By Scott Bridges

Culver City will once again provide bus service onto the campus of West Los Angeles College, acting City Manager Martin Cole told the News.

It was a balancing act, Cole explained, in weighing the needs of students, some of whom are disabled, with the neighboring community’s desire for peace and quiet — the buses do make noise, especially while traveling uphill to the college, which resides outside in an unincorporated county area outside the borders of Culver City.

The city does not want to leave disabled students “stranded” at the bottom of a hill, Cole said.

Former college president, Mark Rocha, gave Culver City officials assurances that when the city cut bus service onto the campus, the college would provide mobility-impaired students an on-call shuttle, which would pick them up at the bus stop, Cole said.

The college, however, provided no such service.  Recently, acting President Betsy Regelado stated in a letter that the school welcomes the resuming of Culver City bus service, which for years had journeyed to the interior of the campus. What she failed to mention in the letter was that it was the college that initially proposed cutting the bus service due to the wear-and-tear of the roads.

Some members of the Culver City City Council were “dismayed by the decision-making of the college” in seeking to have the bus service reinstituted without so much as an acknowledgement of the events which precipitated the brouhaha, Cole said, adding that he looked forward to working together with the interim college president to address the issues cited in an environmental impact report.

Bus service to the interior of the campus is set to resume by the end of the month, which means that area residents will hear some noise. It also means that the affected roads will suffer degradation — disabled students, however, will not.