Transit equity goes far beyond quantitatively assessing how service is distributed, but that is the extent of most transit agencies’ equity work. This one-dimensional understanding has hampered the transit field from achieving equity — long before the tumult of 2020. 

In June, LA Metro’s Board voted to approve a package of reforms to address how the agency conducts policing, emphasizing the need for a community-based approach to security and law enforcement. 

When money is tight for transit agencies, the need to prioritize is even greater. For LA Metro, prioritizing what transit riders need would entail turning away from highway and rail projects in outlying areas, and toward investments that serve the many essential workers who continue to walk and rely on transit.

As federal funding from the CARES Act runs out, transit agencies are running up against bleak financial shortfalls, and will have to cut service to the bone without emergency assistance. We spoke with three transit riders about how the loss of service would affect them.

As protests across the nation call for an end to police violence and discrimination against Black people, the board of BART in the SF Bay Area is taking steps to overhaul the agency’s approach to public safety on transit.

The MBTA has developed a flexible approach to service provision tailored to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

TransitCenter spoke with Commissioner Calise, a daily subway rider who uses a wheelchair, about his priorities for his tenure on the MTA Board.

The MBTA now offers crowding information on 23 of its bus routes, enabling riders to make decisions about how to minimize risk as they travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

To meet the needs of people who have been most affected by the pandemic, agencies should go beyond the initial transition to weekend schedules and adapt service in response to shifting travel patterns. 

The $25 billion for transit in the CARES Act, which passed in March, bought agencies in major cities a few months. But CARES funding was not sufficient to address the scale of the transit crisis, nor was it targeted well.

Advocates in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Durham, N.C. are distributing masks to riders, and using mask giveaways as an occasion to organize riders to demand better transit service.