Today, the Alliance for Community Transit (ACT-LA) hosted a three-hour bus stop activation on Vermont Avenue at Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles’ multi-ethnic Koreatown neighborhood. It wasn’t quite as high-profile as ACT-LA’s large-scale 2022 event at the Compton Metro A-Line station. The shade, refreshments, and engagement were nonetheless welcomed by bus riders looking to escape the hot August sun.
ACT-LA used the pop-up to educate bus riders, pedestrians, and cyclists (and some of those mentioned above) about Metro’s plans to create bus lanes on Vermont Avenue. Vermont currently carries more than 27,000 bus riders daily on Metro’s 204 and 254 bus routes. These routes have long been among the highest ridership routes in Southern California and even the country.
Metro has been studying improvements to bus service in Vermont since at least 2014. Vermont’s bus rapid transit (BRT) upgrades are funded through the 2016 Measure M sales tax and were the subject of several Metro studies in 2018 and 2019. But the financially inexpensive and politically expensive (due to the potential removal of car lanes and/or parking) project appears to be far from ready for Measure M’s groundbreaking scheduled for around 2024.
Using trilingual information materials, ACT-LA was at the side of the road today gathering riders’ opinions on bus and bike lanes and educating them on how expanding Vermont Avenue would result in more frequent and reliable bus service.
For more information, visit the ACT-LA and Metro Vermont Transit Corridor websites.
