Court Opinion

ID: 9557649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:54:00.658374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:07.988537
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
The defendants simply did not comply, substantially or otherwise, with the Consent Decree’s requirements for relieving the overcrowding on buses. The Consent Decree and the associated orders from the Special Master spell out in detail the method by which the parties agreed to measure bus overcrowding and define performance targets that MTA is required to meet. Critically, the Decree also expressly prohibits MTA from seeking to modify the Decree for changed circumstances because of the difficulty meeting targets as set out in the Decree. See Consent Decree § II.A.4 (“The failure of MTA to meet target load factors shall not be deemed a changed or unforeseen factual condition for purposes of seeking a modification of this Consent Decree by MTA”).
Yet, it is just such a modification that MTA has in effect granted to itself, and that the majority is willing to countenance. Unable to comply with the load factor targets defined in the Decree, MTA devised its own measure of compliance and then announced that it had met that measure. The district court went along, without explaining why the defendants were entitled to rewrite a provision to which they had consented and which they had contractually agreed not to try to modify.
*1125Under these circumstances, I am quite certain, it was an abuse of discretion for the district court to terminate its jurisdiction to enforce the Decree. To rule otherwise is to sanction a governmental agency’s flaunting of the law and breaking of solemn promises. I can agree to neither.
1. The Consent Decree
The majority’s account of the background of this case is accurate but incomplete.
First, the Decree identified the reduction of overcrowding on County buses as one of its “critical objective[s].” The means for accomplishing this objective, and, more importantly, the interpretation and enforceability of provisions in the Decree designed to achieve this goal have long been a subject of dispute between the parties. See, e.g., Labor/Community Strategy Ctr. v. L.A. County Metro. Trans. Auth., 263 F.3d 1041, 1043 (9th Cir.2001) (“Labor/Community ”). In this appeal, BRU once again contests MTA’s compliance with Section II.A of the Decree, which committed MTA to “[Reducing [ojvercrowding [b]y[a]dding [n]ew [s]er-vice.”
As the majority recites, to measure compliance with this requirement, the Decree set forth specific “load factor targets,” with specified compliance dates for each target, and provided MTA with “discretion in determining how the targets w[ould] be met.” See Maj. Op. at 1117-18 for an explanation of the “load factor” concept. As the majority also explains, the Decree included procedural mechanisms to monitor implementation and enforcement. See Maj. Op. at 1118.
It is notable — but not noted by the majority, except in passing, see Maj. Op. at 1118-19 — that this is the second time, not the first, that MTA has come to this court to complain that the load factor target terms of the Decree are too harsh. In Labor/Community, MTA argued that the district court had erred in interpreting the load factor target requirements of the Decree. See 263 F.3d at 1048. The targets, MTA asserted, “were simply performance goals that MTA promised to use its ‘best efforts’ to meet, but with which the [D]ecree only required ‘substantial compliance.’ ” Id. at 1048. We disagreed, holding that MTA’s interpretation of what the Decree required “[was] refuted by a reading of the[D]ecree as a whole.” Id. The Decree, we observed, “set out a mathematically precise method of measuring bus overcrowding and a detailed schedule of load factor targets that were to be met by specific dates.” Id. at 1048-49. Therefore, “[t]o say that MTA’s ‘best efforts’ are enough for compliance would be to ignore the precise load factor schedule set out in the decree.” Id.
As I see this case, having failed to persuade us in Labor/ Community that the load factor targets were only “performance goals” to be used to evaluate MTA’s “best efforts,” MTA went forward as if that is all they were. The district court went along with this subversion of the Decree, and now the majority does as well.
2. The Special Master’s Final Order
In 2003, two years after we issued the Labor/Community opinion, the question of MTA’s failure to meet the load factor targets was once again before the Special Master. At that point, “[a]lthough the MTA ha[d] made significant service improvements,” it was “undisputed that, during weekday peak hours,1 the MTA did not meet the[2000 load factor target of 1.25] on 72 non-exempt bus lines, and did not meet *1126the [2002 load factor target of 1.2] on 75 non-exempt bus lines.” Moreover, the BRU/MTA Working Group had concluded that meeting the peak hour load factor targets would “require the addition of 185 buses and 425,500 revenue service hours.”
