UNION BLASTS MTA PROPOSAL TO BUY MORE BUSES AS TOO SMALL.

Byline: Douglas Haberman Daily News Staff Writer

An MTA proposal to buy nearly 800 more buses than originally planned by 2004, for a total of 2,095 new buses by that year, is too little, a Bus Riders Union representative said Thursday.

The bus passengers group insists the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must buy 1,600 new buses in the next two years alone, and 2,900 within five years, to comply with a court order to reduce overcrowding, said Bus Riders Union co-chairman Eric Mann.

``It really is too little, too late,'' Mann said.

Julian Burke, the MTA's chief executive officer, issued the proposal Wednesday to accelerate bus purchases. The transit agency's board will consider approving the plan Monday.

The MTA board also is expected on Monday to vote to exercise a contract option for 100 new compressed natural gas buses. But the agency should be buying at least 400, Mann said.

``Our members are not impressed with plans on paper,'' he said. ``They need purchase orders.''

Burke's proposal also asks the MTA board to overturn its 6-year-old policy that 100 percent of newly purchased buses must be only clean-burning, alternative-fuel vehicles. Burke proposes cutting that to 50 percent, with the rest being so-called ``clean diesel'' vehicles.

``There is no such thing as clean diesel, in our opinion,'' Mann said. All 2,900 buses the union wants the MTA to buy, Mann said, should run on compressed natural gas.

MTA spokesman Marc Littman said the agency's managers are not proposing to abandon its commitment to air quality.

The new buses in Burke's plan would replace the MTA's oldest diesel buses - many of them more than 17 years old - so ``it's going to greatly reduce emissions there,'' Littman said.

He said the agency is reluctant to buy only one type of bus, such as compressed natural gas, to minimize the risk that a hidden design flaw might become apparent later and affect a large portion of the MTA's bus fleet.