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Thank you to our partners who helped us connect with community members to audit six critical LA Metro bus lines, documenting what it actually is like to ride the bus in LA.

We’ve published the results! Go here to see the full report. Keep reading below for a summary of the highlights.

More than 50 riders completed first-hand audits* on six key bus lines traversing the city of Los Angeles. The top issues facing people who ride the bus were identified as:  

• Reliability: Nearly half (44%) said the bus did not arrive when they thought it would.
• Bus stop conditions: Nearly half of the 244 stops audited were described as dirty or as having trash or litter, while 65 bus stops (27%) lacked shade.
• Accessibility: In more than half of the 126 observations, there was at least one person on the bus using a wheelchair, cane, crutches or mobility device. Yet, eight stops had no accessible boarding, 21 had narrow sidewalks, and 19 felt too close to moving cars—all conditions that would make it difficult for those using mobility devices to board the bus. 

When asked what would make their bus trips better, people said they want buses to be fare-free, faster, and more frequent—many specifically asking for bus-only lanes. Notably, they want bus stops to have more shade and benches and less trash. 

Bus Riders Do the Talking

People who ride the bus are tired of being an after-thought. We rarely hear from actual bus riders when decisions are made. In this report, they do the talking. 

We are providing the report to the current city council and to the candidates for mayor and for city council. The mayor controls a third of the Metro board and drafts the city budget (which contains $1 billion annually for streets and public right of way). The city council approves that budget and directs city services in their districts.  And 105 of Metro 119 bus lines operate some or all of their service in City of LA, with a recent Metro report citing, the average trip taken on Metro Bus is less than five miles, and on average about half the journey time is spent waiting for the bus.

We encourage policymakers at both Metro and the City of Los Angeles to use this data to inform their public works and transportation investments, and we especially want our mayor and city council members to pay attention to what their own constituents deal with day in and day out. 

This bus survey is part of a larger Investing in Place campaign currently underway about the need to create a Capital Infrastructure Plan in the City of Los Angeles. 

Sign up for our newsletter for updates and to connect with us about this campaign.

*The audit consisted of observations: 58 volunteers completed 126 observations (each person could observe more than one route). An observation included riding one of the six bus lines identified for the study, and answering questions about their experience waiting for the bus and riding the bus.

Take Action

Everyone: Join us to improve buses in your neighborhood.

• Reach out to us for opportunities to collaborate. 
• Acknowledge the fact that we can’t improve our buses without also increasing access to affordable housing.
• Sign up for our newsletter for future organizing meetings and updates about LA transportation projects and decisions. 

Advocates and Community Leaders: LA needs a plan—one that is specific about projects and budgets. Let’s get it done together! 

• Shed light on the public infrastructure projects that benefit neighborhoods by practicing budget transparency. One way to do this is by creating a Capital Infrastructure Plan. 
• Help demystify the ways that the Board of Public Works makes infrastructure improvements.
• We can’t improve our own neighborhoods if we don’t know what’s budgeted or what projects are being prioritized by any of the 11 City departments that work on streets and sidewalks. 
• Collaborate and join us!

Elected Officials and Policy Leaders: Talk to bus riders where they are—on the bus. 

• Experience the bus for yourself— ride the bus to get somewhere, not as a photo op. Let us know your favorite Metro bus line and why. 
• Ask questions about the timeline, budget and implementation plan for improving access and shade at bus stops in Los Angeles. 
• Ask questions about where local, state and federal public works and transportation dollars are going and how they are prioritized.
• Reach out to us to talk more about how we can support an inclusive and accessible Capital Infrastructure Plan for the City of Los Angeles. 

Go here to donate to support this work.

If you saw the June 7 Los Angeles Times editorial “Is LA Getting Serious About Safer Streets?” you probably came away with more questions than answers. That’s because LA public works and transportation policy looks a lot like the roots in that striking photo that leads the piece: a meandering mess that trips up even the most intrepid advocates (or that most people are forced to just go around).

So here’s how we see it and what you can do about….

The editorial mentions a potential ballot initiative for 2024 and a separate but related motion the LA City Council will consider this month. 

Both the grassroots-led ballot measure and the City Council’s motion in response are great signs. They bring focus to our urgent need for:

• Safer streets
• A way to make progress toward safer streets inevitable (by tying one action to another: if street work is happening, new safety measures must be included)
• An overarching plan for maintaining and improving LA’s entire public right-of-way infrastructure

With the changes coming to the Mayor’s office, City Council and other critical elected offices, and the next several months of campaigning, it is essential to bring these issues to light. 

At Investing in Place, we have begun focusing much of our efforts on that third bullet – the need for an overarching plan for everything related to public works and transportation in Los Angeles. We believe this is the key to achieving bullets 1 and 2. The ballot initiative and the motion each make some progress in that area, but there are nuances (of course) that we’ll explore here in detail.

With this in mind and with what follows here, we hope you will consider your role: 

• Participate in the joint committee meeting on Wednesday 6/22 at 2pm and weigh in
• Submit public comment to the council file (CF 15-0719-S26)
• Connect with us to talk more about what’s happening and ways to get involved 

Some Crucial Background and Context

Over the past year, a coalition of groups led by Streets For All has been gathering signatures to place a measure on the LA City ballot, seeking voter approval to implement the City’s Mobility Plan 2035 every time a street has substantial improvements made to it such as repaving. These Mobility Plan networks include the Bicycle Enhanced Network, the Neighborhood Enhanced Network, the Transit Enhanced Network, Pedestrian Enhanced Districts, etc. These networks are “aspirational” – meaning they set the vision for modal priorities on corridors, while also requiring further conceptual design and community outreach to weigh trade offs related to implementation of those networks. The coalition expects to submit their signatures for qualification for the November 2024 ballot in the next several weeks. 

In anticipation of this, Council President Martinez alongside four other Councilmembers (De León, Harris-Dawson, Price, and Rodriguez) (Council File: 15-0719-S26) introduced a motion to develop an ordinance based on the Healthy Streets Ballot measure for adoption by the City Council. The motion takes the ballot measure further by calling for project coordination among all the many departments that touch the public right of way and to prioritize these projects based on equity.  

What Might Happen Throughout the Summer

City Council is working to have the motion approved in some form before they go on summer recess (July 5 – July 22).  And, in order for the City Council to approve it, it must be first heard in the committees the motion was assigned to, for discussion and potentially changes.  For this motion, it will be heard in a joint committee meeting of Public Works and Transportation on June 22nd and later in the Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee.  It is expected to be approved in committee and sent to the full City Council, and if approved there, one of its first tasks will be led by the City’s Attorney’s office to draft the ordinance.  Then depending on how long it takes for the ordinance to be drafted, the earliest it could be reviewed and discussed by the City Council is in August. 

This motion is aligned with the timing for the Healthy Streets Ballot initiative as it is expected to turn in its signatures in the next several weeks, and if the initiative is certified by the City Clerk, it then goes to City Council with three options: 

•     adopt it as written,
•     put it to voters in a special election, 
•     put it to voters in the next general election

Several Possible Outcomes 

After June (based on the outcomes of the above), there can be several possibilities from there: the city adopts a new ordinance and the coalition withdraws their ballot measure. That is one option. The other option would be for the City to adopt theirs but then also adopt a companion measure that talks about how to implement theirs.

