Los Angeles Adding 30 Miles of Bus Lanes in 2023

According to a TransitCenter blog post by Eli Lipmen, executive director of Move LA, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is adding 30 miles of new bus lanes in 2023, bringing the total bus lane miles in the county to 40.

This accelerating progress on bus lanes in LA has been years in the making, and can be traced to a coordinated advocacy effort that aggressively pushed for both funding and policies that led to better service, infrastructure that speeds up buses and makes routes more reliable, and amenities that benefited current riders.

The growth is part of the agency’s NextGen Bus Plan, which ‘reimagines’ the county’s bus network to ensure better service and equity throughout the system. Recent success is also due to a collaboration between LA Metro and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, which owns and maintains the city’s streets. The NextGen plan sets ambitious goals, such as providing 80 percent of L.A. bus riders with headways of 10 minutes or less.

For Lipmen, “We still have a long way to go before the majority of LA bus riders are speeding to their destination in a bus lane, but how far we’ve come in a short time is a testament to the power of community organizing, building partnerships with planners, and prioritizing the needs of bus riders.”