Allocation of Public Transit Funds in Los Angeles

How Are Public Transit Funds Allocated in Los Angeles?

In Los Angeles the rail networks constitute a small portion of the public transport network, which is made up primarily of bus routes frequented by lower income individuals that do not have access to a car. It seems an inefficient allocation of resources then, for the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) to spend more money on advancing and extending the rail lines, since the buses service more people. In addition, most of the higher income workers taking advantage of the rail service own a car as well, whereas the poor depend on the buses for transportation.

According to Michael Manville, graduate researcher at UCLA, the "LA MTA spends a tremendous amount of money on rail projects, which are of much less use to the poor than intra-urban bus systems. A number of analyses of rail in LA have shown that it is used predominantly by white, middle and upper-middle class people who also own cars. Buses, by contrast, are far more likely to carry people below the poverty line, and more likely to carry racial minorities. Yet the spending disparities between the rail and bus are so large that the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] successfully sued the MTA over its budget. So although the poor have the most to gain from public transit, transit resources are often not channeled to them."