The motion introduced from City Council a few weeks ago is an effort to prepare for the ballot measure and to take it a step further than the Mobility Plan 2035 currently goes by integrating elements that aren’t as easily drawn on the mobility plan project maps like: crosswalks, bus shelters, street lights, stormwater infrastructure, sidewalk repairs and street trees.  

And the new motion brings that expansive vision towards equitable implementation by elevating the need for cross departmental and bureau collaboration,  and most importantly, it calls for a system to prioritize the work by existing definitions of equity in a multiyear work plan that is tied to funding.¹  

The Need for a Capital Infrastructure Plan for LA

The current motion is elevating an issue core to our hearts, creating a capital infrastructure plan. Many people are surprised to learn that the close to $1 billion in funds the City of Los Angeles (and this isn’t even counting State and Federal funding + Metro capital projects within the City) gets by formula every year has no long range plan for investing those dollars.  Creating a Capital Infrastructure Plan for the City,  is something Council President Martinez has been calling for and this new motion builds on those efforts. 

 Three things this motion gets right: 

1. Puts the issues of the City’s public right of way front and center during the next several months of local election campaigns and civic discussions. 
2. Addresses the lack of implementation of the City’s Mobility Plan 2035 mobility networks as elevated by Streets for All and a coalition of organizations with their pending ballot initiative. 
3. Highlights the long-standing need for a Capital Infrastructure Plan that coordinates and prioritizes public works and transportation projects that bakes in equity from the start.  And this effort builds off previous efforts and work currently underway in the Chief Administrative Office (CAO).  (See Council File 21-0039) and for transportation projects at LADOT (See Council File 19-1373).

Five questions that must be answered as this issue goes forward to policy discussion: 

1. What is the single, unified vision for Public Works and Transportation from City policymakers? 
2. How do the departments working in the City’s public right of way  coordinate today and why doesn’t that work well? The agency leaders and those doing the work (as disjointed as it might be), need to share the barriers to doing this.  As a first step in this process, in January 2022, General Managers of various departments including the Department of Public Works (DPW) and LADOT signed onto a, “Interdepartmental Memorandum of Understanding: Improving Project Planning and Delivery in the Public Right of Way.”² 
3. How does each department approach capital planning? (How far into the future do they look, do they maintain strategic unfunded project lists, how do they prioritize their own local resources? How do they get input from the public?)
4. What is the right way to bring communities in on planning for the public right of way without giving privileged voices unfair influence? To what extent should local stakeholders be able to hold up projects with broader benefits?
5. How does this build on the existing work from the City’s Administrative Office (CAO) to create a 5 year funding plan and prioritize funding by equity metric? (See January 26, 2022 CAO report) 

This issue of public spending on public infrastructure is one of the top issues for our city. Investing in Place will  continue to track the progress of the various efforts and will work with community partners, policymakers, and agency staff to understand the challenges, and the opportunities for solutions.  Stay tuned for more. 

¹Currently the Mobility Plan 2035 does not identify funding, contained scoped out projects, or a prioritization plan based on equity metrics, it relies on detailed maps that identify high level priorities for key streets.  It has been the view that a General Plan (which requires a lengthy General Plan Amendment process and City Council approval to update) should not contain these elements. These would be better contained in a Capital Infrastructure Plan (CIP) or Mobility Improvement Plan (MIP).

²The Board of Public Works also adopted the Interagency MOU. This agreement between departments sets into motion new processes for project scoping, agency coordination, data sharing, and joint work program development to deliver more holistic projects in the public right of way.

Key information:  Council File: 15-0719-S26

Date introduced: 05/25/2022

Title: Mobility Plan 2035 / Street Improvement Measures / Healthy Streets LA Ballot Measure / Street Resurfacing / Slurry Seal Projects / High Injury Network / Dangerous Streets

Mover

•     Kevin De León
•     Marqueece Harris-Dawson
•     Nury Martinez 
•     Curren D. Price, Jr.
•     Monica  Rodriguez 

Second

•     Herb Weson, Jr. 

Pending in Committee

•     Transportation Committee
  • Bonin, Chair
  • Koretz
  • Buscaino
•     Public Works Committee
  • Blumenfield, Chair
  • Lee
  • De León
  • O’Farrell 

•     Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee
  • Martinez, Chair
  • O’ Farrell
  • Buscaino 

Section 452 (b) of Los Angeles Charter: 

When an initiative petition requesting the adoption by the Council of a proposed ordinance is presented to the Council by the City Clerk, the Council must take one of the following actions within 20 days after the presentation, unless the petition is withdrawn by the proponents:

• adopt the proposed ordinance, without alteration;
• call a special election to be held not earlier than 110 days nor more than 140 days after Council action on the petition to submit the proposed ordinance, without alteration, to a vote of the electors of the City; or
• determine to submit the proposed ordinance, without alteration, to a vote of the electors of the City at either the next regular City election to be held more than 110 days from the date of Council action on the petition or the next Statewide election conducted by the County of Los Angeles to be held more than 110 days from the date of Council action on the petition.

Election Code 711(d):

Withdrawal of Initiative. The proponents of an initiative petition may withdraw the petition at any time before the City Council has taken action on the initiative pursuant to Charter Section 452 or 453. The proponents also may withdraw the initiative after the City Council has taken action to submit the initiative to a vote of the electors under Charter Section 452 or 453, provided that withdrawal occurs not later than the 88th day before the election and only upon approval of the proponents and the City Council. In order to withdraw the initiative, the proponents shall file with the City Clerk a written notice of withdrawal signed by all five proponents. 

This past week, we shared a deep dive of Metro information in a series 3 posts – the result of months of research, meetings with current and former Metro staff, meetings with our advocacy and organizing partners, anonymous discussions with bus operators, archive visits, and conversations with national experts.

I know; there is a lot to digest here. We shared this information to encourage others to see what we’re seeing. Every community member, bus rider, bus operator, organizer and advocate, journalist, policy-maker, and transportation agency employee should be asking questions about how we address this failure to create a transportation system that works for everyone – especially those who depend on it to survive (and that’s both people who ride and people who operate it!).

The initial response received in just a few short days has shown that even as deep as we dove, there is still so much more to this issue that must be uncovered. We heard from current and former operators sharing the disconnect between the policy-makers and the actual operations, something we have also been hearing from people who rely on the bus. There have been calls back to the legacy of RTD (the agency that eventually became Metro in 1993) that impacts the way operators are paid and treated. Any one of these issues is alone is important enough to address – and there is a lengthy list of what needs to be done.

It can seem overwhelming. It can be overwhelming. The responsibility is on each of us who cares not just about the system but the opportunities it unlocks for our neighbors, our friends and our families when it truly acts as a reliable, safe, and effective public utility. Imagine if your water didn’t flow or your lights went out 10% – 15% of the time. 

Investing in Place’s mission is to shine a light on public investments and advocate for a more inclusive decision-making process and equitable resource allocation in public works and transportation programs for all people in Los Angeles. This work is mostly behind the scenes, mostly in the weeds of multi-hundred page documents, and requires an alliance of partners and communities to share insights not written in those pages.

