A Day in the Life...

Getting There From Here: Transportation Equity in L.A.

Posted: 01-Dec-1999; Updated: 05-Feb-2002

Kyle, 26 years old and a single mother of two, is a typical bus rider in Los Angeles. Having recently come off welfare, which she described as "hell," she is happily employed by a nonprofit drug prevention program. Every day she faces the new hell of her daily commute.

"At 6 a.m. Kyle is at the bus stop with her children. Fourteen-month-old Ishmael is asleep on her shoulder; five-year-old Mustafa holds her hand. Two buses later she drops off Mustafa at school in Inglewood. Then she rides two more buses to get Ishmael to his baby sitter in Watts. From there it is half an hour to work. Kyle arrives about 9 a.m., three hours and six buses after starting.

"'The boys and I read. we play games, we talk to other people, we spend the time however we can," she said. "In L.A. County, it's very difficult to live without a car.'"

Kyle's story, recently featured on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, is all too common. The typical bus rider in L.A. is a Latina woman in her 20's with two children, an annual household income of $15,000, and no access to a car. To ease the transportation burdens on people like Kyle, Environmental Defense is working with a growing coalition of civil rights, environmental and transportation reform advocates to build equality in public transportation.

In the following article -- written for "Race In America: A Message From Los Angeles," a project of Angela Oh, advisory board member for President Bill Clinton's Initiative on Race -- Environmental Defense attorney Robert Garcia describes the history of injustice in L.A. transportation, a landmark legal victory that addresses injustice, and our recommendations to improve transportation equity in L.A. and across the United States.

Read the article