What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Let's Go, Metro!
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What do transit riders think of LA Metro? And what do they think the regional transit agency thinks of THEM? Councilmember Mike Bonin, a member of the Metro board, talks about the bus system, service cuts, transit policing, fare free transit and more with Metro passengers and transit advocates: Scarlett De Leon of ACT-LA, Oscar Zarate of SAJE, and Scott Frasier of LA Podcast and Investing in Place.
Recorded Friday, March 12, 2021
Recommended Reading
Priorities All Wrong at Metro: - Streetsblog LA
Most Metro Rides Could Ride Free Starting Next Year - LAist
Metro Board Approves Steps Towards Reworking Transit Policing - Streetsblog LA
Metro (Again) Orders Bus Service Increases, Seeks to Regroup on Police Overruns - Investing in Place
Metro Overspent Its Policing Budget By How Much? - Investing in Place
Metro Rejects Board Directive to Urgently Restore Bus Service For Essential Workers - Investing in Place
Metro to maintain service cuts despite $300M sales tax windfall - Investing in Place
Metro Next Gen Bus System - LA Metro
CEO Phil Washington Leaving LA Metro in May - Streetsblog LA
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
Hi everyone and welcome. I'm Mike Bonin. Thanks for joining me for this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. I took a bit of a hiatus from this podcast in February, but I am back, and I am continuing to dig into the issues facing Los Angeles, and I'm hoping to continue to give a platform to change makers who are fighting for a better future. If you haven't listened to this podcast before, yes, I am a member of the LA City Council, but no public funds, no public resources at all, are used to produce or to distribute or to promote this podcast. This is something I do completely on my own, for fun and for free, usually to be honest, while dodging interruptions from my seven-year-old. Today on What's Next Los Angeles, we are going to look at the future of public transit in Los Angeles. And I'm going to talk with advocates who are fighting for a better future for passengers of LA Metro, particularly passengers who use and rely on the bus system. I'm a member of the board of directors of the agency, LA Metro, and I have been since 2013. LA Metro, otherwise known by its full and more formal name, the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is a massive, massive agency. It plans, it funds, and it operates most of the transportation system in Los Angeles. And that includes the third largest public transit system in the country that runs Metro bus and Metro Rail. Now, like most transit systems, ridership at LA Metro has been plummeting over the past decade. But in 2019, it's large enough that it still had 370 million boardings. And, you know, in many ways, there's a lot of people who have seen the past decade as a time of renaissance for LA Metro. That's largely because in 2016, voters approved for the second time in a decade, a dedicated sales tax increase. And that is going to pay for tens of billions of dollars of projects for the next couple decades. But as Metro has focused on expanding the rail system, there are a lot of people who feel that the bus system, which carries about 75% of the agency's passengers, has been neglected. Let me say that part again. The bus system at LA Metro carries about 75% of the agency's passengers. Even before the pandemic, bus riders and advocates complained the system was slow and unreliable. They said the agency wasn't prioritizing the majority of its passengers. And they argued that in a quest for finding people who choose transit, and while building a sexy new rail system, the agency was forgetting about people who are transit-dependent, people who don't have any other way to get around. And that is the majority of LA Metro's riders. Here's a little snapshot of some of the data for LA Metro. A full 70% of Metro riders make less than $35,000 a year. The median income for bus riders, get a load of this, is $18,000 per year. And a monthly bus pass costs $100. Now it's easy for stats to pass right by us. So let me put that in starker terms. The majority of metro bus passengers are poor. They live in poverty. And our bus and rail system is the only way that they have to get anywhere, including to work. And let's not be blind to something else. More than 80% of Metro bus passengers are Latino and black. And not coincidentally, many of them are the same essential workers that we have been relying upon for the past year. Essential workers who couldn't afford to stay home and who couldn't afford to stay healthy and keep their families healthy during the pandemic because they had to go to work. These numbers, these stats can't be ignored. They're relevant. And in fact, they need to be central to everything the Metro does. And they have been front and center in a lot of recent discussions, important and heated discussions about bus service, about transit policing, and about fares. And I am going to discuss all of those things today with my guests. Joining me today are three transit riders and influential transit advocates, Scarlett De Leon, Oscar Serrate, and Scott Frasier. Scarlett is the organizing and campaign manager at Alliance for Community Transit Los Angeles, ACT LA. She is also a member of Metro's new Public Safety Advisory Committee. Oscar is an organizer for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, SAGE, which has been pushing for a fairless transit system. And Scott is one of the co-hosts of LA Podcast, which I might say is probably the definitive podcast about Los Angeles news and politics. He also works with Investing in Place, an amazing LA-based transportation policy and advocacy group. All right, Scott, Scarlett, and Oscar, thank you for joining me on this week's edition of What's Next Los Angeles. Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for having us.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having us. So I wanted to jump right in, but first I wanted to sort of get a little bit of a context. All three of you are uh involved in one form or another in advocacy for public transit and for transit riders. But I'm I'm curious when you started using Metro and what your first experience was like. And Scarlett, why don't we start with you?