This week, I hope we shared information to help inform the conversation and frame meaningful questions we should all be asking our agencies and ourselves in whatever role we find ourselves.  

Join us in this effort. Continue to ask these questions. Use your network, power, influence – to whatever degree it exists – to help Metro do better. Want to do even more? Become a supporter of the Investing In Place work by making a contribution to help underwrite this continued collaboration, research, analysis and publication of the information needed to create a world class transportation system in Los Angeles.

Links to this week’s series: 

• Metro Bus Operation: The Past, Present and Future
• The Metro Bus Operator Crisis
• Promises and Press Releases: Where are the Better Buses? 

New to us and want to know more about our work? Click here to learn more about Who We Are.

When the Metro Board adopted the Transit First Scenario alternative for its implementation of the NextGen plan in January 2020 – just two months before COVID-19 lockdowns swept the U.S. – the plan’s aims were among the most ambitious that the agency had ever pursued. The Transit First alternative called for a significant reorganization of Metro’s bus service and major investments in busy corridors where riders have suffered long waits and slow rides for decades. 

But Metro’s history is full of false starts. Many of the agency’s plans have been announced with public fanfare only to falter, ultimately resulting in no lasting changes for transit riders. And after two fraught years, it appears  that the NextGen Transit First Scenario may be yet another such floundering plan.

But we do what we always do: we get to work to reveal the facts. We look for board motions, implementation reports, budgets and expenditures – the details of how plans can and have been implemented. While politicians may love a good press conference, we love a good balance sheet with the actuals. (In accounting, actuals are the recorded revenues and expenditures at a given point in time, as compared to the budget, which is only a forecast of income and spending projections.)

It has been challenging for the public and groups like ours to understand and engage in Metro’s budget prioritization for some time, particularly when it comes to the bus system because of the lack of detail on transit operations investments as well as the quick and one-way Metro budget public processes. Not to mention we never saw a detailed funding plan or project list for NextGen Scenario first. That was why we prioritized our work around these key issues last spring. And, through our Better Buses for LA work group, we created a comment letter that over 54 organizations and 276 individuals supported calling for several key issues such as:

• The allocation of resources to ensure greater procedural equity in FY23 budget-making.
• The expansion of bus service to meet existing needs and to prioritize bus capital improvements

And that’s why we were excited the Metro Board member Supervisor Mitchell responded to our concerns her amendment to motion 2021-0397 in May 2021:

• “Report back with a more thorough and participatory public and legislative process for future budgets and mid-year budget adjustments, including a board meeting that considers the budget exclusively.”

We now find ourselves in yet another year with a very similar budget outreach process which seemingly ignores Supervisor Mitchell’s request . This month there is a presentation about the process, and it does reference the new CEO listening sessions that happened in the fall of 2021. Investing in Place participated in one of the listening sessions. However, we have seen little change beyond that so far.

Without a more transparent budgeting and accounting process, the public isn’t able to help understand and shape the public dollars and infrastructure desperately needed by so many. At the bare minimum, Metro should be honestly sharing how much progress has made on implementing the NextGen Transit First Scenario (see Figure 1), which, according to the direction of the Metro Board, was scheduled to take place over 6 years and to include nearly $1 billion in capital spending and reallocated bus service hours to create an all-day, frequent, and reliable network.

The approach from Metro was: we shouldn’t add more buses until we fix the underlying infrastructure of the bus system.  Metro identified that infrastructure, which includes things like bus stops, shelters, and the congested city streets in need of bus only lanes, as being the primary contributing factor to declining bus speeds. Consequently, fixing the underlying infrastructure meant consolidating bus stops, creating new bus-only lanes, allowing passengers to board through rear doors, implementing traffic signal priority for buses, and improving the bus stops themselves. The plan also included the elimination of almost all of the system’s Rapid buses, including the Santa Monica Boulevard Line 704, Venice Boulevard Line 733, West LA to Sylmar Line 734, with the idea being that their service would be consolidated back into local routes that would be making fewer stops. 

While the rapid routes were actually eliminated, it’s unclear if speed improvements have actually been realized since data and implementation information has been hard to come by. What we do know is that by the end of June 2021, at least $7 million was allocated to be invested in bus speed improvements (see Figure 2).

Questions still linger…how much of that was spent and where? What was programmed for the following year in FY22? Is $7 million a year the best Metro can do given the critical importance the bus system is for so many people in the Los Angeles Region who are struggling to get by? These are the essential workers and others who rely on the bus for their daily needs during the pandemic. (Metro had the least amount of transit ridership loss during the past two years than any other transportation agency in the Country.) 

Since 2018, the Metro and LADOT bus speed work group has implemented 12.8 bus only lane miles, which is small but important progress on a very large problem.

To put it in perspective, remember the scale of the bus and street network in Los Angeles: the City of Los Angeles alone has 23,000 lane miles, and about 40% of those are major avenues and boulevards.

In addition to creating Bus Only Lanes (BOL), the Metro and LADOT work group is:

• Piloting red paint/thermoplastic treatment –  In the summer of 2021 LADOT implemented this partial red thermoplastic treatment along portions of Wilshire Boulevard and the MyFigueroa segment in DTLA and has recently started applying it in and around downtown Los Angeles. 
• Implementing their successful AB 917 State Legislation for Camera Bus Lane Enforcement.  LADOT has recently started to develop implementation strategies for this legislation. 
• Implementing Metro G Line (Orange) Busway signal improvements.
• And future work includes (per a Jan 2022 Board Report): “Metro continues to work with LADOT to improve editing Transit Signal Priority (TSP) and expand it to more buses and along non-TSP Tier 1 Corridors. Today on Metro Rapid Buses receive TSP, which can extend green lights to prioritize certain buses. Metro is exploring the viability to enable TSP on its entire 2,300 bus fleet.”

These are laudable projects. They also represent a welcome shift in the relationship between the City and Metro, which have often seemed to operate at cross purposes on the issue of bus service. But both the level of investment and the rate of progress are wholly incompatible with Los Angeles’s existing (let alone its forecasted) needs.

While COVID-19 has created trying and unprecedented conditions for many local government agencies, it has also presented tremendous opportunities to try new approaches. Federal COVID relief funds are ideal resources for the one-time fixes of many of the bus routes and services needed to improve operations and bus speeds. These investments would have a significant immediate and long lasting impact for the bus network. 

But has any of that happened? With available public data we have been able to find so far, it’s just not clear. 

Investing in Place has been attending NextGen Metro meetings since 2018. For years, we have written analysis, blog posts, comment letters, led convenings and work groups, collaborated with partners for organizing and advocacy with Metro Board members and at Board meetings, but now we find ourselves looking at data and conditions where Metro bus service is actually worse now than it was 25 years ago.

As we struggle to measure Metro’s adopted NextGen Plan, its stage of  implementation, and the state of Metro’s bus service – we keep coming back to Metro’s opaque budget and funding prioritization process. We are seeking to understand why there seems to be no funding to substantially improve the Metro bus experience. It’s a publicly stated priority, yet the proof that investments have been made are less so.

Being a bus operator is hard work. It is both physically and mentally demanding work, and throughout the long days, drivers are charged with getting riders to their destinations safely. Too often, it is a thankless position.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic upheaval that has accompanied it, appears to have changed the calculus for many of those in Metro’s labor pool. Metro has been losing more operators each month than it can hire.

