’s been hard for advocates to get the political traction necessary for change. “Nobody really cares. It’s not a high-profile, glamorous, sexy issue,” he said.

The city gets an automatic 13% share of net advertising revenues from bus shelters, an amount that has totaled about $1 million per year recently, said Robert LaFrance, senior city civil engineer.

This amount is less than the cut that other cities get, but not by much. Outdoor Systems also holds bus shelters with Pasadena, Burbank, West Hollywood, El Segundo, Santa Ana, Inglewood, Anaheim and Bell Gardens, said Hall. Of those, Pasadena gets the biggest share, 15%, and Los Angeles the smallest, he said.

The Transportation Committee next meets to discuss the bus shelter contract Thursday at 2 p.m., Room 314, City Hall, 200 N. Main St.