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        Now that we’ve gotten to some of the often misreported facts, let’s take a look at how a prototype visor installed at four bus stops in Los Angeles last week dominated social media as a failed political Rorschach inkblot test. a more interesting story about how we can make public transport more convenient for women.
        Controversy erupted last week when Los Angeles Department of Transportation officials held a press conference with Los Angeles City Council member Youniss Hernandez to announce the deployment of a prototype new shading and lighting system at a West Lake bus stop. In photos, the design doesn’t look very attractive: a skateboard-shaped piece of perforated metal hangs from the counter and looks like it can cast a shadow on a maximum of two or three people. At night, solar lights are designed to illuminate the sidewalks.
        In a city where lack of shade around bus stops is a major problem (exacerbated by climate change), La Sombrita, as designers call it, has become a joke. I confess that this was my first reaction. A photo of the press conference, in which a group of officials look at the glorious pole, quickly became a meme on Twitter.
        Thousands of subway stops have no covers or even seats. But the proposal to open new shelters in Los Angeles through digital advertising has raised questions.
        What’s worse is PR. A media alert breathlessly announced a “first-of-its-kind bus stop shading design” and presented it as part of an effort to promote gender equality in public transport. If you follow this story on Twitter, you have very little idea how exactly a piece of metal on a stick will help women. It was like surrendering to Angeleno’s stifling habits that had been imposed at countless bus stops: we hid behind telephone poles and prayed they wouldn’t get blown out of their heads.
        Hours after the press conference, observers across the political spectrum saw La Sombrita as a symbol that all was not well in the city. On the left is an indifferent government doing less than the bare minimum for its citizens. On the right is evidence that the blue city is mired in regulation – dumb Los Angeles can’t provide it. “How to fail in infrastructure,” touts a post from the conservative Cato Institute.
        Again, due to the many half-truths circulating, La Sombrita is not a bus stop. It is also not designed to replace bus stops. In fact, LADOT is not a city agency in charge of bus stops. This is StreetsLA, also known as the Street Services Agency, which is part of the Department of Public Works.
       Instead, La Sombrita grew out of an interesting 2021 LADOT study called “Changing Lanes” that looked at how public transport could be more equitable for women.
        Many urban transport systems are designed for passengers from 9 to 5, often men. Transport infrastructure such as armrests and seat height are designed around the male body. But over the decades, the driving style has changed. In the metro that serves Los Angeles County, women made up the majority of bus drivers before the pandemic, according to a Metro survey released last year. They now make up half of the population using buses.
        However, these systems were not designed with their needs in mind. Routes can be useful in getting travelers to and from work, but highly inefficient in getting caregivers from school to football practice, to the supermarket, and home in a timely manner. There was an additional problem with getting the baby into the stroller to navigate the system. (I invite all gender-hating tweeters to take a bus ride around LA dragging a baby, a toddler, and two bags of groceries. Or down deserted boulevards at night with no working lampposts.)
        The 2021 study is the first step towards seriously considering this issue. It was commissioned by LA DOT and is led by the Kounquey Design Initiative (KDI), a non-profit design and community development organization. (They’ve previously worked on projects in Los Angeles, including LA DOT’s “Play Streets,” which temporarily seals off city streets and turns them into makeshift playgrounds.)
        “Changing Lanes” focuses on female riders from three boroughs—Watts, Soter, and Sun Valley—who not only represent a variety of urban settings, but also have a high percentage of working women without a car. At the design level, the report concludes: “Not only do the systems fail to adequately accommodate women, but the infrastructure used in these systems prioritizes the male experience.”
       Recommendations include collecting better data, improving recreational transportation options, re-routing to better reflect women’s travel patterns, and improving design and safety.
       The report has already made minor changes to the system: In 2021, LADOT launched an on-demand parking test on four routes of its DASH transit system from 18:00 to 07:00 segment time.
