Opinion ID: 3064664
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: 35 by the December 31, 1997 deadline. See Labor/

Text: Community, 263 F.3d at 1046. As the parties’ representatives could not agree on a remedial plan to address this failure, and also to ensure that MTA would meet the second target of 1.25 by June 30, 2000, the Special Master issued an order on March 6, 1999 mandating a plan which, as later revised, required, among other things, that MTA acquire 379 additional buses. Id. at 1047. MTA sought review of the 1999 Order, questioning both the Special Master’s authority to impose it and the validity of the factual findings and interpretation of the decree on which it was premised. Id. The district court upheld the Special Master’s findings regarding the agency’s noncompliance with the 1997 1.35 load factor target as not clearly erroneous, and affirmed the 1999 Order as to the 248 buses that MTA was required to purchase to meet the 1997 target. At the same time, the district court declared it “too early to determine whether the MTA is incapable of meeting” the 2000 load factor target, so it vacated the Special Master’s Order with regard 5214 LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA to the remaining additional buses and directed the Special Master to reevaluate the need for those buses once more upto-date data were available. We affirmed the district court’s order in Labor/Community. 263 F.3d at 1051. On January 12, 2004, the Special Master promulgated another order addressing measures necessary for MTA to achieve compliance with the load factor targets. The “Final Order on Remedial Service Plan to Meet 1.25 and 1.2 Load Factor Target Requirements” specified that “[i]n order to achieve compliance with the Consent Decree and to meet and maintain the 1.2 [load factor target],” MTA was required to provide the additional buses and service hours called for by the Working Group. The Order permitted MTA to meet some of the additional requirements through changes to existing services and more efficient scheduling of its existing fleet. But it required MTA to purchase “the vehicular equivalent of 145 new 40-seat expansion buses” and to provide “an additional 290,145 annual in-service hours.” The Final Order stated that providing this expanded service, along with the other improvements specified, would constitute “substantial compliance with the load factor targets of the Consent Decree and create a presumption that [its] expansion bus procurement requirements . . . have been met.”