Busing Blues

Transit mess in Birmingham

Jim Shaw, 40, lives in Birmingham and works across town at a flea market. Partly blind since birth, he sweeps floors for $2.75 an hour. Normally he pays 80-c- each way to take a bus, but last week he had to travel by cab. The cost: $13.35 round trip. Shaw was just one of about 11,000 commuters, most of them low-income blacks, who were stranded last week when Birmingham (pop. 285,000) became the largest city in the country to be without a public mass transit system.

Until the shutdown, the 201 buses of the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority served the city and seven municipalities. The buses were also the vehicle of desegregation for 1,300 of some 5,000 schoolchildren who take them every day. Last October the transit authority tried to close the yearly $1 million deficit by cutting back weekday service and eliminating Sunday service. In addition, it raised the fare from 35-c- to 80-c- in just one year. Then it turned to the Alabama legislature, but the lawmakers were not quick enough in finding new solutions. With funds dwindling, the transit authority shut down bus service, laying off 263 people.

Said State Representative Bill Cabaniss: "They are putting pressure on us. They could keep the buses running for a few more weeks." The legislature, in fact, is caught in a city-suburb battle. A year ago, the transit authority pleaded with Jefferson County legislators for a countywide half-cent sales tax, with proceeds estimated at $8 million a year. But some of the area's more affluent towns wanted no transit system and no transit tax.

With the bus system in limbo, local churches have put 40 of their own buses into service, picking up passengers at 37 stops and taking them to city hall. The Yellow Cab Co. is transporting more than 3,000 students a day for 50-c- a ride. High schools with predominantly black enrollments reported that absenteeism was running no higher than usual.

The downtown area, however, is suffering visibly. Sales were off in department stores. Woolworth's estimates that 60% of its customers and 40% of its employees relied on buses. At Newberry's, where 30 or so regulars once took coffee at the snack bar every morning at 7:30, only a few have been coming in.

Birmingham, which has worked hard to change its image as a onetime citadel of Southern segregation, does not like the publicity. Notes Mayor Richard Arrington: "A story indicating a shutdown of buses in an area of over 700,000 people cannot be viewed in any vein except a negative one." Montgomery Mayor Emory Folmar seems to be taking note: last week he urged the city council to hike bus fares from 40-c- to 50-c-.

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