        KDI is currently developing an action plan called “Next Stop” that will help implement some of the broad policy recommendations from the initial study. “This is a roadmap for actions that DOT can take across its 54 business lines to make transportation infrastructure more gender-inclusive,” said Chelyna Odbert, founder and CEO of KDI.
        The action plan, which is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, will provide guidance on recruitment, data collection and fare pricing. Women tend to make more transfers, which means they have a disproportionate financial burden when we don’t have free transfers between systems,” Odbert said.
        The team is also exploring ways to streamline the process, which requires the involvement of multiple city agencies. For example, the installation of bus stops has always been hampered by bureaucratic red tape and the whims of individual city council deputies.
        In support of the action plan, ODI and LADOT also created two working groups: one from the city’s residents and the other from representatives of various departments. Odbert said they were looking for ways to support long-term policy with small infrastructure solutions. So they decided to solve a recurring problem when talking to women during the initial study: shadows and light.
        KDI has developed many concepts including vertical awnings in various widths, some swivel and some with seating. However, as a starting point, it was decided to produce a prototype model that could be installed on a LADOT pole in a matter of minutes, without requiring additional permits and utilities. Thus La Sombrita was born.
        To be clear, the design and prototyping was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, no city funds were used to create shade. Each prototype costs about $10,000 including design, materials and engineering, but the idea is that if mass produced, the cost would drop to about $2,000 per color, Odbert said.
        One more clarification: as widely reported, designers did not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars traveling to other cities to study shading structures. It has to do with travel, Odbert said, but research into how transit agencies in other countries cater to female riders is in its early stages. “Shadow,” she said, “was not the focus of the project at the time.”
        In addition, La Sombrita is a prototype. Based on feedback, it may be revised or discarded, another prototype may appear.
        However, La Sombrita has the misfortune of landing at the most frustrating time for LA bus passengers who have struggled for years – In a report published last fall, my colleague Rachel Uranga detailed how the advertising model delivered only 660 out of 2,185 promised shelters over a 20-year period. However, despite the setback, last year the board decided to sign another advertising contract with another provider.
       Contained reporter Alyssa Walker noted on Twitter that the current outrage against La Sombrita is best directed at the bus stop contract.
        After all, highways are not usually forced to stay afloat in this way. As Jessica Meaney, director of mobility advocacy group Investing in Place, told LAist last year, “The fact that we don’t invest in bus stop improvements, unless it’s advertising related, is an anachronism. Frankly, it’s a punitive stance for buses”. passengers who are dealing with a bus service that hasn’t really seen much improvement in 30 years.”
        According to a report published by dot.LA in March, the launch of the new shelter, designed by Transito-Vector, has been delayed from this summer until late fall. (The DPW spokesperson was unable to provide an update for this story in time.)
        A spokesman for LADOT noted that La Sombrita “does not replace important investments that we need more, such as bus stops and street lights. This experimental variant is intended to test the creation of a small amount of shadow and light where other solutions cannot be immediately implemented. Methods.
       The regional connector opened in downtown Los Angeles on June 16, eliminating the interchange connecting Long Beach and Azusa, East Los Angeles, and Santa Monica.
        When it comes to design decisions, shadows are better than nothing. I visited the East LA prototype on Monday and found that it helped shield the upper body from the evening sun, even though it was admittedly only 71 degrees. But I had to choose between the shadow and the seat because they didn’t match.
        Joe Linton of Streetsblog wrote in a clever article: “The project is trying to find a constructive niche in a highly unequal Los Angeles, where there are already major differences, to solve the complexities of street furniture distribution. But… La Sombrita still feels inadequate.”
        So many tweets are correct: it’s not impressive. But the research that led to La Sombrita was not. This is a smart move to make public transport more responsive for everyone who uses it. As a woman waiting for a bus on a deserted street, I applaud this.
        After all, the biggest mistake here is not trying out a new design. It was a press conference that gave off more heat than light.
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       Carolina A. Miranda is an art and design columnist for the Los Angeles Times, often covering other areas of culture, including performance, books, and digital life.

 


Post time: Jun-02-2023