Once again, the parties could not agree on a specific remedial plan.2 Therefore, after first issuing a proposed order to determine points of agreement and elicit modifications, the Special Master promulgated a “Final Order on Remedial Service Plan to Meet 1.25 and 1.2 Load Factor Target Requirements” (the “Final Order”). As the majority recounts, see Maj. Op. at 1118, the Final Order spelled out 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 the Working Group had identified as necessary, and specified how it might do that. In addition, although the Final Order stated that the MTA would have discretion both in “how to deploy and schedule” the new buses and in allocating the additional inservice hours “on specific bus lines and during specific time periods throughout the bus system,” the Order also made clear that “MTA should deploy this additional service to meet the objective of alleviating bus overcrowding to achieve the 1.2 [load factor target] on each and every bus line.” The Final Order further 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.” In other words, the Final Order determined, what would constitute “substantial compliance.” MTA’s self-conferred abandonment of the load factor targets was not sanctioned by the Final Order.
3. The District Court’s Opinion
After the district court declined to appoint a new Special Master, BRU filed motions to extend the duration of the Decree and for contempt sanctions; the district court denied both.3 Critically, the paragraph the majority quotes on page 1121 from the district court’s opinion is all the explanation the district court provided. Why the district court thought that “MTA has substantially complied” even though it entirely failed to comply according to the measure carefully included in the Decree, affirmed by this court, and elaborated upon in the Special Master’s Final Order, we were not told.
As the majority holds, see Maj. Op. at 1120, lack of substantial compliance qualifies as a significant change in circum*1127stances justifying modification of a consent decree by extending the length of judicial oversight. In my view, the district court’s unexplained conclusion that there was substantial compliance has no basis in the record, and was therefore clearly erroneous.4
Before turning to a discussion of MTA’s compliance with the Decree since 2004, I note that the majority’s reliance on the district court’s “decade of knowledge about the case,” and its characterization of the district court as “uniquely positioned to determine whether there had been substantial compliance,” Maj. Op. at 1121, is grounded largely in fiction. Until his resignation in early 2006, Special Master Donald Bliss played the central role in monitoring MTA’s compliance with its Decree obligations. For example, prior to issuing the 1999 Remedial Order that this Court upheld, Bliss conducted a painstaking bus line-by-bus line review of MTA’s performance with respect to the 1.35 load factor target. The Order itself included an appendix which identified problems and proposed solutions for individual lines. The Special Master’s 87-page 2004 Final Order likewise included detailed findings regarding MTA’s compliance with the load factor targets and mandated highly specific remedies. In addition to these orders, Special Master Bliss issued literally dozens of detailed opinions and memoranda related to compliance issues. So, in fact, it was the Special Master, not the district court judge, who had been overseeing the Consent Decree on a day-to-day basis, who was intimately familiar with both its provisions and its on-the-ground application, and who had issued the key orders interpreting and implementing the Decree.
Moreover, with the resignation of the Special Master and Judge Hatter’s refusal to appoint a new one (even though the parties had agreed on a replacement), specific findings of the type that permeated Special Master Bliss’s orders were not available to the district court in deciding the motions that underlie this appeal and are not available to us now. Bliss himself does not appear to have updated his 2004 analysis of MTA’s compliance with the load factor targets before his resignation in 2006. And, although it is possible that the district court performed a detailed review of MTA’s compliance before issuing its order denying BRU’s motion to extend, its terse opinion does not reveal that it did, suggest what that review entailed, or indicate what facts were found.5
At a minimum, the majority should have remanded for some elucidation of the district court’s fact findings and legal reason*1128ing before accepting its unexplained conclusions. But the majority does not do so.
4. MTA’s Compliance with the Load Factor Requirements
Notwithstanding the limitations just discussed, the evidence that is available clearly reveals that MTA has not substantially complied with its commitments under the Decree. Specifically, MTA abysmally failed to meet the current load factor target, a “critical objective” of the Decree. Several facts demonstrate the broad extent of MTA’s noncompliance.
First, as of the 2004 Final Report, MTA did not dispute that it had failed to meet the 1.20 load factor target in 2002 and 2003 on a significant number of its bus lines during peak hours, and that remedial measures were warranted. This conclusion, reached by the Joint Working Group, affirmed by the Special Master, and not appealed to the district court by MTA, rested on an analysis of line-by-line data collected by MTA.
