The Better Buses for LA Work group, is an interdisciplinary collection of grassroots community leaders, members of the business community leaders, public agency staff, and grasstops policy experts coming together with the shared goal of increasing community understanding of and engagement on improving the region’s bus system and is focused on championing implementation for bus only lanes in 2020. We know how to improve bus service and a key part of it involves bus only lanes, queue jumpers, signal priority, or boarding islands, all door boarding, all these types of infrastructure improvements are estimated to cut stop times and improve bus speeds by 20% or more.
Join the next meeting on Tuesday January 14th from 3:30 – 5pm. Meetings are open to all, but registration is required.
Improving the region’s bus services is much needed in Los Angeles. Without an engaged constituency of bus riders to advocate and work alongside implementing agencies ridership decline will likely continue. The Better Buses for LA Work Group work plan in 2020 is centered around supporting community based organizations and anchoring this effort alongside them and their members who ride the bus and is focusing on improving bus speeds (bus only lanes) and the transit experience in downtown Los Angeles – particularly looking at 5th, 6th, 7th and Grand and Olive for potential bus only lanes in 2020.
And see our meeting materials from the previous work group meetings and efforts here:
- June IiP blog post: The Long Wait for Buses
- July Work Group meeting materials and letter to the Metro Board
- September Work Group meeting materials
- October Work Group meeting materials
- November Work Group meeting materials
Background: Great cities have many ingredients – and for many, a key one is transportation options for how you can get around – how people can get to jobs, to school, to the doctors, to see family and friends. Providing transportation options is something the LA Region continues to struggle with after decades of giving privilege and prioritization to private car travel. And a result, the region is one where low income people of color, women, youth, older adults, and individuals with access and functional needs are disportionately burdened by negative outcomes (pollution, time, money, safety). The Region’s transportation network has been built like this, collectively, through federal, state, and local investments. And it shows up in many people’s inability to access what they need – a good job, an opportunity to go to school, time increasing social connections and bonds, healthcare and more for those who don’t own or have access to their own car. In the LA Region you can only reach 6% of the jobs within 60 minutes if you are using transit, compared to the 75% of the region’s jobs you can access if you have your own car. (Owen, Andrew and Brenda Murphy 2018. Access Across America, Accessibility Observatory, University of Minnesota. And Dr. Evelyn Blumenberg, UCLA Luskin Center).
Being a part of efforts to change this guides and informs the work of Investing in Place. Which is one of the reasons we have been coordinating monthly Better Buses for LA work group this year.
Metro is midway through NextGen, the region’s first redesign of the bus network in more than 20 years. In early September, largely inspired by the recent experience and success of the Flower Street pilot bus lane, Metro and the City of Los Angeles formalized the creation of a work group to identify other corridors in the City of Los Angeles that would benefit from strategic bus-supportive infrastructure (e.g. bus only lanes, que jumpers, signal priority, boarding islands, all door boarding).
See Metro’s November 2019 NextGen presentation.