In the Fall of 2021, as Metro tried to reinstate pre-COVID bus service (7.1 million RSH), the agency’s statistics show a gap immediately between the number of worker-hours that Metro would have needed to run service according to the timetable and the worker-hours they actually had at their disposal.

The picture on the ground was grim. Riders were left stranded by the system as operator callouts led to rolling cancellations throughout the day. That was despite promises from Metro to undo the COVID service cuts and repeated admonitions from the Board of Directors to boost hiring to support the NextGen program that riders were told would finally boost frequencies on major corridors.

Like so much else in our region, the worst impacts of the service cancellations were concentrated in some of the neighborhoods that could least afford them. According to an analysis by Henry Fung, chair of Metro’s Community Advisory Council, canceled buses fell disproportionately in South Los Angeles. Out of 15 bus lines which reported a 25% or greater cancellation rate in January, Fung says that 13 of them serve South Los Angeles. And, that rate means that one out of every four buses on a line would be canceled every day for the entire month. The Vermont Rapid Line, one of the few Rapid lines remaining serving one of the county’s busiest transit corridors, experienced a cancellation rate of nearly four in 10 buses – 40%!

The reasons for such a disparity – and why it should fall on one of the poorest regions of Los Angeles County – might be able to be found in the way Metro schedules operators work. Fung indicates that after training, new operator hires at Metro may be sent to work anywhere in the county. Metro’s service area is enormous, and, with Los Angeles’s traffic, this can result in multi-hour commutes for drivers to or from work in an unfamiliar part of town. Municipal bus services throughout Los Angeles County such as Long Beach Transit and Santa Monica Big Blue Bus have much smaller service areas, which therefore ensures a greater idea for prospective bus operators where they will commute to.

The elevated number of operator callouts in South Los Angeles could be, at least in part, a product of harmful perceptions about the frequently stigmatized area. This is a challenging problem, to be sure – but it is Metro’s duty to solve it and solve it well. Riders in South Los Angeles rely on transit to navigate the city. Good transit can liberate riders, but on the flipside bad transit can entrap riders.

Investing in Place’s analysis indicates that despite the unfavorable commuting conditions and high cost of living, operators start at a rate ($19.12 after six months) that is below several of the agency’s peers. As Henry Fung writes in his letter, the approximately $30,000 a new hire at Metro could expect to earn in a year is barely enough to get by, even without the challenges that come with being a bus driver.

Metro is currently short almost 600 bus operators. This is a crisis.  Based on the data we have, the best month Metro had in hiring new operators was April 2021, with 43 new people hired, but they haven’t hit that level since. 

Metro Transit Operator Hiring Trends 

*Metro Rail and Bus Operators come from the same group of staff. When Metro increased rail service, it took away bus operators. And when new rail lines start, that will be another hit to the bus operator pool.

At this rate it may be years before Metro has enough operators to restore bus service to pre-COVID levels.  The impact of this is huge, we know that the majority of Metro bus riders have no other choice but the bus to meet their daily needs.  COVID-19 bus ridership numbers clearly demonstrated that.  Metro suffered the least amount of transit ridership loss than anywhere in the country since the start of the pandemic. Metro bus riders still relied on the bus in the early days of the pandemic. Why, you may ask? Because Metro is a lifeline, the only option, and likely because many bus riders are also low wage service workers who took care of the region while many of us sheltered in place.

The current contract with Metro’s transit operators expires June 30, 2022. Metro executives and Union leadership are meeting to develop a new contract.

We have learned about key themes impacting the desirability of the job such as: 

• Starting Pay
• Unpredictable schedule and location
• Working conditions on the bus 
• The fact operators are currently contractually required to show up  for overtime hours if called back. Over the past two years this has had a tremendous impact on staff and their families due to Metro’s operator shortage.

It is critical that all Metro leaders – Board and staff – recognize this crisis, and respond with significant changes to restructure the job and the working environment, analyze key takeaways that come up from current operators to inform changes to the new contract, and speed up and streamline the path to full time employment.  It is particularly important to get input from current bus operators – particularly ones with 1-3 years of service.  They can illuminate why so few people want to be a Metro Bus Operator.  

Every decision made by Metro leadership should consider this information to address this crisis if they want to make progress and improve from conditions within the next year. Metro and the Board need to respond with urgency and commitment to radically improve the bus experience for everyone.

Metro is currently running the same amount of bus service now as it was in 1998, nearly 25 years ago. Metro is running 6.2 million revenue service hours (RSH) after service cuts were implemented last month due to the bus operator shortage crisis.. We’ll repeat it again. Metro is running the same amount of bus service as it was in 1998. The biggest difference between now and 1998 is that Metro’s budget was only $2.8 billion dollars  compared to today’s $8 billion dollar budget. Metro’s budget has grown because of two additional voter-approved sales taxes (Measure R & Measure M), increased state funding, and federal funding. AND, Metro’s buses have gotten slower.

Bottom line: With a nearly tripled budget, Metro bus service is actually worse now than it was 25 years ago.

The solution is clear: policy-makers and analysts need to be clear with the public that they understand what they are sacrificing and who they are negatively impacting by NOT prioritizing the needs of millions of trips made by people who rely on our bus system for their survival. Investing in Place is currently analyzing over 25 years of Metro budgets and bus operations with a goal of curating data to increase a shared understanding of what has been going on. Our goal is to be able to produce the tools for policymakers, partners and interested community members to understand and engage with Metro’s operations spending.

But first, we have to understand the agency’s history on bus operations funding, where it is today, and analyze what we see is being allocated in the upcoming Fiscal Year 2023 budget. We anticipate the FY23 Transit Operations budget to be presented to the Metro Board in the next few weeks. 

Look out for our next post on the Metro Bus Operator Crisis.

LA adds to its processes, confusion, and uncertainty due to a lack of a plan to spend nearly $1 Billion each year on roads, sidewalks, trees, access ramps, bus shelters, and more. And the fix is simple and doesn’t require more spending.

Did you know that Los Angeles is the only major US city without a capital infrastructure plan?[efn_note]The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) “recommends that state and local governments prepare and adopt comprehensive, fiscally sustainable, and multi-year capital plans to ensure effective management of capital assets. A prudent multi-year capital plan identifies and prioritizes expected needs based on a strategic plan, establishes project scope and cost, details estimated amounts of funding from various sources, and projects future operating and maintenance costs. A capital plan should cover a period of at least three years, preferably five or more.” https://www.gfoa.org/materials/multi-year-capital-planning[/efn_note] And the reason it matters to you: No one (I mean, no one) has a clear picture of where BILLIONS of public works and transportation funds have gone over the years, and there is no publicly accessible funding plan for past, present or future investments. In short: without a plan, you can be the region with the largest public works program in the nation and you can still have broken, unpassable sidewalks and no viable, reliable, and safe options other than driving.

From our research, we have found that every year in the past few years, at least $700 – $800 million in your tax dollars is dedicated to public works and transportation projects – all without a guiding vision that a capital infrastructure plan would provide. We don’t have this essential guiding document and funding plan, and as a result, we’re not serving the needs of the most vulnerable because we have no means to track where money is being spent.