SPEAKER_03Yes, well, um I grew up using public transportation. I think my first memories are going with my great-grandma to church or to downtown LA, taking I grew up in Koreatown, taking the 8th Street bus, um, down to Los Callejones and buying a bunch of things to fill up a box to send back to Guatemala to our cousins. And yeah, I just can't remember when because I've always been on public transportation. And then um I went into fifth grade, my mom put me in this school that's from fifth to twelfth grade in San Fernando Valley, Resita. Um, and we were in Koreatown because it was a better school. And so I was one of those kids that relied on the school bus, but as I got older, I didn't want to be in a on a stop at 6 a.m. and home at 7, 8 p.m. So I started writing um the metro, the train to school. And when the orange line opened up, it really changed my life, honestly.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03And yeah, I could go straight to school now and and use the orange line. And that was really impactful for me, and then been using it ever since, really.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Oscar, how about you? Um, yeah, thanks for the question, Mike. Um, well, I mean, I I was born in Acapulco, Guerrero, in Mexico, and I think my earliest memories is taking the bus with my mom to the beach. So Acapulco is a very like tourist city, and you know, my grandfather owned a business out um at the beach, you know, taking tourists out into the water with like a banana float. Um, and me and my mom would get on the bus. And in Mexico, the buses are super packed. You know, it's like I always think buses are a central piece of the community, and that you can really feel that. Or I remember feeling that when I got on the bus, like there'd be like just there'd be like different people in there, animals, and then we'd all just go to the to the beach, and uh it's really fond memories of of growing up back back uh back in my home country. And when I got here to the US, um I remember taking the bus to school, just like Scarlet, um, and really exploring the community that I was in.
SPEAKER_01All right. And Scott, how about you? You grew up in the South Bay, right? So not exactly a transit nirvana.
SPEAKER_04Uh I I was born in San Pedro. I grew up mostly in Arizona. Uh my my dad uh was a big transit person. He he just loved it. Uh what took me to the opening day for the blue line, which was shortly after I was born. I was I was maybe a couple months old at the at the time. But my my actual transit journey, I remember being in growing up as a kid in southern Arizona and just feeling like I want to be able to take the bus places because otherwise I'm completely isolated. But also there's just not uh there's actually just not a way to get from, you know, it's the you can't get there from here sort of thing. Uh that was that was my experience in Arizona. My first metro experience that I really strongly remember was living with my uh then girlfriend, now wife in Palms. And and I was like, I really want to go downtown. I want to go just like uh, you know, go to like the Pinata district, go to all these, play, go to Grand Central Market, do all of these things. We were we were new back from Arizona, back in LA, and took the 33 bus out to uh downtown. My girlfriend's like, why are we doing this? Why don't we just drive? I'm like, I don't, I don't want to drive. I want to see, I want to see the city. I want to, I wanna uh, you know, experience the experience the the parts of the city that you don't um that you really can't see if you're just like on a car on the freeway and there and back point to point. Um and then cut to a couple hours later, we've done our thing in downtown, and we can't figure out where to get the bus to go back to the west side. It's hot, it's really hot, and my partner Sarah is like, I told you we should have just driven. We're like on the side of the road. That's my that's my earliest, um, that's my earliest first memory about falling in love with Metro and uh unshakable ever since.
SPEAKER_01So all three of you have a a long history with with transit and with metro. Uh we're at a a very different and unique place in in in the history of of the agency. Uh I I was thinking about it today, and and before I dive into some specific subjects about Metro, I just wanted to sort of get a general impression from you of how you feel about the agency today and and and where it is. And as I was thinking about it, I it made me think of you know the opening lines to A Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the uh springtime of hope and the winter of despair. Uh on one hand, we're we're at this moment where the agency just launched a much promoted, much celebrated next-gen bus system, supposed to revamp and improve the bus system, make it work better for people, and then matched it with really steep cuts in service. Um we had a few months ago a sales tax windfall where we had more money than we thought. And uh some of us on the board who really wanted to restore transit were getting a lot of pushback and resistance from the people who are supposed to be doing transit. You know, we're uh on on the verge of reimagining public safety, but we're also looking at a proposal that would invest, you know, another $110 million in transit policing. We're talking about free transit, but you know, there's there's some talk about bringing back fares before we transition from where we are now, which is effectively free transit, to permanent free transit or a pilot for it anyway. Uh how are you feeling about the agency today as transit users? And I'll start this time with Oscar.
SPEAKER_00I think I agree with you. I think there's a lot of very positive movement and very like optimistic movement happening at the board. Um, I have to give a lot of credit to the people, to our members at Sage, especially, that are like going out there and then making public comment and talking to their neighbors and telling them about what's happening at the bus. Because a lot of the time people are riding the bus and are seeing the things that they don't like, but don't know that there's a board that like is supposed to listen to them and it's supposed to take action to ameliorate the the situations that they're going through. So I think, yeah, that the there's a lot of challenges, but I really, really find energy and strength in the people who are taking the bus and are taking action to make sure that the buses are better, especially because we're, you know, I I think you might have mentioned it during the board meeting, but we're getting a new chance to make a first impression, you know, a first impression on people who are gonna go get start getting back into work and start using the buses again. And we really have to jump at the opportunity.
SPEAKER_01I love when a guest quotes me. That's awesome. Uh at least somebody's paying attention to me when I speak at the board. Uh Scarlett, what are your feelings about Metro right now?
SPEAKER_03Oh, we pay attention to you. We know what you say, all of you. Um I think the tail the Tale of Two Cities quote was perfect. I mean, not just for Metro as an agency, but I think all of us, there's really a reckoning around our values right now and our value systems. And I think we have a choice to make on um how we're gonna prioritize that. We can't just say we serve transit writers and then do things like cut buses. Um, I think Metro, from my point of view, um, gets confused about what their job is. Like their job is here to provide public transportation to Angelinos to Los Angeles. And um, you know, there's this like back and forth of a step to the right direction and then a pullback um to like the old ways, which I think leads to a lot of mistrust from community. And when I was sharing about, you know, growing up and and taking public transportation and relying on it, my family relying on public transportation, um, and sometimes not being able to pay for the for the fare or having to choose um to buy a snack because I just got out of school and I'm really hungry, and um having gotten a lot of ferrovation tickets and then having to go to court and fight those and pay all those things, it puts you in a cycle of poverty, and our agencies and our institutions in Los Angeles should set up, should be set up to alleviate that and not keep on trapping us in that cycle.