Second, the updates to this data reveal that MTA remains substantially noncom-pliant. For example, data from 2005 and 2006 show that MTA failed to meet the 1.20 target on approximately 80 out of 90 monitored bus lines, a noncomplianee rate of almost 90%. See David C. v. Leavitt, 242 F.3d 1206, 1212 (10th Cir.2001) (concluding that an 80% noncompliance rate qualified as “substantial noncompliance” and merited modification of the decree); Vanguards of Cleveland v. City of Cleveland, 23 F.3d 1013, 1019 (6th Cir.1994) (holding that noncompliance rates of between 25% and 40% were substantial enough to warrant modification under Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 112 S.Ct. 748, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992)).
Tellingly, MTA does not dispute this data or suggest that it was either collected or analyzed in a manner different from that employed by the Working Group and the Special Master in 2004. Rather, MTA suggests — and the majority agrees — that an entirely different approach can be used to analyze the data for purposes of determining substantial compliance with the Consent Decree, and that this new approach demonstrates that MTA is now in substantial compliance with the targets.
There are, however, several problems with the approach MTA espouses and the majority — blindly, with no inquiry at all into its premises — relies upon. First, MTA’s methodology, even if accepted at face value, does not reveal an identifiable change in the rate of MTA’s compliance with the load factor targets between 2002, a period for which MTA agreed that it was not substantially compliant, and now, when it claims to have achieved substantial compliance. For instance, according to MTA’s new methodology and its own calculations, the agency was in compliance with the 1.20 load factor target 96.38% of the time in the third quarter of 2005 and 95.99% of the time in the fourth quarter of 2005. MTA’s own calculations using this same methodology indicate, however, that MTA was 96.14% compliant with the 1.20 load factor target in the third quarter of 2002, 95.28% compliant in the fourth quarter of that year, and 95.97% compliant in the third quarter of 2003. Indeed, a comparison of MTA’s revised 2002 and 2003 calculations with its 2005 figures shows virtually no change in MTA’s rate of compliance. Yet, as discussed above, MTA did not dispute in 2004 that it was not substantially compliant with the targets in 2002 and 2003. In other words, MTA’s new methodology supports BRU’s argument that MTA is no more compliant with the load factor targets now than it was when the Special Master issued the Final Order, finding that there had not yet been substantial *1129compliance and setting out standards for judging substantial compliance in the future.6
In addition to failing to demonstrate any increase in its rate of compliance with the load factor targets, MTA’s proposed methodology suffers from fundamental conceptual deficiencies. MTA readily acknowledges that its approach provides an aggregate measure of compliance with the 1.20 target, by averaging performance across bus lines. However, as Special Master Bliss repeatedly stated, “Section II of the Decree requires that the load factors be met on each and every bus line.” Final Order at 46 n. 39 (emphasis added). Thus, MTA’s methodology does not provide adequate information for adducing its compliance with the Decree.
The Authority’s approach also averages peak and non-peak hour data. Once again, such averaging runs counter to the express language of the Decree, which specifically requires that the agency meet the load factor targets during both peak hours and non-peak hours. In other words, MTA cannot demonstrate substantial compliance by averaging low compliance rates in peak hours with high compliance rates in non-peak hours. It must achieve high compliance rates on each relevant bus line during both peak and non-peak periods to substantially comply with Decree, as that — ■ not just some average improvement — is what the Decree required.
Despite these significant problems with its approach, MTA contends that its method is superior to BRU’s because, according to MTA, BRU’s methodology “misleadingly]” identifies a bus line as noncompliant for a given quarter if that line exceeds the target even once in that quarter. MTA’s argument is unpersuasive for two reasons.. First, the Special Master agreed with BRU that a single measured exceedence renders a bus line noncompliant. See Final Order at 7 (“For example, 57 monitored bus lines exhibited one or more exceedences above 1.35 LFT [in 2003Q3] ... Moreover, W monitored bus lines exhibited one or more exceedences above 1.5 [load factor target.] ”) (emphasis added). Second, MTA’s own methodology suggests that each line exceeds the load factor target more than once per quarter. For example, in the first quarter of 2005, MTA’s data show there were 271 measured exceedences across 65 monitored bus lines. This number of exceedences equates to just over 4 measured exceedences per line per quarter. The number of exceedences on these 65 lines jumps to 532, or more than 8 per line per quarter, by the fourth quarter of that same year. In short, even if MTA is correct in characterizing BRU’s methodology as “misleading” — a characterization the majority echoes, even though the methodology is the one employed by Special Master Bliss — its own data and methodology suggest that it frequently exceeds the load factor targets.