The truth is: creating such a plan isn’t that difficult. In fact, there is a pending motion from Council President Nury Martinez that can begin to address this.  Council File 21-0039  states:

“Public infrastructure is one of  the most fundamental services the city provides… However, the way these funds are apportioned and implemented is often convoluted and divided between multiple agencies and city departments.”

“The City must take a more unified and holistic approach to planning for infrastructure improvements to ensure equity for all neighborhoods. This includes assessing deficits in the neighborhoods and creating a plan and prioritization list for addressing them. This type of assessment will ensure that the City can better coordinate between city departments with purview over public infrastructure.”

This is an opportunity for the City of Los Angeles to operationalize equity in its Public Works and Transportation departments. The City Council has publicly acknowledged it, and this is where the process gets mired in bureaucracy and in some ways, a power struggle. 

The Council President’s motion instructs the City Administrative Officer (CAO) to prepare a plan to reform the City’s Capital Improvement Expenditure Plan. This was requested in January 2021 — in September 2021, City Staff still has not provided this requested plan.

So, what can we do?

Here are our recommendations for the the top 3 things we need the City of Los Angeles needs to do in the next year to move this important and overdue effort forward:  

1. Have the City Council and Mayor set a clear unified vision for the future of infrastructure functionality in the City. This is the required first step in creating a Strategic infrastructure plan. The role of the Mayor and City Council is to set vision and governance, and the role of bureaus and departments is to implement it. This requires
   • A single unified vision for Public Works and Transportation from policymakers. For example, the City’s Board of Public Works, manages the Bureau of Public Works, and yet their vision for the next 10 years must include that of other departments that touch the public right of way like the Department of Transportation and LAPD.  This should be grounded in not what the Bureaus and Departments do now, but what they could be doing.
     • Input from stakeholders, especially Neighborhood Councils, that informs the process at the Board of Public Works and City Council.
     • Action by the City Council to vote on a vision document before a plan is developed by the departments.
2. Be transparent about how much money is annually available to the city for infrastructure work and how it has been and will be spent through the City’s months-long budgeting process. This is accomplished by the Chief Administrative Office (CAO) providing:
   • The key Bureaus and Departments[efn_note] So far, we have identified:
     1. Bureau of Engineering
     2. Bureau of Street Lighting
     3. Bureau of Street Services/Streets LA
     4. Bureau of Sanitation
     5. Department of Transportation
     6. And additional programs as identified 

     And while LADWP does public infrastructure work in the public ROW, their work is constrained by a different governance slightly outside of the City services process.[/efn_note] working on public infrastructure and the public right of way. 

   • The total figure these departments were allocated in City-controlled funds since FY17 to today.  
   • A breakdown of these figures in operating versus capital dollars.
   • The total funding for each of the following programs since FY17, including funding streams (including grants such as ATP and HSIP) and funding allocations for each department related to it:  
     • Safe Routes to School 
     • Vision Zero
     • Sidewalk Repair Program
     • Urban Forestry (Tree trimming, tree planting, etc.)
     • Complete Streets (work program led by BOE)
     • Street Furniture and Bus stop improvements and access
     • Street Lighting 
     • Metro Bus speed improvements and Dash service 
   • A list or description of any as-yet unfunded strategies and/or programs that would improve coordination between departments and/or public safety, equity, public health, or transportation outcomes in the public right of way.
3. Direct the Chief Administrative Office (CAO) to address the status of the motion reopened June 2021 (Council File 18-0458) by Councilmembers Bonin, Blumenfield, and Buscaino. This original 2018 motion asked: 

“We further move that the City Administrative Officer and the Chief Legislative Analyst, be directed to report with recommendations on existing street-related functions and divisions of other departments and bureaus that could be transferred to a merged streets & transportation department, to enhance efficiency and better deliver city services to the residents of Los Angeles.”

This motion is directly tied to the issues raised in Council President Martinez’s motion:  

“The way [public works] funds are apportioned and implemented is often convoluted and divided between multiple agencies and city departments.The City’s infrastructure investment is done on an ad-hoc basis and often the critical infrastructure needs in low income communities are ignored.”

With the national attention on infrastructure funding, the moment requires that the second largest city in the Nation create a transparent and accessible Capital Infrastructure Plan.  This can only be realized with an accurate accounting of historic public works and transportation investments. We cannot continue to rely on funding windfalls or lawsuits that fall short in order to provide the basic city services that define our city.

Continue to watch this space for further analysis of this fundamental municipal issue.

Footnotes:

The City of Los  Angeles is in the process of developing a new bus shelter program as its 20 year contract with Outfront/JCDecaux expires at the end of this year (see Council File 20-1536).  As part of the replacement process, Los Angeles is hosting “demonstration projects” for potential new shelters across the city this month (see StreetsblogLA’s coverage of it here).

While the City spends two weeks showcasing potential new bus stops, we are still left with fundamental questions about this program. In particular, details have been scarce regarding implementation, funding and repairs to existing sidewalk damage where shelters are installed.

Funding:  When the City issued its Request for Proposals earlier this year, they asked for proposals “to include a minimum of three different cost proposals based upon the City participating in zero percent, fifty percent and one hundred percent of the program’s foreseen capital expenditures (CAPEX) costs.” (May 20, 2021 CF 20-1536 report to Public Works Committee).

While interested community members are being encouraged to check out the new shelters, there is no public discussion on the financing and scope of this new program. If the City contributes no capital dollars, the new program, like the old program, will likely be steered by advertising revenue.

There are key issues that need to be discussed with policymakers and community members such as:

1. How many Metro bus stops will get new shelters? What is that timeline (6 months? a year)? Will this include DASH bus stops?

2. If the City provides 100% of the funding up front:

• • How much will this cost?

  • Where is this funding coming from?

  • Is Metro contributing to the effort?

  • Does this include funding for fixing/addressing access ramps and sidewalk repairs where needed ?

  • With a CAPEX of 100% how many shelters can be installed in year 1?

  • What do the initial finances look like? Who is reviewing them?

  • What happens at the bus stops where we need shelters but the sidewalks are not ADA accessible and in disrepair? Will the broken sidewalks/crosswalks be fixed in order to install needed shelters?

3. Is there coordination for new shelters with the City’s urban forestry program? Can the new shelters include trees?

4. Bureau of Street Services (BSS) manages: sidewalks, the street vendor program, and the street furniture program – is there an opportunity to coordinate and discuss how these 3 key programs work together to support an inclusive and accessible space?

LA Sidewalks: It is no secret that there is a lack of coordination and investment in the City’s sidewalks and crosswalks. There is reason to be concerned that this new street furniture program is moving ahead without addressing the fact that the City of Los Angeles has no guiding policy or set of metrics to inform the development of a walkable and rollable city with vibrant and inclusive sidewalks serving multiple needs and community uses.

The difference between how the City of Los Angeles manages its roads for people in cars, as opposed to those walking, rolling and using the bus is staggering.

For the past 20 years, Los Angeles bus riders have not been provided a shelter and seat in the shade, unless there can be advertising money recouped from it. In a region where voters have taxed themselves 4 times to improve transportation options, why is it that policymakers have decided that it doesn’t include transit and bus access? Or sidewalk and crosswalk access?