SPEAKER_04Uh I I really struggle. I really struggle with Metro. I I am uh like like all of us on this call, so passionate about public transportation, so uh passionate about this the system that we have. But I I completely I think that that Scarlett said it all when she said that it seems like Metro is not really clear as an agency what their job is. And and that is really it's it's troubling and it leads to some really dramatic uh juxtapositions like like you brought up, council member, at the beginning. We have simultaneously a rollout of what is supposed to be what was billed as uh the biggest reinvestment in the bus network in 25 years. And at the same time, also we're we're cutting bus service by 20%. Some of that is you know, some of that is unfortunate timing. And of course, nobody predicted the pandemic. However, again, as you mentioned, then when it came time to, as the board had requested, start putting some of that money back into restoring bus service, uh, you have the the operations department of metro, the people who are out there running buses on on LA City streets, then saying, basically, we don't want to. And and that that to me is is always so distressing. I think, I think and hope that that your your comment about a chance for a second chance at a first impression is true. But I also know that Metro's bus service serves predominantly people who are impoverished, people who are uh experiencing levels of poverty that most angelinos will never experience for even a single day. And and I think honestly, that that those riders have a good sense of of what the agency thinks of them, and it is evidenced in the decisions that come out. Um, I do think that we're starting to see some things change, particularly uh at the board level. And in recent months, I've heard things said by by members of the board that I would never have previously expected, things about uh transit being a public good and that it is important to invest in it. And and this this to me is very different from rhetoric that we would have heard in years past when I heard board members uh explicitly state that they viewed Metro as a basically a jobs program, a source of construction jobs, um, and not as a service being provided to people who need that service. So that is changing, but I think institutionally um a lot of the same mindset still remains in place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you you wrote, and I and I recommend to to anybody, you you've written some pretty uh uh cogent and and biting uh uh pieces for the investing in placeing in place blog uh about Metro, uh specifically really about the the fight over the restoration of uh of service hours. And uh I mean it was pretty clear to to me reading it um that you thought the institution was failing and that you were pretty pissed.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's that's accurate. Um I mean what what is what is so strange and and and I think that that all of us have have touched on it to an extent, it is it is it's odd to to think that you would have a a public transit authority who seems willing and and and able to throw out any excuse imaginable in in order to not run more public transit service. That that always um it does it does uh make me angry, frankly. Um when we have uh as uh as we did a couple months ago, ACT LA uh put together uh an impressive slate of of testimonies from current riders, uh, essential workers, people who rely on the services that they provide, what service cuts look like. And and um and I could I could say more about the fact that those testimonies are are necessary and that and that many people at Metro do not seem to utilize the the service that they provide and don't don't have that first experience. But the testimonies I think really spoke for themselves. And and we're talking about people who are homebound, who who are who are ill, who have disabilities and rely on bus riders to um to help them make it through through the day-to-day of their life. And then you you talk about having service cuts. The the pre-COVID baseline that I have now become an ardent defender of was not good enough. Before COVID, it was we we did not have enough bus service.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_04And um, and that was something that I accepted as fact. Now I'm I'm fighting tooth and nail along with many other colleagues like Scarlet and Oscar to get back to that place. So I I do take it personally, having to having to defend a previous status quo that none of us thought was good enough, and and kind of expecting more support from within the organization and and um and then seeing uh the board having to have it out with with staff about whether or not they're just gonna follow the the direction you've given them. It's it's all a lot to process.
SPEAKER_01It it it was it was a lot uh on the on the board end too. It felt a little bit like groundhog day because I felt like I was having the the same conversation again and again. Scarlett, in uh uh in one of Scott's pieces, he he pointed out one of what I thought was one of the more absurd excuses by Metro to not restore service. And that was that it would be confusing for riders to restore service now and then change stuff with with next gen and at the end of the year. Um my reaction to that was uh one, I'm not sure people are gonna be all that confused. And two, that confusion, even if it existed, would be a hell of a lot onerous than the pain and frustration and suffering of the service being shitty in the meantime. As a transit writer, I mean, what's your reaction to that kind of uh uh comment?
SPEAKER_03Man, I have no words. That is exactly, I think, like that just tells you what the agency thinks of transit writers. And when we're talking about transit writers, we're talking about POC folks, we're talking about low income folks, we're talking about essential workers, and that's the type of um messages you're putting out there when talking about them. Confused how that my bus was supposed to come in half an hour, but it came in five minutes, so I can get home early to have dinner with my kids. I don't understand.
SPEAKER_04Like you're so confused you just don't get on the bus that it comes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm like, oh, I can't get on this one. I I don't understand. Also, not only that, it um it's conflicting because I often feel like the way Metro communicates about service changes and other things is in a way that is not really accessible to um immigrant communities and um folks who are non-monolingual English, but but they've never made a change or they they constantly say, like, we did the outreach that's needed and haven't changed the way they do outreach. But now when it comes to like something that's actually good and needed, like improving service hours, they feel it's gonna be confusing. So I I feel like there's no response to that. Like, like whoever wrote that has to know they really messed up.
