[The following final update was written by the organization and then sent to us for further sharing.]

ACT-LA is a coalition of 50 member organizations in the City and County of Los Angeles that works at the intersections of housing and transportation justice. As a part of our five-year strategic goals set from 2023 - 2028, our coalition established that we would develop a 30-year People’s Transportation Plan. This plan would create a long-term vision for transit justice in Los Angeles planned and led by a community base of transit riders. Our goal is to bring together transit planning experts across sectors to co-build a political training series that equips transit riders with the skills to understand how our transit systems are planned, funded, and executed. Communities that are disproportionately impacted by poor planning policies are often completely left out of plans that have great impacts on their day to day well being. Short sighted planning is detrimental to achieving bold long term visions. Therefore we aim to have a generational vision for robust and transformational transit improvements for our cities, designed by and for transit riders.

Through LA2050 support, ACT-LA advanced the early stages of the People’s Transportation Plan by developing curriculum, convening riders, and deepening public understanding of equitable transit planning. Our goal was to develop a transit planning curriculum this year, organize a cohort of community transit riders in 2026, and to build out collaborative long term visions and plans to meet public transit needs by 2027. As 2028 is quickly approaching and Los Angeles is set to host international audiences and increased tourism through a series of mega events in the next few years. A city and worldwide public arena should prioritize the wellbeing and needs of its residents.

We aim to have a published People’s Transportation Plan to use as an advocacy tool for long-term projects that identify bus and train infrastructure, pedestrian accessibility, strategies for reducing air pollutants, alternative safety measures, and a transit system that has competitive transit times to cars. These plans also must be intersectional. Public transit is a third space in our cities. It is a place where people exist in public and as we face a continued housing crisis, mental health care crisis, and more, we will work in collaboration to identify how transit ties into the general public health of our cities.

This year’s political climate has greatly affected the work and progress of our campaigns. Angelenos have been directly targeted by the federal government. Immigrant communities are the heart and backbone of Los Angeles, and many transit riders are a part of those communities. Ridership during the summer decreased and we were informed by our member organizations that people prefer to meet over Zoom than in person. ACT-LA staff shifted the long term planning timeline to make space for organizations that are leading this work to provide direct support to their impacted members.

This year, we held a series of transit rider convenings and popular education sessions to build up the skills and engagement of community members into our campaigns. We identified the need to consolidate our previous research, findings, and organizing goals into a training series for coalition members, other transit advocates, and community base membership.

In the Spring, we partnered with researchers from UC Irvine’s Department of Planning and Policy and UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge to convene community members to learn about restorative practices in transit and infrastructure planning. One of ACT-LA’s goals as stated in our 2028 strategic plan, is to reallocate freeway funding towards improvements for bus infrastructure. This convening gave over 30 community members the knowledge of the impacts of freeway projects in neighborhoods and a forum to connect with fellow transit riders from across LA County. Presenters demonstrated the historical impacts of freeways on communities, its detrimental health and climate effects, and linkages to long histories of redlining.

The presentation also demonstrated case study examples of freeway divestment projects and how other cities are reclaiming spaces where freeways have been removed. This convening gave community members a space to interact with new concepts of freeway divestment opportunities and to share about their own visions for infrastructure improvements and transportation needs in Los Angeles. Through small group discussions, community members shared their visions starting from baseline bus service improvements, pedestrian and public infrastructure needs, and the need to genuinely invest in resources for people that seek refuge on transit.

In the summer, our coalition compiled years of data and input from transit riders to establish our People’s Plan for bus lanes. We identified 20 bus lanes in Los Angeles that are high transited and identified as priority lanes by our organizations, looked at improvement projects already in the pipeline for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) enhancements, and compiled a series of envisioning exercises into visuals of what improved infrastructure would look like. ACT-LA chose to prioritize bus lanes because as Metro reports:

● 9 in 10 transit riders in Los Angeles are non-white riders

● 8 in 10 riders qualify for extremely low-income housing (less than $50,000 a year)

● 8 in 10 Metro riders are bus riders

Genuine investments in bus infrastructure, including shaded stops, protection for bike riders, up to date wait times, can have an exponential improvement on transit riders experiences on transit and further incentivise more drivers to ride public transit. Our work values centering and uplifting the leadership of working class Black, Indigenous, and people of color and transit justice is directly tied with improving access and quality of life for our communities.

These plans were showcased in a People’s Transit webinar to demonstrate our visions for LA’s transit systems in the next few years and to share Metro’s current improvement and BRT projects, where they are located, and how they are funded. We will continue to expand our work by creating maps of our priority transit corridors and aim to collaborate with our member organizations that organize in cultural districts like Thai Town, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, East LA, and South LA. We also will be in close collaboration with the Bus and Train Electrification Coalition that bridges environmental justice organizations with Jobs to Move America to advocate for the expansion of electric buses. This will support bringing more advocates to demand improved public transit infrastructure that considers the need for pollution reduction and prioritizes lower income BIPOC communities.

In the fall, we held a virtual Budget 101 webinar with 40 community members attending and about 90% of attendees were monolingual Spanish speakers. It is important for transit riders to understand how Metro spends their $9 billion dollar budget, who the decisionmakers are, and how community members can advocate for their priorities to be heard and funded. ACT-LA is building up participatory budget practices in the fall because Metro begins its budget planning in the winter and publishes their annual budget in June. We aim to build with interested community members to continue to further their understanding of Metro by providing ongoing power analysis of the Metro Board members, sharing advocacy opportunities, and building organizing strategies to ensure that more riders are aware of budget priorities and decision makers. To follow up the momentum of the Budget 101, in November we will host a Spokesperson Media training to build up people’s public speaking skills and ability to talk to the media. The best spokespeople for our campaigns are everyday transit riders that are impacted by Metro’s decisions often made through untransparent processes. We aim to establish a cohort of transit riders that become public facing leaders that can clearly express their perspectives at Metro board meetings, on social media, with journalists, and other media as needed. This provides people with transferable skills and they get to see themselves as the front and center as leaders then call on robust improvements for our city and county.

As we wrap up 2025, ACT-LA aims to establish our campaign goals for next year and to develop our 2028 Platform. The 2028 Platform will showcase our goals to ensure that public funds for the city’s Olympics plans prioritizes transit riders and scales improvement projects that have long standing benefits for the communities where these games will impact. We are currently researching and organizing around possible expansions of congestion pricing in Los Angeles as a method of securing ongoing funding for transit and infrastructure, involved in engaging with the City Charter reform to advocate for a long term capital improvement plan, calling for improvements and expansions of the transit ambassador program, and researching the implications of shifting Metro’s reduced fare program into a completely fareless program. Next year we aim to reengage more organizational members into our transit justice work, deepen relationships with active transit riders as part of member organizations, support organizational base building efforts, and build out our popular education training series. We will support the capacity of community members to advocate for improved transit by making our presentations publicly accessible, continue Metro budget organizing and advocacy efforts, build more spokespeople for our campaigns, and refine additional learning materials that can be used by organizers to activate their members into building out our long term visions through the People’s Transportation Plan. We will include evaluation metrics to keep track of people's engagement, participation, and comprehension of our materials. Transit funding is under political threat and our priority is to ensure the long term sustainability of our work and the financial health of our member organizations to lead this work. We aim to deepen our collaboration efforts to jointly move towards the transit justice that Angelenos deserve.