The board that runs Los Angeles County's transit system took a step Thursday toward putting the people who actually ride the buses and trains in the room where decisions are made, LAist reports.
What the board did
Metro's governing board voted to advance a plan creating its first-ever seat reserved for a regular transit rider. The motion came from county Supervisor Janice Hahn and passed unanimously. A complementary motion from Mayor Karen Bass, which would set aside one of the mayor's three appointments for a rider or rider advocate, passed 12-1.
Both new positions would carry full voting power. The five seats reserved for county supervisors would not change.
Why it is more than symbolic
The case for it is straightforward, and it addresses a genuine oddity of how Metro is governed. The board has 13 voting seats and oversees an agency with a budget of nearly $10 billion, and yet its members are almost entirely elected officials and their appointees, people who, as a group, are far less likely to depend on the system day to day than the riders they set fares and service levels for. Adding a rider with a vote is an attempt to put lived experience of the actual bus and train at the same table as the politics and the money.
Whether one seat, or two, meaningfully changes decisions on a 13-member board is a fair question. A single rider vote can be outvoted twelve to one. But representation on a body like this is partly about whose questions get asked in the meeting, not only whose votes prevail, and on that count a standing rider seat is a real change.
The dissent worth hearing
The lone no vote came from Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and her objection is worth stating fairly rather than waving past. Her concern was not about riders but about a different piece of Bass's motion touching county-executive representation. "The county executive will be the only elected seat to represent the entire county of Los Angeles," Horvath said. "For that position to not be at the decision-making table on something as critical as transit solutions for the region makes absolutely no sense."
That is a structural argument about who speaks for the whole county on a board where five seats already go to individual supervisors representing districts, and it is a reminder that "add a rider" and "rework the board" are related but separate questions.
The catch
None of this is final. Metro's board composition is written into California's public utilities code, which means the change has to be approved by state legislators in Sacramento before it takes effect. The board can recommend adding riders to its ranks; only the Legislature can actually do it. The Herald will follow the proposal to Sacramento and report whether the rider seats survive the trip.