SPEAKER_00Uh Oscar, any thoughts? Yeah, it's very ridiculous. Um, and I don't know, like I think the more I learn about like transit, the more I realize that it is a class issue, you know. You know, different top modes of transportation are funded differently. And, you know, it's not a surprise to me that like buses are getting attacked, you know, especially when, or at least that the first thing that they're wanting to reduce when stuff about the budget comes up.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it it's it's pretty telling that I mean for a lot of people, if all of a sudden the the service was on time and reliable and fast, people would be confused because it would be such a different experience. But they would be pleasantly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's pleasantly confused, which is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01In in the middle of all this, right, there's the there's been these, I guess, three different board meetings where we've been discussing the the restoration of service. And now there's this compromise where where service will get back um uh by the end of end of the year, and then discussions about the potential to sort of ramp stuff up and expand. I I've been running some numbers and and between the uh the care funds and the American Rescue Plan Funds uh and some other funds that have come Metro's way. I mean, it looks like the agency is getting uh like $2.5 or $2.6 billion, uh which is basically, you know, it it's actually a little bit more than what the agency spends every year on service. Um what what are you looking for Metro to to do with this money? Because the the the cost of improving service really isn't a legitimate excuse at this point. Uh Oscar, you want to start out?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah. Um well, I mean, recently I saw like a post, like an Instagram post about Metro finally installing like mask dispensaries uh on the trains. And I think that's something that community members have been asking for for a minute. And it's really, I mean, it's good, it's finally done, but I'm also like, man, it's taking a minute to get this on on the actual like vehicles and trains. So stuff like that, stuff that um really helps people stay safe, especially because um, like we were talking about before, the surface cuts leads to just way more people being on the bus, uh, causing like crowding and people getting closer together. So I that's my response right now, like stuff that can really help people keep safe, especially under a pandemic.
SPEAKER_01And and and I I would imagine that at this point, I mean, one one one of the first things is all right, now you have the opportunity to to really fully fund NextGen. You can actually put it into place. Um uh what uh what what is ACT? Well, let me put it this way. Act LA is gonna be coming out uh later this week. This will be airing on Sunday. Uh later this week, uh Act LA is gonna be coming out with sort of its vision. Um, I know you don't want to sort of squander the whole moment when it gets announced, but uh is there anything you can say about what you're looking for Metro uh to be doing?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean I think this goes back to the first question around what's the moment right now, right? Like what moment are we in? And this is really make or break. This is I don't know, this is really serious. Like we just lived through a pandemic, folks don't have jobs, folks are dying. Like this is um serious stuff. And I think we need to really metro plays a big, big role in a just recovery. So when we think of a just recovery, we're thinking of actual transit riders and what they need, which is bus service. And we're not talking, you know, we were we've been talking and joking about them restoring bus service to pre-COVID levels, but that was already not enough, right? People were already not being able to get into their bus because it was so crowded, missing a job interview or or after school pickup, daycare pickup, and getting charged. And again, I just want to keep on reminding folks, these we're talking about mostly a lot of folks who don't have an option but to take public transportation. So there's that. There's we need to run really good service beyond the folks that are already on the bus. We need to get more folks on the bus, right? Because um, we're also in the middle of an environmental crisis on top of everything. So we need to get folks on the bus. So definitely bus service is a big part of our vision. Going hand in hand with that, we also are calling for fair-free transit, um, which might seem shocking to someone who first heard it, but the way and Los Angeles is very unique, right? We already have sales tax, sales taxes that pay for a lot of our transportation system. And Metro spending a lot of money on fair enforcement. And what that does is that it creates all these opportunities for um folks to come into contact with police that can escalate and lead to things like overticketing or sometimes even arrests, um, and sometimes even worse, right? So we're talking we're we're calling for uh fair-free transit. And then lastly, going with that, we're also calling for Metro to not renew its policing contracts and instead um adapt community-based alternatives. And our report is gonna lay out what those community-based alternatives can and should look like.
SPEAKER_01So even before Metro gets to the question of renewing the contract with with Long Beach PD, LAPD, and and and sheriff, we've we've got this little issue that just uh came up at the the last board meeting where staff came back and said, Oh, well, we've we've already spent all of the money we had for the existing contract, we need another 110 million more. That's so wild. Say say some more.
SPEAKER_00That that's I mean, I don't know. It's just like, how is that possible? Like, I don't know. When I first heard that, as just somebody who's not very like into the weeds of the police contract at Metro. I'm just like, how is it possible to spend more than what you budgeted and contracted for? So I don't know. That's that's just so wild.
SPEAKER_04I can't you I could tell you uh some of the things that that that money was spent on, if you want, Oscar. It's it's pretty funny. I I looked at this a bit last year, and uh to my to my chagrin, I I kind of forgot about it. I had I had all of these documents from uh from Metro where I'd gone through the contracts and and looked at like, oh yeah, additional service deployments on requests from Metro. That's interesting. Requested all of those uh through a public records request. Uh and and what comes back is a lot of requests for additional police service on buses and trains, particularly around special events. Uh, we're talking LAFC, the soccer team. We're talking LA Galaxy, we're talking concerts. Mumford and Sons was my favorite personal one that the the agency might spend $10,000 putting police on trains because uh, you know, an uh indie folk band is is performing somewhere in the city uh at some point. All of this is happening on a repeat basis over the course of three years and ends up adding up to over, like you said, over a hundred million dollars. That's 16% premium on top of what was already a very lucrative contract for a five-year period. This is uh I I I I wrote and and I I maintain that this is the only category of the of the budget for Metro that you could get away with this kind of spending and expect it to just be rubber stamped after the fact, which is what it seems like the expectation was, regardless of of what ends up happening.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's also uh uh uh Tudor Shalipa construction contract contract. Sure, that's true. At least those get fought over and litigated, I guess. Um the um uh the in in the conversations about this 110 million, one of the things that staff was was saying to the board was uh, well, we we need this money, we need to continue the contract, and and and we need more because uh we we need to to use the additional law enforcement to respond to homelessness and what they called other quality of life stuff. That that almost really sort of sets you up, doesn't it, Scarlett, for the argument about how to do things better and how to do things differently?
