Transit Scrip Program Delayed : Services: City officials will try to enlist minority contractors before expanding subsidized taxi and bus service for senior citizens and the disabled.

A citywide program to provide senior citizens and the disabled with universal transit scrip--coupons that could be used like cash to pay for taxi, dial-a-ride and bus services--will probably not go into effect July 1 as scheduled, Los Angeles transportation officials said Monday.

The start-up date for the expanded program is likely to be delayed at least until Oct. 1 and possibly until Jan. 1, officials said. The delay is a result of a decision by the City Council to seek new bids for participation in the program because the city wants to attract minority-owned companies to serve South-Central Los Angeles and Watts, two areas where transportation services have been lacking, they said.

The scrip program has been in high demand in the San Fernando Valley, where more than 23,000 senior citizens and people with disabilities are registered for a city-subsidized transportation program. Throughout the city, 77,000 senior citizens and disabled riders use the services.

The City Council awarded a second taxi franchise for the Valley in March on the assumption that the scrip program would go into effect in July and increase the demand by about 215,000 taxi trips a year in the Valley alone.

The current program divides the city into six regions. In each, the city provides either taxi coupons or dial-a-ride services or a combination of the two. The new program will replace this patchwork system by distributing scrip that senior citizens and the disabled throughout the city can use like cash, not only for taxi and dial-a-ride services but also for RTD bus passes.

Eligible residents--who are at least 65 or disabled--can order a book of transit scrip for $15 and use it to get $60 worth of transportation services. Partial benefits are available to those between 62 and 64 who do not have full-time jobs. They pay $15 for a scrip book with a value of $30.

The current program costs the city about $21 million a year. The new program would cost $23.7 million annually, with the money coming from a half-cent sales tax increase approved by voters in 1980’s Proposition A referendum.

City transportation planner John Fong said the Department of Transportation had been ready to begin the program on schedule in most areas when the City Council decided several months ago to make changes in the service to be provided in South-Central and Watts.

Fong said the council decided to seek two contractors--instead of the one planned earlier--to serve those areas with taxi and dial-a-ride services. By splitting the responsibilities, he said, the council hopes to attract small minority-owned companies to apply for the contracts.

Contractors’ bids were due Monday.

Several months of the delay can be attributed to the city’s bureaucratic process, Fong said. For accounting reasons, city officials prefer to start the program at the beginning of a fiscal quarter, Fong said. Therefore, postponing the start from July 1 means putting it off until the beginning of the next quarter, Oct. 1. But Fong said it is more likely that it will be postponed for yet another quarter, to Jan. 1.

“As you come closer and closer to those deadlines, you sometimes have to extend them,” he said.

The Department of Transportation could begin the program July 1 in the Valley and other areas of the city while new bid proposals are accepted for South-Central and Watts, Fong said. But he said the department prefers to wait until the program can be put into operation citywide because it will be easier to advertise and operate the program in its entirety.

Phyllis Moats, transportation deputy to City Councilman Nate Holden, chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, said the delay should not be allowed to postpone inauguration of services in other areas of the city.

“I don’t see why they want to put a hold on the rest of it,” she said.

Blanche Brown of Tarzana, a senior citizen who has trouble driving because of bursitis in her arm, protested the delay, asking, “Do you realize what it’s like for a disabled person on a fixed income to get around?”

The delay will also mean that an underused dial-a-ride program in the northeast Valley area will not be eliminated this summer. The program is open to all local commuters, not just the elderly and disabled.

For months, city officials have considered eliminating the four yellow-and-red Foothill Dial-a-Ride vans that have operated under contract with the city since 1984 to transport people within a designated area in Sunland, Pacoima, Lake View Terrace and Sylmar. The dial-a-ride program has disappointed city officials by attracting only about 50 commuters a day at a cost of $170,000 a year, more than $9 a trip.

The vans were added to serve the hillside areas of Sunland and Tujunga, where residents have complained for years that they are underserved by public transportation. Buses do not travel the hilly areas of the two communities because their weight would prematurely wear out the narrow, curving streets, Fong said.

The city would like to replace the vans with a program offering discounted taxi coupons for commuters in a narrow 10-mile corridor that extends along Foothill Boulevard from Sunland to Sylmar, Fong said. But, he said, that effort must also wait until the entire citywide scrip program starts.