Poverty & the Environment: A Grist Special Series
Fit to Be Ride
Francisca Porchas, clean-bus campaigner, answers readers' questions
17 Mar 2006
Francisca Porchas of the Bus Riders Union.
How is your organization working with the state of California and the feds to bring cleaner transportation options to your communities? I noted that you mentioned gas-powered buses -- how many? -- Bill Turner, Dillsburg, Pa.
Our main focus to this day has been working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an agency with an annual budget of $3 billion. In the 10 years of our struggle with MTA, we have redistributed approximately $1.5 billion back into the bus system, expanded the fleet by over 550 buses, and created 800 new, green union jobs. In 1998, the Bus Riders Union's Fight Transit Racism Campaign forced MTA to replace its entire 1,800-bus fleet of old, dirty diesel buses with compressed natural gas buses, making it the largest clean-fuel fleet in the country. According to a recent study conducted by the Bus Riders Union in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council, since 1998, the BRU's clean-fuel victories removed 6,713 tons of nitrogen oxides and 335 tons of particulate matter from the air. In turn, this has prevented 33 premature deaths, 805 asthma attacks, 7,000 lost workdays, and 531,209 restricted-activity days for children.
What tactics do you have in mind to lure drivers out of their single-occupant automobiles and onto the natural-gas buses? -- Grist editors
Our plan is to ideologically challenge the mentality of "auto is king" by making connections between the proliferation of the auto and what Dr. Robert Bullard calls "drive-by pollution" -- tailpipe emissions that send black and brown children to the emergency room every day. 
Introduction to the series.
How environmentalism got its elitist tinge.
Photos of Louisiana towns battered by Katrina.
A look at the poultry farms ravaging the South.
How coal mining has scarred the hills of Appalachia.
A virtual walking tour of the polluted South Bronx.
More stories on poverty & the environment.
We also will work with the city of Los Angeles, urging them to take the necessary measures to not only reduce but also restrict auto use and promote a more transit-oriented mobility plan. We plan to carry out campaigns to massively expand public transportation and implement policies such as bus-only lanes and auto-free zones -- restricting car space and prioritizing it for buses.
A California Department of Transportation study reported that added bus service won by the Bus Rider's Union on Wilshire Blvd., one of the densest corridors in the nation, attracted more than 17,000 riders to the buses. About 50 percent of those riders were car drivers, meaning that 60,000 car miles, 4.1 tons of nitrogen oxide, and 5,835 tons of carbon dioxide were removed from the road. Now, imagine what a 14-mile bus-only lane could do on this corridor -- and added service on 29 major corridors in Los Angeles, including bus-only lanes.
Do you have current figures on deaths related to exacerbated asthma and emphysema from poor air quality? -- Ginger Wireman, Richland, Wash.
Children, pregnant women, the elderly, and low-income communities of color -- the ones most often living next to toxic, polluting industries and freeways, and lacking health care -- are the most vulnerable to the effects of air pollution. For example, young children are very vulnerable to the medical impact of air pollution, because from birth until they reach the age of 10, their lung tissue is in the process of developing. During the 1990's, for example, in any given year, 94 percent of the children in the South Coast air basin were exposed to first-stage smog alert. Today, children in L.A.-- 80 percent of whom are black, Latino, or Asian/Pacific Islander -- breathe more air toxins in the first two months of life than is recommended in a lifetime.
Do you have any insights as to why people don't carpool or use public transportation? Can you offer any thoughts on increasing ridership? -- Grist editors
One of the main determinants is that there are no real incentives -- like a first-class bus system -- to leave the auto. For example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proposed a $222 billion infrastructure bond that would build roughly 750 miles of highway. And the federal government approved the last federal transportation authorization bill -- amounting to $286 billion, of which roughly 80 percent is being directed to highway programs.However, in the last 10 years of our civil rights and environmental justice victories, ridership has increased by 12 percent. At the BRU, we have designed a countywide Five-Year New Service Plan on how to expand bus service to provide a viable alternative to the automobile. We think saturating the city with a clean-fuel, fast, efficient, reliable bus system with buses that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, would provide quality transportation for the almost half a million transit-dependent people and attract thousands more out of their polluting cars.
Why does the Bus Riders Union oppose the construction of rail lines through working-class neighborhoods? -- Alexander Zajac, Arcadia, Calif.
The BRU/MTA Consent Decree is a result of a civil rights lawsuit, Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union vs. Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which mandates the prioritization of the bus system in order to enforce civil rights and break separate and unequal transit policies. We are asking for a moratorium on rail expansion until all Consent Decree obligations are fulfilled. The Consent Decree delineates the priority of the needs of the transit-dependent over any other project and mandates the reallocation of other necessary funding, including rail projects. Spend your $.02
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We believe that a bus-centered transportation plan is required in a city like Los Angeles. Among transportation "experts" -- academics, planners and MTA staff -- there was an almost unanimous consensus that costly rail projects served no legitimate transportation objectives in a region with such low-density population and multiple centers of employment, business, residence, and recreation.
L.A. does not have nearly the population density of cities like Tokyo, New York, or London, all of which have rail systems that, with the complementary work of buses, can serve the needs of the transit-dependent. A train with a fixed route is simply a bus that can't turn. The proliferation of rail and subway construction means the raiding of bus-eligible funding and the starving of the bus system that predominantly serves low-income, overwhelmingly Latino, African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and significantly female transit-dependent people.
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