SPEAKER_03Oh man, and honestly, I think it's also very just kind of saddening and disappointing to always be putting this unhoused homelessness issue in the front and like being like, we need people don't feel safe around them, people don't feel safe around them, and that's the reason we need more policing. But um this issue goes beyond uh Metro. Obviously, we have a a huge citywide issue on keeping folks housed. And one of the things that Metro can do as a touch point because they are there, is to make sure they're uh connecting folks to services and to shelters. And police don't do that. That's not police's job. And I don't understand why you're why you're asking police to do that and trying to increase money that was already, you know, you already spent your whole contract, and now you're saying you need more money in order to take care of this issue. Yeah, I think it does set us up to be like, well, here are some alternatives to safety that you should be implementing instead of this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was weird because the examples they used were were really the examples that that that advocates have been saying are the areas precisely where it's easiest to make the pivot to to the alternatives.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you know, like I think we really need to step away from this kind of thinking that police, that this reaction is just to go to police, right? Someone doesn't pay the fare, we go to call the police. Someone is homeless in the system, we call the police. Someone's having a mental uh breakdown in the system, we call the police. Like, I think the whole idea, especially with our members, with our partners in Actelay, is that there needs to be resources, right? Like police react to situations, they don't prevent them. And I think stuff like housing, investing in mental counseling, investing in homeless uh outreach, are the things that are gonna prevent these issues instead of just uh attacking them with force.
SPEAKER_01Scarlett, you're you're kind of in the the uh at least one of the people who's in the driver's seat for the next phase of of this discussion discussion about how to reimagine public safety on Metro. You're uh on the the public's uh safety advisory committee, which is being tasked with figuring out how to do things differently. Um what are the other things that that you think we should be looking at, other than sort of the response to homelessness uh or to a mental health incident?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, other things. So, like about a year ago, we had an activation at one of the metro stops. Um, and the idea came from reading a lot of reports and talking to a lot of our community members of what made them feel safe or what made them feel unsafe in transit system. Because I want to make it really clear that we're not talking about getting rid of safety. Everyone wants to feel safe. I'm a woman. I've been on transit as a young woman. I want to feel safe, but there are other ways, right, for all of us to actually feel to actually have actual safety, not just perceived safety of like, I think there's a cop somewhere, three stations down, so maybe I'm safe. Um, so some of those things are having activated stops, so letting street vendors sell, having light, right? No one wants to be in a very dark place waiting for the bus late at night, having light, having people there. All of this actually reduces crime. So it's not just perceived safety, but it also reduces crime. So those type of things. Um, shelter, light, people and programs.
SPEAKER_01Uh one of the things that was that was interesting when we were talking about the the public safety advisory committee is the the different impressions people have about what keeps people safe. You you just articulated something that that doesn't necessarily jump to the mind of a lot of the decision makers. The the instinctive response is police. And and and even in Metro's surveys, I mean, there are two different information points that I remembered reading about. One was sort of a sort of a a straight survey, which which I think basically said, do you think we need more police? And people who were concerned about safety mostly I think said yes. But then when they did focus groups, and they did a focus group with, I believe it was passengers of the blue line, and they had actual conversations with people and teased out from them what they wanted, the kind of things that came back were activations of public space and and ways to just bring things alive in a more positive way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think it goes back to what Oscar was saying. Um we've gotten used to calling police for everything. So when we think of safety, many of us, that's what we think of, whether it keeps us safe or not, but although usually it's a response to something. But I think we're at the point where we need to think through like who's safety, right? And we want to make sure we're all safe. And that includes young black men, and that includes young Latino men, and et cetera, et cetera. So there are other ways to do that that actually guarantee community safety and not this continued traumatization of our communities that really has been happening for generations by police.
SPEAKER_01Scott, did you have something to add? You looked like you had something to say.
SPEAKER_04No, I I really um I really appreciate what what both you and Scarlett were saying. I think that uh it's absolutely correct that uh, and this is this is a case where the the conflation of safety and additional police is so deeply entrenched in not just American, but specifically in an Angelino culture. We we look at that as the solution to every problem. Yes, so we we have a presentation about this particular contract where uh Metro's chief safety officer is saying, look at these survey results. People are saying, all of the all of these people are saying safety is a concern. We want to feel safe. And those may be identified either in the terms of the survey, which in this case I think was certainly part of the issue, or in people's minds, actually, they might be uh identifying those things with the presence of armed police officers. But if you actually look at what they're saying uh and the feeling that they want to have, which is one of physical uh and emotional safety while they're riding transit, that's something that um that's something that of course we can all agree on. And I don't believe that it is actually best achieved or even universally achievable by just deploying more armed police. I want to say too, when I when I hear uh as we did the a couple months ago, uh when I hear a presentation like that where unhoused people are specifically called out as being quality of life issues for for others in a way that is so dehumanizing. I mean, if you think about the the if you think about like the the profile of who is unhoused in Los Angeles, it's very similar to the profile of who is a transit rider, uh just in general. If you compare those two groups, you know, they're they're very likely to be people of color, they're very likely to be extremely uh poor, they're very likely to uh be housing insecure on a on a long-term basis. Um, we know all of these things. Um, and yet for Metro to suggest that uh an unhoused person is not a rider, is not a legitimate constituent of their services, but is rather an issue that needs to be resolved and probably um with somebody authorized to use force if necessary, is a a core issue, I think. And and it's um and it's something that I see happen time and again and and really needs to be addressed on a deep cultural level level within Metro. Like the unhoused people in Los Angeles are Metro's constituents, they are Metro riders, and and they deserve to be treated as such. They deserve to be treated as people who have needs that need to be fulfilled by public transportation, and that that can be done in a manner that guarantees everybody's safety, including theirs, with while taking into account, um, as you mentioned at the top, council member, that uh we know that that these are not the areas in which the armed law enforcement officers tend to shine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I sorry, I read this thing, and I I don't know if this is up to date. I keep it on my phone for a couple of years now because it was so shocking to me that 33% of homeless population is in LA is black, but only 8% of the population are residents, and that that's super shocking. So when we're talking about these things, they are there are racial justice issues, and all of this is so intersectional. Um, so I think when we think of alternatives to safety, it's really exciting that we can we get to be creative, we get to create new jobs and really um just transform the city, really.