The majority does not recognize any of these deficiencies in MTA’s statistical showing, maintaining that the parties simply “interpret [the] data” in different ways, and that “both [parties’] figures are correct.” Maj. Op. at p. 1121. That simply cannot be.
The load factor targets, measured as BRU measures them, are in the Decree; they are not simply external measures of compliance with more general goals con*1130tained in the Decree. So, in effect, far from “using a holistic view of all available the information,” Maj. Op. at 1122, to judge compliance with the Decree, the majority would sanction an implicit, unilateral, substantive modification of the consent decree at the behest of the defendants, changing the method agreed upon by the parties for determining how the overcrowding problem would be solved. Moreover, the Decree, as interpreted by the Special Master with the approval of this court, prescribed the manner in which the targets are to be understood and applied. To call that prescribed methodology an “imperfect and misleading metric,” Maj. Op. at 1121, and then ignore it is to rewrite the Decree. It is that metric, imperfect or otherwise, the parties chose and the district court adopted, not some other.
Using the Decree’s methodology, the defendants were not in substantial compliance. Only by altering the decree’s agreed-upon methodology can one come to an opposite conclusion. Put another way, although the methodology defendants suggest and the majority would sanction could have been the agreed-upon way of curing the overcrowding problem, it was not. That is why it is only by substantively modifying the consent decree that the defendants could have reached the result they support and that the majority approves.
But the defendants did not move for such a modification. The reason, in all likelihood, is that they were precluded by the decree itself from doing so.
Section II.A.4 of the decree provides that “The failure of MTA to meet the target load factors shall not be deemed a changed or unforeseen factual condition for purposes of seeking a modification of the Consent Decree by MTA.” That the parties included this unusual provision in the consent decree indicates how important the precisely delineated target load factors provided for in the decree were to the bargain struck.
In the end, MTA did fail to meet the target load factors the parties had agreed upon, not just here and there but substantially. In other words, MTA did not substantially comply with the terms of the Decree. Period. Instead, MTA sought to prove substantial compliance by formulating a different measure of load improvement than the parties’ bargain required. Allowing that alteration would be tantamount to a substantive modification of the decree in the defendant’s favor.
But no modification has been requested, and no basis for one has been suggested other than the contractually forbidden consideration- — -that MTA did not meet the target load factors provided for in the consent decree. To backdoor the consent decree’s prohibition on modification by unilaterally failing to comply throughout the period of the decree and then claiming substantial compliance through a different measure than the parties agreed upon simply flaunts the rule of law. That the majority approves this lawless stratagem by a public body can only encourage others to engage in similarly bald evasion of judicial decrees arrived at after lengthy negotiation and approved by the courts. It is grave concern about sanctioning such evasion that motivates this dissent, even more so than the quite serious indignities many people in Los Angeles suffer when using the City’s transportation system and that the Decree was supposed to alleviate.
In an alternative argument not addressed by the majority, MTA asserts that, regardless of what the data about actual overcrowding shows, it substantially complied with the load factor targets of the Decree by implementing the capacity expansion requirements imposed on it by Special Master Bliss in the Final Order. *1131These requirements included the purchase of 145 40-seat buses and the addition of 290,145 annual inservice hours.
Special Master Bliss did indicate that MTA’s implementation of the requirements just discussed would “constitute good faith, substantial compliance with the load factor targets of the Consent Decree” and would “create a presumption that the ... requirements of Section II.A of the Decree have been met.” And BRU does not dispute that MTA added almost 300,-000 annual in-service hours since the 2004 Final Order.
The problem with MTA’s position, however, is that it added 45% of these in-service hours during non-peak time periods. MTA asserts that this allocation is consistent with the Final Order because the Order did not specifically state that the additional hours had to be added at peak times. MTA maintains that the Decree provided MTA with discretion concerning when to add the hours, and that the non-peak hour additions therefore give rise to the compliance presumption alluded to in the Order.
