The Women Changing Transportation program is pleased to present the second installment of videos from our conversation series.

Before COVID-19 struck, LA Metro seemed to be turning a corner on bus service with the ambitious network redesign known as NextGen. But the new budget plan signals a return to the days when Metro regularly overlooked the bus riders who make the vast majority of trips on its services.

Millions of people across the country are at risk of losing access to good transit as the COVID pandemic grinds on and imposes an unprecedented fiscal crisis on the nation’s transit agencies.

At the final convening of the first year of the Women Changing Transportation program we asked the members of the cohort to reflect on their year together, the current state and future of transportation, and their experiences as women working in the field.

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. 

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.