SPEAKER_01Is is there a I mean, there's definitely a class and there's definitely a racial divide on on this question about how to do it. It is there, to any extent, do any of you think that there's a generational divide as well? I I know when board members talk about public safety, you've got a lot of elected officials. So we we we all hear a lot from people who have the the the privilege of choosing to use the system or not, who say, well, I can't use it because I don't feel safe. There's too many homeless people. Um but then a lot of board members also say they hear from seniors, even uh African American or Latino seniors who uh express a preference for having more law enforcement. Is there a generational difference at all? And how do you overcome that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I it goes back to what you're saying, right? We're just so used to calling for police, and I think it's super fair for everyone to feel safe. Um, you know, I'm you know, I want my grandma to be safe on the transit system, but I think it goes back to just having these conversations, to really doing the organizing work and really sharing what police actual job is on the system, which a lot of times is things like fare enforcement. Um, it's them getting paid their overtime and also walking through these different ideas of different things we can have. Um, you know, some cities have things like buddy programs where they walk, you know, where someone volunteers and walks with um elderly folks to make sure they get from their trip from trip A point A to B safely. You know, there's just so many different other ways to go about it. And I do think that every age group um generation has different concerns, um, just like different, you know, folks are gonna have different needs when traveling the system. And I think there is definitely a way to address all of them.
SPEAKER_01Well, you you mentioned fair enforcement. So let me let me pivot to the discussion of the the fare-free transit. And you know, the there's the the the the the things we're talking about, it's almost like a uh a game of dominoes or there's a pipeline, right? Because you're talking about restoration of service hours, and that gets dictated by how much money the agency needs to put into public safety. And one of the big justifications for the public safety budget is enforcement of fairvision. So um let's talk about the the enforcement of fair vision, because you don't need to do it if you have fair free transit. Oscar, um uh Sage has really been out front, uh a leader in the movement of having fair free transit in Los Angeles. Uh what what's the vision? And why is it important?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, Fair Free Transit, in my opinion, would revolutionize our public transportation system in LA and hopefully be a model for the country. And I think it's it's incredibly essential because in order for the city and the county of LA to recover from this pandemic, working class people need to recover. And fair-free transit is, you know, both an economic relief in that it eliminates uh one less thing that working people need to worry about in their budgets, but it's also a stimulus, right? Because it frees up money that people can use and other necessities like food, medicine, clothing. And to put it in perspective, like 50% of transit riders have an annual income of around $18,000, $20,000. And a monthly pass, if you look it up on the Metro website, is around $100. So for a family of four, that's like $400. Um, that means that, you know, without even mentioning that during this pandemic, the income of many working class families have been hit the hardest. Some don't even have incomes because they lost their jobs, and every dollar counts nowadays. And people are really looking at agencies like Metro to lend a helping hand uh in a time where public goods really need to do good, to do what's good for the public uh and help them in a just recovery.
SPEAKER_01So the there's a voice out there that pushes back. Uh there's several voices that push back against fare-free transit. One of them is why should we give it be giving people free stuff? Uh rebut that one.
SPEAKER_00Why should we be giving people free stuff? I mean, it's not free. I mean, people pay thousands and millions of dollars into the public transportation system through sales tax. You know, the majority of Metro's funding is provided through like proposition A, C, and measure RM that makes up around like 60 and 70 percent of the budget. So, I mean, what I would respond is like fares are almost is almost like charging us twice for something that the whole community, I mean, the whole our whole tax base is composed of working class families. And it just seems doesn't seem fair to just charge them again, especially under the time of pandemic when people uh have lost so much income.
SPEAKER_04I I would go further. I would say, why are we not charging fares to people who don't ride transit? You you want to you want an exemption from riding transit here here's your $1.75 a day. I mean, it's it's really absolutely the case that that transit is a public good. And as Oscar said, it's it's one that we all pay for. It was one that we've all agreed to pay for many times over here in Los Angeles. So it is sort of insult to injury that you have the people who are uh one way or another ending up uh being the people who affirmatively further what should be the public policy goal of getting as many people onto public transportation as possible, then being saddled with uh additional fees because they are making that choice, while other people are are making choices that are more beneficial for them, but on uh on a grander scale, ecologically disastrous. And and you know, like they they're the ones who are ultimately saying we can't afford free transit. Why would we do this for free? But they're the the costs of their choices are are borne disproportionately again by transit riders.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I agree with both of you, Scott and Oscar. I mean, we pay with our taxes to pave the streets, but I don't have to pay a fee to drive on them every time I need to go to the store in my car. Um so it's it's just I think it's just a misunderstanding of how actually the public transportation system works. Um, I think there's a misunderstanding that that fairs are um keeping it alive because they're not. So I think, you know, keep on, we need to keep on having this conversation that actually all of you out there, Angelinos voted for this. We already pay for it. And like Scott said, there's bigger things at stake, like our, you know, we have big environmental goals and we should be getting everyone on public transportation. And I don't know, for me personally, I have just very deep, deep love for Los Angeles. And I think it'd be amazing to have a public transportation system that that works, that we can all get on, you know. What a like this city's great. How great would it be if I can if all of us could just jump on a bus and go see each other post-COVID after vaccines?