This interpretation of the Final Order is wrong.7 Although the Final Order inartfully states that “the MTA has discretion in scheduling [the additional buses and in-service hours] on specific bus lines and during specific time periods throughout the bus system,” the Special Master undeniably intended MTA to add the additional buses and in-service hours to peak time periods. The clearest indication of this intent is provided in the section of the Final Order entitled, “What level of expansion service should be added to alleviate bus overcrowding during off-peak hours?” In the section, Special Master Bliss states that “the Consent Decree also requires that the load factor targets be met during off-peaks hours.” (emphasis added). Notwithstanding this requirement, the Special Master deferred a decision on MTA’s compliance with off-peak targets on the grounds that the relevant data were not yet available. The Special Master then instructed that, once the data was collected,
The JWG thereafter should apply the remedial methodology and determine the number of off-peak [expansion service units] to be implemented by the MTA in the June 2004 service change. Since peak fleet requirements are greater than off-peak requirements, this should not necessitate the procurement of any additional expansion buses, but it will require an appropriate increase of bus in-service hours during the relevant off-peak periods.
Final Order at 59 (emphasis added). In other words, the Special Master indicated that, at the time of the Final Order, he was not yet certain how many additional in-service hours were required during off-peak periods (although he did believe that some increase would be necessary). By implication, his exceedingly specific 290,-145 additional in-service hour requirement must have applied only to peak hours.
This interpretation is further confirmed by the fact that Special Master Bliss derived the 145 bus and 290,145 hour re*1132quirements from the Working Group’s conclusion that MTA needed to add “331 expansion service units[to] the weekday A.M. peak hours ... and 453 expansion service units [to] the weekday P.M. peak hours.” In other words, the requirements were tied directly to the Working Group’s determination that MTA needed to expand service during peak times; the Working Group made no such determination regarding non-peak periods.
In short, although the Special Master provided MTA with the discretion to add the 290,000 in-service hours wherever it chose “throughout the bus system,” and whenever it chose during peak time periods, MTA was nonetheless required to add those hours to peak time periods. MTA’s contention to the contrary is untenable.
I conclude that an analysis of the record leads to only one reasonable conclusion: MTA remains substantially noncompliant with the load factor targets.
5. MTA’s Compliance with the Other Decree Requirements
MTA suggests, and the majority in passing agrees, that, even if MTA did not substantially comply with the load factor requirements, it nonetheless substantially complied with the Decree as a whole, because it satisfied other obligations imposed on it by the Decree. As examples of its success in meeting the Decree’s other requirements, MTA cites its introduction of a Regional EZ Transit Pass and a Day Pass and implementation of the Metro Rapid bus network as a form of new service.
I am not persuaded. The Decree describes the reduction of bus overcrowding through compliance with the load factor targets as a “critical objective.” Moreover, the Decree establishes a “mathematically precise,” Labor/Community, 263 F.3d at 1046, system of targets and deadlines for achieving this objective, and devotes more text to the load factor requirements than to most of the other requirements combined. Only those provisions related to bus fares rival the load factor requirements in apparent importance.
The import of the load factor requirements is further underscored by the substantial amount of time the Special Master and the Working Group devoted to monitoring MTA’s compliance with those requirements and to crafting remedial measures to cure MTA’s noncompliance. The voluminous pre-2004 administrative record belies any suggestion that compliance with the load factor targets was not of predominant significance.8
In sum, because the load factor targets are such a central component of the Decree, I cannot accept the majority’s suggestion that compliance with other provisions could outweigh MTA’s lack of substantial compliance with the targets.
I would hold, therefore, that MTA did not substantially comply with the Decree’s load factor requirements, and that this failure qualifies as a significant change in factual circumstances sufficient to justify extension of the district court’s enforcement authority. Under the terms of the Decree, MTA promised that it would meet the third and final target by June 30, 2002, four full years before the district court’s retention of jurisdiction ended. As explained above, MTA remains substantially *1133noncompliant with the Decree’s load factor requirements, and therefore failed to adhere to its promise and the parties’ expectations. Extending the Decree to ensure that the planned compliance occurs is a natural response to MTA’s failure.