We have heard anecdotal information from Bureau of Street Services staff that 50% or more of the bus stops in Los Angeles are currently unable to have a bus shelter because the sidewalk is in disrepair, inaccessible or not wide enough. But in reality, we have no idea what this number is because even after the 2015 Willits Class action lawsuit, the City still has no inventory of the 11,000 miles of sidewalks that cover our city.

For the past 20+ years, policy makers in the City of Los Angeles have decided to hand over sidewalks and bus shelters, both critical parts of our transportation network, to property owners and the private sector to manage, only inserting City policy to attempt to leverage advertising revenue. This current approach only benefits wealthy homeowners and those who do not ride buses.

The City of Los Angeles needs a comprehensive bus stop upgrade capital program (not a plan, not a contest, not a pilot, but something that will be implemented). Done in partnership with Metro, with transportation funds and not a program reliant on advertising revenue.

Background:

• Let’s Talk Some Shade 

• Got Shade? 20 years of bus shelters in the City of Los Angeles 

• LA Sidewalk Policy Frequently Asked Questions 

• LA’s at the Tripping Point. Organizing advocates for better #LAsidewalks, crosswalks, bus stops and urban tree canopy.

Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the mobility of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) in Los Angeles, particularly mothers in South Los Angeles. Mothers who relied on taking public transportation suddenly were waiting for less frequent, more crowded buses, thus increasing the risk for COVID-19 exposure. Furthermore, systemic disinvestments continued to harm mothers of color across the city including cracked sidewalks to walk strollers, and lack of protected bike lanes for recreational trips with kids.

Our partners East Side Riders Bike Club surveyed 23 mothers of Black and Latinx descent about how COVID-19 has affected their transportation needs. These surveys were taken between November 2020 and March 2021 (link to full survey here). 

East Side Riders Bike Club (ESRBC) is a grassroots organization that was founded in 2008, based in Watts. East Side Riders Bike Club started as a small collective that rode around Watts, Florence-Firestone, and Compton distributing food and water to unhoused folks in the area. 

The organization seeks to engage the community through a variety of activities including youth bike rides, which help kids to stay healthy and out of gang activity. ESRBC thus established a program called Life Lanes that ensured the safety of bike riders from gangs when riding through Watts. ESRBC hosts frequent group bike rides that give community members an opportunity to bike for free without having to purchase a bike or pay for equipment.

Furthermore, ESRBC hosts Bicycle Education and Safety Training Classes during summer, winter, and spring break for the community. After the classes are completed, students receive free helmets and lights. 

Community is a central focal point of ESRBC. ESRBC often hosts barbecues and breakfast for the community. During COVID-19, ESRBC has served breakfast on weekdays for the Watts community. Currently, ESRBC has served over 240,000 meals since the COVID-19 pandemic began. You can donate to support the work of East Side Riders Bike Club here.

Findings:

Out of the 23 mothers surveyed, 70% were Latinx and 30% were Black. Most mothers (57%) made under $25,000 a year, 74% of mothers were between the age of 30-45, and 39% of mothers learned Spanish as their first language.

We found that 83% of mothers surveyed used their cars as a primary mode of transportation, however 70% of mothers were not looking for or saving up for a new car. This suggests that car ownership, while necessary for day-to-day activities, is also potentially expensive with high costs for gas, insurance, and maintenance. 70% of mothers surveyed said that they knew other mothers that found high costs for purchasing a vehicle and insurance financially challenging. 

Similar trends can be seen with primary modes of transportation among various trips. Over 65% of mothers drive their kids to preschool or grade school, 70% of mothers drive to the grocery store and to medical/dental appointments, and 65% of mothers surveyed drive for recreational trips. Recreation trips to the park, beach, museums, and visiting family had the most varied distribution, as 26% of mothers surveyed used the train and 22% of mothers used bikes as a primary mode of transportation. These numbers show potential that mothers surveyed would be open to alternative modes of transportation other than driving if a feasible option was available.

Mothers surveyed also responded to what transportation infrastructure improvements would greatly benefit them and their families. Out of the 23 respondents, 48% of mothers surveyed would like to see more protected bike lanes and bike paths away from car traffic, and 30% would like to increase the current amount of bike lanes. Mothers would like a safe and comfortable place to bike with infrastructure that protects them and their children from car traffic.

35% would like to see bike improvements that reduce dangerous driving and speeding. This number correlates to the biggest pedestrian improvement priority: creating pedestrian improvements that reduce dangerous driving (52% of those surveyed). This makes a lot of sense as many kids in Watts and South LA walk and bike. 

We thank East Side Riders Bike Club for the amazing work that they do, and are grateful for their partnership in our Moms and Mobility Campaign. 

Our Moms and Mobility Campaign: This year Investing in Place is  working together with the East Side Riders Bike Club, Los Angeles Walks and South Central LAMP in a funded partnership to combine new data and new voices from women to impact policy and investments for the City’s transportation network.

Next week, Metro is set to vote on its largest ever annual budget. Spurred by the ongoing economic recovery in Los Angeles and stimulus support from the federal government, the transit agency expects to spend $8 billion next year. That money pays for rail and highway construction, system maintenance, local government services. But, as Metro points out, it will also go toward restoring transit service to its pre-Covid levels after the Board of Directors approved 20% cuts last year.

Joined by a coalition of transit riders, advocates, and community organizations, Investing in Place opposed the bone-deep service cuts put in place by Metro during the pandemic. These cuts, we argued, would fall disproportionately on the Black and brown low-income Angelenos that make up the core of Los Angeles’s transit riders. While local leaders spoke about the selflessness of essential workers, they were putting many of those same workers in even greater risk of lost wages, serious illness, or even death by stripping the transportation services on which they relied.

Metro argued that these cuts were undertaken out of necessity, but that was shown not to be the case when staff identified a mid-year surplus and failed to recommend that any of that money be used for restoring service. When the Board of Directors twice directed the agency to use the additional funds to boost bus service, staff delayed and an eventual compromise was put in place to return to the pre-Covid level of service by September 2021, a full 18 months after the cuts were first implemented.

In pushing Metro to provide the “Old Normal” of service during the pandemic, we were asking the agency to hold the line in support of the riding public. This, in our opinion, was a duty that Metro owed to Angelenos who had no choice but to continue relying on public transportation. Now, though, with Metro’s financial position better than ever, we cannot support the idea that the Old Normal is cause for celebration.

Since the end of a federal consent decree in 2006, Metro has repeatedly cut bus service. With the exception of the cuts that began in March 2020, bus service has been kept flat for nearly a decade. During that decade, riders voted with their feet, abandoning the buses and the transit system as a whole once it became clear to them that Metro was not serious about providing high-quality service.

Riders can tell from experience when transit service is bad. The wait for buses becomes agonizing. The time it takes to get to their destination becomes unreasonably long. But they generally don’t have data on hand to make their experience something more than anecdotal. It turns out, Metro’s own budgets show the degradation in service that riders have been noticing on the ground.

In statistics that the agency records on the number of hours its bus fleet is in service annually, as well as how far they cumulatively travel each year, it can be seen that bus speeds have dropped 20% on average since the start of the 21st century.

