Did you know you can get a free ride in Los Angeles? If you take the bus in L.A. County, the rides are free and have been since the start of the pandemic. Madeline Horowitz got more information from Dave Sotero, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, about this initiative.
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Why is this not advertised to the public? I feel like more people would be inclined to ride if they knew the bus was free right now.
DAVE SOTERO: I think our regular transit riders do know that we’ve been having these. It’s people that don’t normally ride the system or infrequently ride the system that don’t know.
When asked why the metro has not made more of an effort to make the initiative more widely known, Sotero said it would be confusing to advertise that the busses are free because the rails are not free as well.
SOTERO: Say, for example, you ride the rail and the bus and you hear that the bus is free, but you’re required to collect fares-- present your fare on the rail. That’s confusing, and it’s not going to be something that people are going to welcome is the confusion that leads to that.
Although the rail is not currently free to the public, a pilot program called the fairness system initiative was announced in May 2021. The program makes both buses and rails free to students.
SOTERO: They would be able to ride the metro system freely, not just to school, but for any destination that they wish within Los Angeles County. That’s a specific program specifically for K through 14 students. That’s separate and distinct from what we’ve been doing since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020.
Six schools are currently involved in the program and more should be added soon.
SOTERO: In May 2021, the board approved it, but they wanted metro to follow up with some items and one of them was the funding plan for FSA. It was kind of like a conditional approval where, yes, we approve it, but we want you to come back and provide us with additional information about the funding, where the funding is going to come from, and what are the costs of implementing a program like this.
According to Sotero, the pilot program has cost about 50 million dollars. This has been Madeline Horowitz, Annenberg Media.