Convention Shapes Up as Key Test for Mass Transit

Despite all the security fences, concrete barricades and pre-convention warnings about escape routes, a group of out-of-town college students here to work at the Democratic National Convention has been finding its way around Los Angeles just fine.

What’s surprising about that is that most of their traveling has been on Los Angeles’ often-maligned public transportation system.

Expressing a common reaction, Emily Wessel, 19, a student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., just north of Chicago, said: “I didn’t know they had a Metro system like this before I got here.”

Wessel, one of 200 academic interns who will be working at the convention, had to stand during a subway trip from downtown to Universal City because the Red Line was packed with regular passengers, even at 4 p.m.

Her comments were just what Metropolitan Transportation Authority administrators have been hoping to hear.

The convention is supposed to be an acid test for the city’s rail and bus system.

With delegates arriving this weekend, about 260 special buses have been lined up to shuttle convention attendees around town. Drivers of the convention buses have undergone special training and should be ready to handle emergencies. The city’s DASH buses will run during convention week until midnight, three to four hours later than normal. And as of midnight today, the final street barricades will be set up around Staples Center.

Transportation officials are hoping for the best, but bracing for the worst.

Three stations are located close to where demonstrators will be massing--MacArthur Park, Pershing Square and the Pico Blue Line station, across the street from Staples Center, the convention’s site.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has already issued an advisory that it is illegal “to carry any flammable or combustible liquids, explosives or any other dangerous items” anywhere near an MTA train. There will also be no tolerance for anyone carrying signs or placards “affixed to a pole” when in a Metro station or train.

Aside from that, demonstrators are welcome--and very much expected--on the Metro light-rail and subway system.

The MTA also hopes that the thousands of convention delegates and political workers, like the college students experiencing Los Angeles for the first time, will also find their way to the Blue Line light-rail and Red Line subway.

As part of the first wave of convention workers, the college students’ impressions of the city and its transit system generally were favorable.

“I thought the city would be really polluted but it is not as bad as I thought,” said Tosin Sulaiman 19, a student at the Cambridge University in England who will work next week with the Congressional Black Caucus. “And the public transportation system isn’t as bad as I thought.”

Wessel, Sulaiman and other students, who are being housed at USC, were dropped into the convention scene a week ago with directions that they find their way around using public transportation. It’s part of a two-week academic internship with the Washington Center.

Most of the students bought the MTA’s $11 weekly pass, which provides unlimited rides on the Blue Line, Red Line, DASH and most buses.

Even though most of the students are from some of America’s largest cities, they said they were unprepared for the racial and ethnic diversity they found in Los Angeles. “I’m starting to get addicted to this place,” said Julia Azari, 20, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “It’s not like we necessarily are in the U.S. You see these signs printed in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Farsi.”

For their outing to Universal City, the students took the city’s DASH bus from USC to the subway terminal at 7th Street downtown. From there they took the Red Line to Universal City. The free Universal shuttle picked them up and deposited them in front of CityWalk a few minutes later.

One of their surprises was that the subway operates on the honor system. There were no machines to scan their passes or live bodies to check their tickets.

‘Where Do You Pay?’

“Where do you pay?” asked Bryan Gryka, 20, a student at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. A onetime resident of Washington, D.C., Gryka said, “They don’t have an honor system in D.C. No one trusts anyone for anything there.”

The crowded trains the students encountered will probably give transportation administrators headaches all week.

Even at 4 p.m., the Blue Line and Red Line were packed with their regular riders. Once the convention starts, demonstrators will also be pouring in. Thousands of convention attendees also may start using the system, realizing it will get them downtown from hotels in Hollywood and Universal City much faster than the convention-supplied shuttles.

The MTA is not used to the kinds of traffic it may see. If it materializes, there are extra trains standing by to be brought into the system.

Already, the MTA has had to shoot down rumors that it plans to shut down the Red Line’s Pershing Square and Blue Line’s Pico stations. As it stands, all stations will be open, although plans could change quickly if demonstrations get out of hand.

“We’ve devoted a lot of assets to keep the system operating,” said Tom Conner, MTA’s chief of operations.

The MTA has watched closely as other cities experienced large scale demonstrations in the recent past--Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

“People who demonstrate see the transit system as a vital means of getting around,” said Paul J. Lennon, MTA’s chief of safety and security. “They are not going to shoot themselves in the foot.”

The Los Angeles Police Department, Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol, MTA security and others have been planning for weeks on how to keep streets and freeways open, canceling vacations and time off.

“Caltrans has basically been working around the clock to ensure that there are not glitches and we keep traffic moving,” said Caltrans representative Margie Tiritilli.

To help keep delegates coming and going on time, the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau brought in Jack Lott, whose firm was responsible for ground transportation for the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York City, and other big events, such as the 1999 Daytona 500 auto race. Lott has been working on the convention since January.

Lott’s game plan for the convention runs 526 pages. Each route of the 260 or so shuttle buses that will run delegates and others around town is precisely mapped out, with alternative routes, if they become necessary. A sheriff’s deputy will be on board each bus.

For the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Lott worked out transportation for 144,000 participants and guests, who were moved around on 1,700 vans, buses and coaches--about 3 million individual trips.

Lott said that except for traffic snarls close to Staples Center he doesn’t expect the fleet of 260 buses--assembled to deliver delegates, the press and convention guests to and from Staples Center--to cause much of a headache around the city.

75 Hotels Being Used

Because delegates will be spread over a 200-square-mile area at 75 hotels, with the hotels running from El Segundo to Santa Monica, Universal City, Pasadena and downtown, Lott said most Angelenos will hardly notice the convention buses.

“The only problems are going to be caused by protesters and others who are out of the control of the transportation system,” Lott said.

For the time being, things are quiet.

“I was expecting more protests, more tension,” said Lafayette Williams, a 21-year-old student at Shendoah University and one of the academic interns on the outing to Universal. He was standing on Universal’s CityWalk on one of those postcard Southern California days: a bright sun, temperatures in the low 80s, a cloudless sky and a nice breeze.

He was watching a friend, Jemimah Noonoo, 20, a student at Northeastern Illinois University, answer questions like, “What do you look for physically in a man?” in an ad hoc interview for a new television show, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.”

Was a star being born? Noonoo didn’t bat an eye.

“My major is broadcast journalism,” she said. “I want to be a news anchorwoman. Ted Koppel, watch out.”