In a ceremony inside Union Station’s historic ticketing hall on Monday, July 24, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass officially took over as chair of LA Metro and laid out an ambitious vision for the county’s transit agency.
Bass, who has been on the Metro board for seven months, wants to increase ridership; move the homeless off the trains, stations and buses; improve rider wait times and make the system safer for anxious residents who’ve abandoned mass transit due to crime concerns.
Ridership on the entire system reached about 900,000 boardings every weekday and has risen 11 of the 12 months in the last fiscal year, with ridership at about 77% of 2019 levels, Metro reported. Safety concerns, plus more employees working from home, has decreased commuter ridership, while weekend ridership has risen faster and is about 90% of pre-pandemic ridership.
“Ridership is still down and the reduction is disproportionately among women who report they do not feel safe,” Bass said during her remarks made to an audience of about 500, including many Metro employees, elected officials and others, including LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore.
The emphasis on bringing back women who once rode the subways, light rails and buses but stopped was echoed by Third District Supervisor and Metro board member Lindsey Horvath.
“We absolutely want to make sure we are expanding ridership and making it safer for women,” she said in an interview after the event. “Women have dropped off significantly because of perceived safety issues. We have to work on that.”
Bass touted the 300 Metro Ambassadors — customer relations guides in green shirts who watch out for crime, report homeless sleeping on trains and work with Metro Transit Security and three law enforcement agencies patrolling the system: LAPD, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Long Beach Police Department.
As someone who has made finding housing for the homeless in Los Angeles a priority, Bass touched on the issue of…
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