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The story
Early 1990s: Founding of Metro
Los Angeles Metro was founded in 1993 from the merger of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. It was charged with financing and constructing a rapid transit rail system, operating the bus system, and coordinating other transportation programs in the region. The conflicts that had occurred between the RTD and the LACTC persisted as internal conflicts within Metro, with union leaders arguing that former LACTC staff received better benefits than former RTD staff, even after the merger.
The ongoing conflict over funding rail construction and bus services continued at Metro. Only months after the agency's founding, Metro CEO Julian Burke presented a proposed budget for fiscal year 1994 to the agency's board of directors. The proposed budget would halt progress on the Union Station–Pasadena segment of the Blue Line to support continued bus operations and rail construction. Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan strongly criticized the plan, and at his insistence, the board directed Metro staff to continue planning for the Pasadena Blue Line, causing Metro to look for other sources of funding.
Metro proposed a large bus fare increase in June 1994, to take effect on September 1st of that year. The fare for a single bus ride was proposed to increase 23% from $1.10 to $1.35 ($2.39 to $2.93 in 2025), and all monthly passes were planned to be eliminated. A 2004 analysis found that the average monthly bus pass user took approximately 100 trips per month, which would have caused a fare increase of over 50% for the average passholder.
Late 1990s: Consent decree and Metro Rapid
On August 31, 1994, a class action lawsuit was filed against Metro by a coalition of local and national civil rights organizations, representing Los Angeles bus riders. The civil rights organizations, including the Bus Riders Union, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, supported by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The plaintiffs argued that Metro's large subsidies for rail construction and operation discriminated against bus riders, whose demographics were significantly different than those of rail riders. The court delayed the fare increase, and after nearly two years of discovery proceedings, the case was settled before it went to trial.
The consent decree that resulted from the settlement required Metro to significantly expand bus service. One product of the consent decree was Metro Rapid, a brand of limited-stop bus service with some characteristics of bus rapid transit. A delegation from the Los Angeles city government, including Mayor Richard Riordan, visited the Brazilian city of Curitiba in early 1999. The civic leaders were impressed by Curitiba's comprehensive bus rapid transit system, the Rede Integrada de Transporte, and sought to replicate it. By the summer of 1999, planning was underway for a pilot program of bus rapid transit service on two corridors: Wilshire Blvd/Whittier Blvd and Ventura Blvd.
In addition to Metro Rapid service, Metro expanded local and express bus service, purchased hundreds of new buses, and lowered bus pass prices. Metro Rapid service on the two pilot corridors began in June 2000, opening on the same day as the Red Line extension to North Hollywood. Both lines were immediately popular, generating ridership growth of 25% in their first 90 days of operation. Travel time was improved by over 20% on both lines, aided by the signal priority at intersections in the City of Los Angeles. Customer satisfaction increased relative to the previous local and limited-stop bus services, and the Rapid service quickly captured over 60% of bus ridership on both corridors.
2000s: Alternative fuels and declining ridership
Metro introduced compressed natural gas-powered buses and low-floor buses in the late 1990s. By 2003, Metro was the largest operator of CNG buses in the country, with over 1,900 CNG buses operating across its service area. A rule passed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District in 2000 banned new diesel-powered buses in transit fleets in Southern California, seeking to improve air quality in the region.
California transit ridership began declining in the early 2000s, with a large share of the decline coming from the Los Angeles region. A 2018 study attributed some of the decline to rising car ownership among passengers, and also highlighted the effect of bus service cuts across the region. From 2007 to 2013, bus service in miles traveled dropped 13% across the entire Southern California Association of Governments region, which extends beyond Los Angeles County. In addition to the 2018 study's hypothesis, a 2024 study argued that some of this decline was due to the high cost of housing in areas of Southern California that had better access to public transport.
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Metro introduced the TAP card fare payment system in 2008, creating a single fare card for most buses and trains in Los Angeles County. TAP replaced a system of magnetic stripe stored-value cards already in use by some agencies, including Big Blue Bus and Foothill Transit. In 2018, TAP fully replaced the previous system of paper interagency transfers, offering discounts on rides that connected between multiple bus and rail operators.
2020s: NextGen Bus Plan and COVID-19
The NextGen Bus Plan was introduced to passengers in 2019 and approved by the Metro board in 2021. The plan eliminated most Metro Rapid routes, stating that passengers would be better served with more frequent local service on routes with slightly fewer stops. As part of the plan, low ridership routes were converted to Metro Micro microtransit, routing was simplified, and some stops closer than one quarter mile spacing were eliminated.
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in California, Metro Bus services were cut to approximately 80% of 2019 levels. Face masks were required on Metro buses, and passengers were required to board through the back door of buses to support social distancing between bus drivers and passengers.
The pandemic's impact on public transit affected ridership in Los Angeles and worldwide. In 2021, as transit ridership nationwide began to increase, bus service in Los Angeles regained patronage faster than rail services in the region, and faster than its peers in California. Los Angeles-area transit ridership outpaced Bay Area transit ridership by tens of millions of trips in 2021 for the first time in decades, driven largely by bus ridership. An analysis by the Bay Area News Group showed that the largest bus operators in the Los Angeles region were at 74% of 2019 bus ridership levels in June 2022, far higher than their peers in New York City and the Bay Area.
From Wikipedia’s article on Los Angeles Metro Bus, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4