In the upcoming budget year, Metro expects that bus speeds will reach their lowest point yet. And, as NextGen redirects more bus service hours onto congested corridors where demand is higher, we can expect that trend to continue without significant and expedient work to get buses moving faster. That means that, even as Metro touts its belated decision to return to the pre-pandemic Old Normal, the actual amount of bus service riders are getting will continue to decline.

Below, we graph the number of budgeted service hours for each year dating back to 2000 in black. But, if we want our year-to-year comparisons to be more effective, we want to adjust each years budgeted hours based on average bus speeds. That is shown in red. What the red line tells us is, for any given year, how much service would need to be provided in order to match what riders could have expected at the start of the century.

Our takeaway is simply this: bus service has collapsed since the Great Recession, and Metro has done nothing to repair it. More and more transit riders have left the system because of the too-slow, unreliable, infrequent, and unsafe riding environment that Metro provides. While the agency says they are “restoring” service, the real service provided continues to sink. And riders cannot be fooled.

If Metro were to provide a level of bus service equal to what was provided in 2000, it would need to dramatically accelerate its bus fleet or provide 1.5 million service hours above what is currently proposed in the 2022 budget. While the NextGen plan proposes to accelerate buses, on the current funding timeline, it would take a decades or longer to complete the planned speed improvements to the network. This budget is, quite frankly, not a document that reflects either the ambition or the urgency with which Metro needs to approach the problem of declining bus service.

We call on Metro to dramatically increase the level of service provided in the 2022 budget, and to begin the first real expansion of bus service in Los Angeles since the end of the federal consent decree.

A few months ago, during a presentation on Metro’s latest initiative intended to rescue the failing bus system, a proposal was floated to request $100 million in federal funding for the purpose of improving the region’s long neglected bus stops. Investing in Place has long called for shelters and other components of a safe and dignified riding experience, so it is encouraging to see Metro begin to direct its focus in this area. But it is concerning to hear that this investment is being held out as contingent on federal aid, when Metro has local resources for these purposes.

Improving the bus system is an issue of paramount importance for Metro. While major rail investments will take decades to pay off, the only thing standing between Los Angeles and a world-class bus network is that that has never been a high-priority goal for local decision-makers. Unfortunately, that also seems to explain why existing funds are not being targeted for these improvements, but it is extremely difficult to figure out what is being funded instead.

Understanding where operations-eligible money is going is critical to informing efforts to restore and expand bus service and bus only lanes beyond the pre-Covid baseline, as well as increase shade and bus shelters, reimagine public safety and support fare free transit. In advance of May’s public budget hearing, Metro should commit to providing a clear analysis of revenues eligible for transit operations, and whether funding for operations is being diverted to other projects.

Metro has significant funding from four sales taxes passed by county residents. However, the opacity of budgeting at Metro means that there is no easy way to hold decision-makers accountable to pursuing policies that would make life better for riders.

It is critical that not only advocates and community organizers, but also the Metro Board of Directors, understand whether operations-eligible money is going to support capital projects unrelated to transit operations (such capital expansion). These commitments will provide an irreplaceable boost to the equity of Metro’s budget process, by increasing the ability of community members and organizations to provide informed comment and analysis on agency budget and priorities. And have the potential to lead to seeing Metro develop a 3-5 year funding plan to build buses back better. 

We know we are not alone in the dark about understanding how Metro spends their discretionary funding. Operations funding covers many departments with Metro, including going to the agency’s policing contracts. We need Metro to provide transparency regarding how the different pots of money are being spent so that the public can determine whether those choices will achieve the key outcomes for the region. Metro is largely funded by the people of Los Angeles County – who have voted to tax themselves to provide more transit.

Last month, Investing in Place sent a letter to Los Angeles Metro requesting that the agency approach future budgets through a procedural equity lens. Procedural equity is a tool in which Metro’s organizational structures and policies would be transformed to better serve the marginalized communities Metro provides services to by making it easier for those communities to access and substantially impact Metro’s decision making process. We ask Metro to provide a clear analysis of revenues eligible for transit operations and other spending categories with clear descriptions and activities included in each category.

In May, Metro will vote on the approval for its 2022 budget, following a year of Covid-induced financial stresses. The vote marks a return to normalcy for Metro after the 2021 budget vote was delayed for months in the wake of the pandemic declaration and the accompanying economic shutdown. But for transit riders in Los Angeles, a return to the pre-pandemic normal is not a welcome prospect. 

Under the old normal, transit ridership plummeted deliriously as riders abandoned a service made unreliable through cuts and disinvestment. It saw the needs of a privileged minority of “choice” riders pitted against those of a stable base of bus riders, with the latter’s needs routinely being disregarded.

Things have been going wrong at Metro for far longer than the world has been in quarantine, and the blame for that can be traced directly back to the financial decisions baked into Metro’s annual budget process. As the primary transportation provider and planner for Los Angeles County, Metro’s budget accounts for more than $6 billion in annual spending on transit, highways, roads, and more. But the process by which that money is divvied up is decidedly old school: it’s a black box from which numbers emerge apparently at random with no explanation and next-to-no input from riders.

That’s why Investing in Place sent Metro a letter last month requesting that the agency begin to change the way it approaches budgeting to address procedural equity concerns. Procedural equity can be thought of as the way in which a service provider centers the needs of those most affected by its policies in its internal structures. Are there organizational structures and policies that support access to spaces where decisions are made? Are groups who face greater barriers to accessing service proactively sought out so they can authentically engage with decision-makers? Can they really expect to influence how decisions are made?

In Metro’s case, Investing in Place believes the answer to each question is “No.” While, truthfully, much of the change will require a major shift in organizational thinking within Metro – a shift that we are hopeful incoming CEO Stephanie Wiggins will help to bring about – there are small improvements that Metro could make without delay.

In particular, one proposal that Investing in Place submitted to Metro was that the agency should commit to extending the public review period for the budget from two weeks to a full month. The current 14-day window forces riders, activists, and organizers to compress a great deal of activity into an arbitrarily truncated timeframe. There is insufficient time to analyze the contents of the budget, conduct community outreach, and to collaboratively develop a response to Metro’s proposal. And, given that drafts of the budget are already available, it does not seem to be a hardship to suggest that they be shared publicly. Nonetheless, Metro has indicated that they will proceed with the 14-day timeframe for at least another year.

On our part, this ask was not for a silver bullet or panacea. We were asking for a show of good faith. A modest adjustment to the baseline that would demonstrate Metro’s commitment to making more lasting improvements to procedural equity going forward.

The role of transit advocacy groups like Investing in Place is to provide a source of analysis that can help build capacity and spread awareness in transit-riding communities. These are functions that Metro can and should be interested in fulfilling itself, but at a minimum it is in the agency’s best interest to support an informed and engaged ridership. It is our sincere hope that Metro will come around to viewing the development of its budget as a participatory process, and one of the region’s greatest tools for achieving equity.

During the February meeting of the Metro Board of Directors, the transit agency was scheduled to hear two items with urgent importance to riders throughout Los Angeles: a plan from staff to restore service that was cut in September, and a request from staff for $111 million to patch enormous budget overruns for policing.