6. Conclusion
In short, I would hold that the district court erroneously concluded that MTA had substantially complied with its obligations under the Decree, and so abused its discretion when it denied BRU’s motion to extend its jurisdiction to enforce the Decree. See Kenney, 458 F.3d at 1032. Although I agree with the majority that a consent decree should extend no longer than necessary, See Maj. Op. at 1122-23, MTA’s ongoing failure to comply with a “critical objective” of the Decree necessitates extension in this case. See Board of Educ. of Oklahoma City, 498 U.S. at 249-50, 111 S.Ct. 630 (holding that, when deciding whether to dissolve a decree, the district court “should address itself to whether the [defendant] had complied with the [consent] decree since it was entered”). I therefore respectfully dissent.9

. Data for off-peak time periods was not available at the time.

. For example, although the Working Group had determined that MTA needed to add 185 buses to the relevant bus routes, MTA asserted that it could achieve the functional equivalent of adding 185 buses (or some portion thereof) by scheduling its existing fleet more efficiently. It therefore contended that it did not need physically to purchase 185 new buses. BRU contested these assertions.

. I note that BRU suggests that the Decree has no termination date and so extends beyond the ten year period. The Decree is in fact silent with respect to its overall termination date. Compare Holland v. New Jersey Dept. of Corrections, 246 F.3d 267, 279 (3rd Cir.2001) (quoting the consent decree, which explicitly and separately defined both the duration of the district court’s jurisdiction and the duration of the decree as a whole). It is therefore probable that the Decree is enforceable as a contract even if not as a judicial decree. See, e.g., Board of Educ. of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 244-46, 111 S.Ct. 630, 112 L.Ed.2d 715 (1991) (holding that a desegregation decree extended beyond the district court’s termination of its jurisdiction). Any such contractual enforcement issue is, however, beyond the scope of the current appeal.

. We have previously held in the context of a party’s compliance with a federal regulation, that the "issue of substantial compliance is a mixed question of law and fact” that we review de novo. See Louisiana-Pacific Corp. v. ASARCO Inc., 24 F.3d 1565, 1576 (9th Cir.1994). I nonetheless apply the more deferential clearly erroneous standard to our review of the district court's determination that MTA had substantially complied with the Decree for two reasons. First, BRU itself asks us to apply that standard. See Appellant’s Opening Brief at 6 ("The factual findings themselves, such as the nature of the data and what the data meant, and the resulting state of compliance with this Decree, are addressed by a reviewing court under the clearly erroneous standard.”) (emphasis added). Second, my review of the record indicates that the districts court’s decision warrants reversal even under the more deferential standard. Whether we apply the clearly erroneous standard or a de novo standard is therefore irrelevant.

. Because the parties did not timely appeal the district court’s decision not to appoint a replacement special master, we cannot now reverse it. See 28 U.S.C. § 2107. Were the issue before us, I would hold that the failure to appoint the new special master agreed upon by the parties was, given the terms of the Consent Decree, an abuse of discretion.

. In support of its argument that it need not achieve 100% compliance with the targets, MTA regularly cites statements by Special Master Bliss that "the Consent Decree does not require perfection.” Whatever implications these statements may have, however, MTA has not demonstrated that it is any closer to achieving "perfection” or near "perfection” than it was in 2004.

. I note that the district court has never provided its own interpretation of the Final Order's requirements. In 2004, it affirmed the Final Order in its entirety in a single sentence. In the 2006 order which gives rise to this appeal, the district court stated only that "MTA has substantially complied, and taken all reasonable steps within its power to insure compliance, with the Final Order.” Although we typically review a district court's interpretation of a consent decree de novo with "deference ... based on the court’s extensive oversight of the decree,” the district court has not provided a pertinent interpretation of the Final Order to which we might defer.

. It is also noteworthy that the Special Master downplayed the significance of alleged improvements such as the Metro Rapid Service and the Limited Stop Service. See Final Report at 30, 31 (noting that "bus overcrowding conditions worsened on Line 111 (Florence Avene) after the inauguration of Rapid Bus service” and that "[ojvercrowding similarly persists on Lines 60 (Long Beach Blvd.) and 66 (E. Olympic Blvd.) even after the introduction of Limited Stop Service”).

. I concur in the majority’s holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that contempt sanctions are not warranted.