SPEAKER_01Well, and and and a lot of people react and they say, Well, well, how the hell are you gonna pay for it? And they they don't realize, I mean, you you talked about how little of of the agency's revenue comes from from fares. It's of the of the overall budget, it's like three or four percent. Exactly. But but the other thing you hit on, Scarlett, is uh in one of your earlier answers, is it's like one of the great ironies of the fair system on Metro is that we we spend nearly as much enforcing fare evasion as we make from fairs themselves. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So uh at the last board meeting, uh we had another discussion about fare-free transit, and uh Phil Washington, our CEO, uh, who's uh only around for a few more months, his tenure is winding up, um uh proposed that uh starting in uh January of next year, we would do uh a pilot for fair-free transit. Usually when you think about a pilot, it's small, it's limited. Uh the way it was described, it could almost seem uh small and limited until you realize the the the demographics of who it applies to. Uh what Phil was proposing is that we do fare-free transit for for anybody uh who is low income, which is like 70% of Metro's riders. And then you had students on top of it in the in the second phase, and and you've got a a a huge uh chunk of of the the the ridership. Uh what do folks think of of what Phil uh proposed? Uh good, bad, indifferent?
SPEAKER_00I can start. I mean, it's it's a good start. I mean, I think it's definitely a good start. Um at the same time, and I think you might have mentioned it, uh, council member in the beginning, that like it's already free now. It's kind of like because it's kind of like we already have a pilot program now at the buses where people are not being charged. And it's kind of very, I don't know, it it it boggles my mind how we want to create a whole complicated administrative system to ensure this kind of like delegation of service, and then we want to erase it later. So it's kind of like we're doing so much work to do something that you know we're not doing now and we're not gonna do later, and it just seems unnecessary. So, I mean, just like I made my comment during that meeting, I think we should just go for a full fairless pilot, um, kind of skip all of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I wonder if if you're if you're gonna spend all this money to to only enforce fares for 25 or 30 percent of the people, are you are you spending more than than it's even worth to to try to do it? Um uh Scarlett, what what are your feelings on the pilot that Phil proposed?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I agree with Oscar. I'm you know, I'm thankful. I thank Phil Washington, um, Mayor Garcetti for bringing this up. I think it's great that Fair-Free Transit is such a part of the conversation and so serious now because I think a few years ago it would have seemed like so out of this world. However, I I worry anytime there is just like anytime low-income folks, quote unquote, have to jump through hoops and go through administrative processes to just be able to get the services they need. A lot of times a lot of folks are not gonna know how to access them or you know, don't have the time, honestly, to do all that, which I get with some stuff, right? Like um, you know, like for example, like food in other places we have to go, you know, like EBT or something like that. But for an agency that was just set that's set up to serve people and like have we've been having a whole, you know, 40-minute conversation around how the budget works and and can do this, I think they should just go ahead and make it for a free transit now or continue what already is going on.
SPEAKER_00And just to add on really quickly, Scarlett, like Metro already has programs that people have to apply to for fair reduction, you know, and those are so hard. Like I hear every day from my members who I mean, members that uh participate at Sage that, you know, they're it's really hard. And I mean, I I I remember when I had to apply for a student card and it was I had to drive somewhere, I didn't even know where I drove over. So, like, yeah, like Scarlett says we we can't put administrative barriers to resources because that just puts the people who are most vulnerable at a distance from the resources that they need.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it's it's interesting because you you do hear like how how are we gonna, how are we gonna pay for free fares, et cetera? But like the structure, the structure of this pilot is runs directly counter to that. Because in order to actually administrate something like this in a way where you were making it accessible to everybody who needed it, you were doing sufficient outreach, not just whatever the minimum required by law is, um, that you are making an effort to eliminate the information equity barriers, particularly for non-English speakers, for economically isolated households, the costs are going to be very high. The administrative costs of doing this type of means testing are high, and you're doing it just to collect what is a marginal amount of money for the agency as a whole from the from the non-included members of the public. It is self-defeating, I think, in in a number of ways. And one of those ways is that if you think about the fair, if you think about the transit fair, it really only serves two purposes. One is to regulate the use of the space. LA does not have a problem with that. We have plenty of spare capacity. Like we can run more buses, but like we also have a lot of people who are driving in their cars alone. When we get to a point where so many people are opting onto the system that we have to run more more buses, that's a good problem to have. Like that, that is definitely something that uh we should all welcome as a turn of events. Make it free for everybody. It doesn't, it doesn't have any uh downside. The other thing is that um I think that the the non-extension of this uh fare-free pilot to everybody, as as you alluded to a few minutes ago, council member, is uh it requires the ongoing regime of fare enforcement. If you have fares for anybody, then it justifies the continued existence of a fare enforcement regime. And that just doesn't, it defeats the purpose of getting rid of the fares.
SPEAKER_01Well, you you kind of think if I'm reading your your some of your tweets accurately, Scott, you you kind of think this whole thing is smoke and mirrors and that Metro's not really serious about it, right?
SPEAKER_04I cannot take it seriously. Uh and it's for the reason that I I brought up a few minutes ago. Um if if you if you look at the demographic profile of an out unhoused person in Los Angeles, it is much more similar to the demographic profile of a transit rider than either of those are to just the median person who lives in this county. So, how do you distinguish between uh a transit rider and uh an unhoused person who is just a quality of life issue on Metro, if that's what you're attempting to do? And the reality is, in most cases, the way that you do that is by presence or absence of a fare. Uh and and so I as long as as long as as Metro is dedicating itself to uh uh seemingly trying to remove all of the unhoused people from the system by force and not treating them as valid riders and users of the system, I don't see how that uh that can be reconciled with fair-free transit as a goal. I think it makes sense for all of us in this room, but I don't see how how, as an agency, Metro will figure out a way to make those two things make sense side by side.
