The City of Los Angeles has announced a major funding boost to install bus stop shelters and shades, and will begin installing them next year. The Korea Daily has consistently reported on the lack of shade in LA’s Koreatown.
At a press conference in the San Fernando Valley on November 27, LA Mayor Karen Bass and city officials announced a $38 million plan to install shelters and shade structures at bus stops, including a loan from the LA Public Works Trust Fund.
The funding will be used for the first project in the city’s Sidewalk and Transit Amenities Program (STAP). STAP is a city infrastructure improvement program that aims to install 3,000 transit stop shelters and 450 shade structures across the City of Los Angeles, and the new funding will be used in conjunction with $8 million already allocated in the city’s budget.
According to city officials, work to install the bus stop shelters is expected to begin in 2024. It will be completed gradually over a three- to six-year period, prioritizing areas with high ridership or long bus wait times that are exposed to the heat.
According to the STAP data currently available on the website, District 10 has 54 locations in LA that have been approved for projects in the first year (16 have been interim approved).
This includes a number of bus stops in Koreatown, including 7th street, 8th and Vermont, Western and Olympic, and Western and Wilshire.
“We must use all of the tools we have in order to build a greener Los Angeles, starting with improving our city services which is made possible through the partnership with our City Council, Metro, and congressional representatives coming together to secure additional funding for new infrastructure,” said Mayor Bass.
“For the first time in this City’s history, we are actually committing dollars that will go directly towards building these 3,000 critical bus structures,” said Councilmember Nithya Raman. “To put that into perspective, in just the first year of this contract, we are going to build more bus structures than we’ve built in the last decade in Los Angeles! That is a dramatic change that is going to result in a new way of getting around this city because you will have much-needed shade at all of these stops for the first time.”
In the Valley, Congressman Tony Cárdenas has secured $2.5 million in Federal Community Project Funding for shade structures, cool paving street segments, and other neighborhood cooling projects.
BY SUAH JANG, JUNHAN PARK [jang.suah@koreadaily.com]
