Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass addressed reporters at a press event this morning at Foshay Learning Center. She reaffirmed her administration’s commitment to offering free metro rides to K-12 students. The GoPass program lets students ride any metro line or bus within the system free of charge.
The Mayor stressed that the program can help alleviate significant costs associated with transportation.
Karen Bass: We want to make sure that cost is never a barrier to accessibility or opportunity. And removing barriers to transportation can only open doors to improving education and the GoPass program does exactly that.
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho heralded the program which emerged from the partnership between LAUSD and L.A. Transit Authority.
Alberto Carvalho: The possibility of free transportation within our community to over 540,000 students, it is an idea whose time has come. It is safe. It is protected. It is clean. It is the right idea.
Gloria Alegria sends her daughter to the 32nd Street Magnet school near the USC Village. She says the program is a good idea but she would wait before sending her children on the metro alone.
Gloria Alegria: It’s like I’m scared that he’s going to get lost or anything can happen. Now it’s dangerous times that I’m scared for him to get in trouble or something happens in the streets. But I think after he gets 16, he can go on the bus.
Alegria is not alone in her concerns about safety on the Metro. In March the transit authority launched its Metro Ambassador program which now staffs many metro line stations with yellow-vested individuals who are available to answer rider questions. Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins says her office is doing a lot ensure the system is safe for all riders.
Stephanie Wiggins: So we’re committed to ensuring a safe trip, particularly for the students who are riding our system. Not only do we have a program that we share with all of the schools to inform the parents and the students about safe riding and travel tips, we’ve increased our visible presence of whether it is our ambassador program, our law enforcement and our transit security officers to in particular be focused on the lines that serve our schools.
Dillan Robinson is a high school senior and Student Body president at Foshay Learning Center. He focused on the advantages the new program offer. Over the summer he said he explored LA with his friends.
Dillan Robinson: I went to the Natural History Museum, the Santa Barbara Tar Pits and Little Tokyo with my friends over the summer. I am very grateful for the Metro because with it I can go anywhere in L.A. and even beyond. All with the Tap.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Jules Feeney.