SPEAKER_03I think that's what's scary about Metro and all of this is that everything we're talking about today can happen and can work, but if done halfway, not actually done all the way, right? You know, then it might not, it could fail, and then they could point to like we tried, but did you actually try? Like fair free transit can work because we have the budget, we've been talking about it, but also it needs we need to make sure we have good bus service, like they need to go hand in hand. I think, or I know we can do all this, but it needs to be done all the way, all three of them.
SPEAKER_01So, Oscar, what's the next step for the the the grassroots campaign for Fair Free Transit?
SPEAKER_00Yes, uh folks should definitely connect with you know all of our amazing organizations at Act Delay Sage, especially, if you can. Uh, we have a really easy link that you can follow that you can uh click and can connect. It's called b bit.leaslash fare free. Um, you can definitely connect with us there. There's the pilot program is going to be voted on in the May uh board meeting. Uh so we definitely want to get as many people there and you can get uh alerts if you if you connect with us.
SPEAKER_01So before I ask the last question, I just want to make something clear uh for those who are listening. Scott said that um uh fare-free transit is is a goal shared by everybody in this room. Just for those who are being uh uh uh very precise, we are all in four separate rooms in four different locations. We are not sitting in the same room within inches of each other without masks on.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. What is a room anymore? What is a room?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It's a virtual room. It's a virtual room. So uh last question is is is looking towards the future. Um Phil Washington has announced that he is leaving at the end of May after I what I guess has been a six-year tenure. Um there are so many things to that the board could be looking for as its primary considerations in uh a new CEO. You know, some people are very concerned, okay, we have lots of big construction projects. Um others are very concerned about service restoration and about actually making a robust bus service possible. Um if if you were on a search committee, what would you be looking for in a new CEO? And as you answer that, since it's our last question, if you want to uh also put in a uh plug for uh any of your organizations as as Oscar just did on his, uh, why don't we start with Scarlett?
SPEAKER_03Well, um I do think we should be on the search committee. I think community should be on the search committee. So that's first. Uh I'll be on the lookout for my letter. Um, but definitely someone who's gonna prioritize transit writers when we're thinking of a just recovery. Um hopefully, you know, coming out of this pandemic, I'm hoping this summer, slowly. Um, so and what that means is everything we're talking about, right? Service first, service, service first, um, fair free transit, and really a commitment to um alternatives to safety, um, racial justice, and equity within um Metro because it really touches all of our lives as Angelinos, whether we realize it or not, you know, and um those neighbors of ours who need it the most really depend on it and depend on are gonna be really affected by whoever the next CEO is. And to put in the plug, ACTALA has a report coming out as mentioned this coming week or when uh the week after this airs. Um and yeah, go to our website and you can read it or follow us on Twitter and you will see us tweet about it. And um, it is a great way for you to start really getting familiar with what alternatives actually look like and what other cities are doing.
SPEAKER_04Okay, Scott? Honestly, so um, you know, CEO Phil Washington came in uh at a point in time where where I think the board was very focused on big capital projects. And uh of course that continues to be a major point of focus for for a lot of people in the region, but um but for transit riders, services is everything. I would say that if I were if I were part of the search committee for the next uh CEO, my two questions would be do you think that LA can have the best bus system in the entire world? And what are you going to do to get us there? Anyone who says no, they're out. And and if they don't have a good strategy for how to make LA's bus network the best in the world, then then that's a problem. That that should be the overriding goal. We got 75% of transit riders in in the county are are on our buses more than any other American city. This is this is a bus city, and and you wouldn't know it by uh by the types of diff decisions that we that we see. It's it's time to it's time to really turn that that thinking on its head and and figure out what we can do to make this a system that all of our Angelinos can be proud of. Uh anything you want to plug? I am co-host of the LA podcast uh at the LA Pod. And and that's it. You want to follow, follow that, please do.
SPEAKER_01And uh Oscar, what should we be looking for in a CEO?
SPEAKER_00Um, by the way, I love Scott's answer. Anyone who doesn't want to make the public trust, L's public trust is the best, is automatically out. I mean, I'll echo Scarlett, to be honest. Like someone who understands the values of bus riders, of transit writers, someone who uh is gonna continue the amazing work we've been able to get done under uh CEO of Phil Washington and wants to expand, it wants to grow, it wants to be even more imaginary and more revolutionary. I remember like on Wednesday we had a forum on Fair Free Transit, and we had a question to the two transit writers, like, where would you want to explore with a with better bus service, with a fair free transit? And you know, I remember Robin's answer, one of our Sage members, she was like, I want to go to Disney, like that energy, that like optimism, that like wanting the the buses and the trains to be such a central piece of the community, like that's the kind of energy that I wanted to see of and I hope that our our transit still can go with. Cool. Um and plug and a plug, well, you know, Sage, other than Fair Free Transit, we do amazing work with tenants. Uh, we also have to cancel the rent, we have to cancel mortgage, we have to do amazing work, so definitely connect with us.
SPEAKER_01And I will be putting uh all the the links uh and social media handles into the the show notes. Just just so you know, the first question I'm gonna ask anybody is uh outgoing CEO Phil Washington has said he wants to start moving to fair-free transit in January. Do you support that and do you commit to getting it done?
SPEAKER_03Uh yes.
SPEAKER_01But to the extent I get to ask people stuff, I'm open to more questions. So let me know. Um all right. So that wraps it up for us. Uh Scarlett and Scott and Oscar, thank you so much for joining me this week on What's Next Los Angeles. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Thank you.
SPEAKER_01And that's all the time we have for this edition of What's Next Los Angeles. I am Mike Bonin. My thanks to Brian Holmes, my editor and my sound engineer. And my thanks to you for listening and for spreading the word. If you'd like to suggest topics or guests for a future episode, feel free to shoot me an email at what's nextlosangeless at gmail.com. And you can also follow me on Twitter at Mike Bonin. Until next time, peace and take good care.