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Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been taking public transportation more often lately, including the bus down Wilshire Blvd. Now, amid concerns pointed out by constituents at yesterday's Metro Board meeting about service cuts that could happen this June, the Mayor said he wasn't ready to vote yet, point out the hypocrisy of the situation. "We are encouraging people to take the bus," he said in a Daily News quote. "There is some contradiction at the same time to cutting service."
The proposal of cuts looks to save $21 million or cut 370,000 hours of bus service reductions, depending on how you look at it. The service changes happen every six months when Metro evaluates all of its bus lines in regards to efficiency and ridership, then recommends changes.
How the changes to service will affect crime is another factor in the Mayor's postponing of the vote:
Villaraigosa wants to know the crime rates, transit dependency, alternative transit services that might be available, the distance to alternative services and the expected wait for the alternate services in the areas effected by the service cuts. The Mayor also asked that the staff prepare an alternate set of cuts the board could vote upon in April that would not eliminate service in high crime areas. "Before we cut service, we need to know who's effected and what the effect is. Right now we don't know that," the Villaraigosa concluded.
Supervisor Burke also spoke up about the impact cuts could have on crime. "There are places that at 10 P.M. you shouldn't be standing at the corner. I don't want to be responsible for putting people there." [StreetsblogLA]