Transit advocates and community members have been pushing Metro to be more active in support of their riders, and that language has recently become a fixture within Metro’s Board meetings. In January, Directors indicated that they knew riders did not trust their needs to be met by their transit agency. Building that trust required listening and taking action based on what they heard, which the Directors sought to do in directing staff to restore bus service to pre-Covid levels by June of this year.

Operations staff returned in February with a report that said that bus service could not be restored before December, and that riders may be “confused” by the impacts of adding back cut service. Further, at the meeting of the Board of Directors, Metro staff again indicated that a building back of bus service hours was at cross-purposes with an implementation plan for NextGen that had been in place for years.

Even amidst the clear opposition from the Board, staff expressed yet more consternation about restoring service. Whereas riders and advocates have said for years that, even before Covid, successive cuts have left unacceptably infrequent service on Los Angeles streets, Metro is seeking to use ridership numbers as a reason not to provide more buses.

The frustration with these reports was evident in remarks made by the Directors. Board Chair Eric Garcetti expressed his disappointment that Metro’s service restoration plan would take so long, and that the report received was so focused on reasons why trying to serve riders better and faster might not pan out. In introducing the presentation by Operations head Jim Gallagher, Garcetti warned that he would be listening for solutions-oriented language: “I’m less interested in why we can’t do it.”

Directors Mike Bonin and Janice Hahn spoke with similar force about the pressing need to stand with the predominantly low-income, disproportionately Black and Brown riders that rely on Los Angeles’s buses. Director Bonin stated that this was now the third time that the Board would be giving the same directive to staff, and that staff had apparently thought the Board “didn’t mean it.” Directors Solis, Hahn and Garcetti each made suggestions about potential pathways to accelerating a return to pre-Covid levels of service.

As riders and advocates have become increasingly vocal about the impacts of service cuts during the pandemic, the Board has shown that they are listening. That can be seen, too, in what was not discussed during February’s meeting. 

Originally scheduled to be approved, an item that would have approved $111 million in funds for Metro’s policing contracts was suddenly removed from the agenda at the last minute. This huge sum of money needs Board approval because over the last three years, Metro has already spent it. To date, the agency has spent about 15% in excess of the $750 million baseline contract approved by the agency in 2017.

It is hard to imagine any other category of spending in which budget overruns like this could be racked up over a period of years without, apparently, any authorization by the Board. Further, advocates and riders continue to press Metro to change what public safety looks like on the system in a fundamental way.

Metro’s relationship with police is under widespread scrutiny, like many other public agencies in Los Angeles. While the county, LAUSD, and voters themselves have sought to pursue new models of public safety, Metro has mostly continued under the status quo.

Metro’s policing overspending item will return for consideration by the Board in March, and there is a requirement that riders and advocates will continue to place on Metro’s Board of Directors: that they give consideration to the needs of all their riders. Black riders, brown riders, unhoused riders. They, as much as white so-called “choice” transit riders, deserve to feel safe, and deserve to feel that their needs are a priority to Metro.

On Thursday, Metro’s Board of Directors will be asked to vote on floating more than $110 million in additional funding to maintain the agency’s existing contract for uniformed police on the transit system. The contract, which was negotiated in 2017, resulted in replacing the Sheriff’s Department with a lucrative policing-by-committee approach including sheriff’s deputies and officers from the Los Angeles and Long Beach Police Departments.

Concerns were raised back then about the terms of the agreement. In particular, its planned expenditures of more than $650 million over a five-year period offered a potentially huge new revenue stream for both the LAPD and the LBPD. The contract consisted of offering overtime to officers – specifically to more expensive supervisory staff –  was enough to make the public wonder how much we were truly getting for our money. The response was that the overtime pay was a useful tool to make the shifts more attractive as voluntary work. 

There were also plenty of concerns about the reputation of these agencies over policing Black and brown Angelenos, and Metro’s history of targeting these same riders for violations of its code of conduct. Those questions only became amplified last year in the wake of the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Dijon Kizzee, Andres Guardado and too many others by police.

So what is happening in Los Angeles? Last week, Metro staff gave a presentation to the Operations and Public Safety committee stating that through the first three years of the five year contract, the agency has overspent its budget for policing by about 17%–that’s $111 million dollars! The policing contract includes no money for special event deployments or other times that Metro might request a police presence on the system.

According to the staff presentation, without the Board’s approval to boost the total contract value to up near $800 million dollars, the agency will run out of money for policing by this summer – a full year early. Staff compound this by saying they also expect to return to ask for an extension of 6 months on the existing contract, amounting to $84 million more dollars (plus whatever unvetted additional services staff authorize, of course).

Let’s not mince words. Metro has to ask for an increase in its contracts with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Long Beach Police Department and the County Sheriff because the original contracts were egregiously generous and because the agency’s approach to policing  mirrors the systemic failures we’ve seen elsewhere; namely, overly generous contracts with little oversight, insufficient accountability mechanisms, and an over-reliance on police overtime.

There is no other category of spending that could exceed its budget by this much without the Metro Board raising serious questions about the program’s sheer fiscal irresponsibility. As we have discussed at length with respect to bus service, even when the Board directs money to restoring service, Operations resists spending it. How is it then that in the wake of the largest wave of calls to change the mainstream conception of acceptable policing practices, Metro is pushing not only for more money but for a longer period of time on a contract that simply is not working?

We find ourselves asking the peculiar question of having to ask, “Did Metro not know that special events happen in Los Angeles?” Given the intensity of focus at the same time as the contract was approved on the recent selection of the city for the 2028 Olympics, this seems unlikely. What was the chain of approval for requesting special police deployments? Why is Metro only coming to the Board for approval after multiple years of above-budget spending?

There are so many questions that the Board should put to staff, but the biggest one is this: Why should the Board – or the public – trust Metro’s spending going forward? In a moment when radical change is being demanded, staff has indicated that they are dedicated to retrenchment – failed models of policing that rely on pushing armed police into confrontations with unhoused Angelenos.

Metro owes the public a full accounting of what went wrong with this contract. Why was the contract structured in a way that allowed the agency to run up a huge tab for unanticipated services? What alternatives did the agency consider when existing policing resources were deemed insufficient? How is the agency holding leadership accountable for contract overages and what controls are being put in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen again? As the agency is convening an Public Safety Advisory Committee that will be providing recommendations for a future public safety contract, we need to have a clear understanding of what went wrong here. Expanding an already bloated police budget at a time when the public, including Investing in Place and many partners we work with, are calling for more thoughtful and effective approaches to public safety does not inspire trust.

Riders want, expect, and deserve a safe riding experience, but we do not accept that the current contract and approach delivers that. The Board should take notes from the Los Angeles Unified School District and use this as an opportunity to be bold in redirecting funds from policing to other resources to provide compassionate public safety and services on board the system.  It is past time to close the door on this failed contract and the attitudes toward policing that it represents.

Investing in Place is working towards a vision where Los Angeles is a city that addresses the safety and access needs of all who call it home. We stand in solidarity with our partners like the Labor Strategy Center/Bus Riders Union and Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles, who have been advocating for years to reimagine public safety on our public transit system and divest to invest in our communities. Not only is this contract broken, but so is Metro’s approach to its role in supporting public safety for Black and brown people as they travel throughout our region, and now is the time to revisit that approach.