U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter ruled today that a ten-year-old legal agreement with the Bus Riders Union that prodded the MTA to spend $1.3 billion to improve service for the poor can expire later this month. Rachel Uranga reports on the Daily News website:

In a major victory for the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, the judge ruled that the agency had taken all "reasonable steps" to improve the bus system for poor minorities, easing crowding, extending service and adding hundreds of buses.

The decision sets the stage for a massive reorganization of Metro bus lines mandated under the decree but that officials say have been a drain on the budget.

The MTA praised the decision, while the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund warned that if the agency guts the bus system there will be more court action. Also: CBS 2

* Reax: "The end of the consent decree is the beginning of what could be an interesting dialogue of what future we want for our region," emails Dana Gabbard, executive secretary of Southern California Transit Advocates...Alan Mittelsteadt writes in the LA Weekly, "Anybody ever see Bus Riders Union founder Eric Mann getting to work on a bus? Mann and his wife, with a combined average annual salary of $204,000 between 2000 and 2004 from the Labor/Community Strategy Center, don’t exactly fit the profile of the average bus rider. Yet Los Angeles’ transit policies have been held hostage to the antirail freak ever since he set up the Bus Riders Union to fight a bus-fare increase in 1994 on grounds that it was racist — and to protest any transit money going to rail projects."