To the consternation of noise-conscious nearby homeowners, the City Council last night unanimously approved a sharply shrunken bus schedule for campus service at West Los Angeles College that satisfied the education community but left residents sourly disappointed.
It is not entirely clear why a small but quite vocal band of homeowners is erupting now to protest, especially since bus service probably pre-dates the residency of most. Culver City has been running buses across the sloping campus for about 25 of West’s 42 years.
Although both sides turned out forcefully passionate and articulate partisans, 26 persons spoke in all, there was not a trace of division among the Councilmen who commended Transportation Director Art Ida’s reconfigured campus schedule as a fair compromise.
At the suggestion of West’s Interim President, Dr. Rose Marie Joyce, the Ida plan will be treated as a pilot program. Results will be reviewed after the present semester ends on June 6. Implementation is three weeks away, Monday, March 28.
Homeowners pegged their arguments to two principal accusations, noise levels morning until night and questionable rider load.
(They also argued that young, healthy, energetic college-age students should be able to handily cover the hillside campus on foot. But several student respondents strongly asserted that West’s demographics are not so traditional, that numerous students are older, many have families and jobs, and numerous disabled students are enrolled. To the charge that Culver City taxpayers were needlessly supporting transportation for robust young people, Mr. Ida explained that 20 percent of funding was derived from fares, the balance from transportation grants. The single homeowner complaint left dangling was why the college does not provide its own transportation.)
Irritating Volume
The answer to the first charge essentially was, noise is what busses do. After consulting with parties on both sides, Mr. Ida, one of the city’s lowest profile and least disputatious executives, concluded that the most broadly acceptable panacea was to pare the schedule for the two lines serving the West campus:
• 48 percent reduction in Monday through Thursday trips to the campus, from 121 per day to 63,
• 74 percent reduction in Friday trips, from 121 to 31, and
• 79 percent reduction in Saturday trips, from 66 to 14.
In response to the charge that the quantity of riders was debatable, Mr. Ida and students testified that mornings typically were crowded. Patronage is sporadic the rest of the day, Mr. Ida said. Under the new arrangement, busses will run long enough to accommodate students leaving the final classes at 10:30 p.m.
None of the present bus-fueled resentment from the homeowners might have surfaced had it not been for a trouble-starting decision by former West President Mark Rocha last May at the same time he was negotiating a contract for his next job.
Richly aware of the historically turbulent relationship between West, which resides on County property, and Culver City, Dr. Rocha lit a bonfire when he told City Hall to discontinue a quarter-century of bus service. The college hereafter would provide bus service, he said, knowing well that he would be miles away when the experiment instantly blew up, a predictable development, sources said.
Dr. Rocha’s ill-fated, poorly timed, dead-on-arrival scheme — in the midst of a roaring City Hall-college-homeowner war over last year’s Environmental Impact Report, which he also ignited — became a license for thumping disagreement on a new front that arguably never should have happened.
What He Left Behind
Since he abruptly left for a similar position at Pasadena City College, relations between the campus and City Hall steadily have improved under the more serene, civility-first leadership of Dr. Joyce.
The latest result of the new attitude is last night’s half-is-much-better-than-nothing outcome.
“The new schedule is not optimal for us at all,” Dr. Joyce told the newspaper. “But it is truly trying to figure out the best interests of both sides.” She classified it as more “acceptable” than “desirable.”
Going into the meeting, she said there were two dealbreakers with Mr. Ida’s proposal:
• West needed a schedule extension — which was granted — to pick up students until 10:30 “because it is cold, dark and late.”
• “It is important this be a pilot program (which the Council granted). In their proposal, the city had some concerns about workability, and that is understandable,” Dr. Joyce said. “They have overparticipation on some busses, just handling the present load of students with gas prices soaring. Later, both sides, both interests, that is, can look at a schedule for summer and a schedule for the fall.”
