Ending buses to stymie regrowth of New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, Nov 14 (Reuters) Theresa Jones hangs on to her low-paying job in New Orleans by riding a free, government-funded bus 80 miles to work from the temporary housing she has lived in since Hurricane Katrina.

But her efforts to keep a job in hand and a roof over her head are in peril, as the bus service for displaced New Orleans residents is running out of money and poised to shut down at the end of this month.

''I'm going to lose this job if they get rid of that bus,'' said Jones, 45, who earns 100 dollars caring for an elderly couple one week per month. ''I don't see why they encourage everyone to come to New Orleans to work. I get a job, and they turn around and stop the bus.'' Funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and carrying an average of 1,000 people a day, the free buses have been running between New Orleans and the state capital, Baton Rouge, where many storm victims live, since last fall.

The service would need at least 6 million dollars from FEMA to keep running, but officials say it's unlikely the federal agency will pay up.

''As it stands right now, on December 1 there will be no bus service to New Orleans,'' said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. ''The thing that we need and don't have is the money.'' The demise of the LA Swift bus service comes as a blow to its riders, many of whom are low-paid workers who cannot afford to live in New Orleans, where a housing shortage has sent rents soaring since the storm devastated the city in August 2005.

''People want to work, they want to get jobs and it's not asking very much of government to keep those doors open through something as meager as bus service from Baton Rouge to New Orleans,'' said Alan Jenkins of Opportunity Agenda, a research and advocacy group based in New York. ''It makes no sense.'' According to FEMA, the service was funded as a relief measure in an emergency situation that no longer exists in New Orleans.

''We're way beyond the emergency period,'' said Jim Stark, director of FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office. ''It's become a successful commuter system that rightfully belongs to the state for responsibility.'' Of the bus riders, 85 per cent use it to go to work or to find work. Riders also include teenagers making the trek of nearly two hours each way to attend high schools in New Orleans.

''The thing that's a shame is that this has really been a successful service. These are people who are trying to make the best of a bad situation,'' Lambert said. ''This truly is a recovery tool.

It's frustrating, very frustrating.'' NO ALTERNATIVE State officials have asked FEMA, which in June extended the service to keep buses through Nov. 30ember the end of the hurricane season, to reconsider.

They also have asked the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which coordinates the state's rebuilding efforts, to consider taking over the service, although that is likely to mean a one-way bus fare of 6 dollars. Three-quarters of the riders earn less than 10 dollars an hour, Lambert said.

Now, with no other public transport between the state's two major cities, alternatives include paying 14.50 dollars one-way for a Greyhound Bus or not making the trip at all.

That's what looms for Andrea Raymond, 31, who stays in Baton Rouge but works mowing grass at New Orleans' public parks.

''I would have to quit my job because I don't have nowhere to live down here,'' Raymond said as she waited at a grimy corner of downtown New Orleans for a bus back to Baton Rouge. ''It's a must.'' Kathy Taylor, 33, also waiting at the bus stop, said she would work in Baton Rouge but finds employers reluctant to hire workers from New Orleans. So she takes the bus to care for an elderly woman in New Orleans.

''We're not welcome,'' she said. ''I want to come home. Get the schools together, make it affordable for us so we can come back home.'' Michael Cowan of Common Good, a local coalition of faith-based groups, schools and non-profits, said without affordable transportation, ''You put a wall between people who want to work and the good jobs that are available in their region.

''A community that has a wall between its jobs and its workforce cannot have a growing economy,'' he said.

At Opportunity Agenda, Jenkins argues the rebuilding of New Orleans, with affordable transportation, housing and health care and quality education, is ''a test of our national values.'' ''We're supposed to be a land of opportunity, which means that everyone should have a fair chance to start over,'' he said. ''We're falling very far short of that promise of opportunity in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Reuters BDP DB0934