About 74% of the bus stops in Los Angeles County serving Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus routes do not have shelters, exposing thousands of potential riders each day to rain, sun and excessive heat that can lead to emergency room visits and even death, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Move LA and the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies found that most of the holes in the county’s transit safety net were in low-income areas. The absence of sheltered bus stops disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income riders, the study found.

Now that climate change is producing longer spells of excessive heat, the problem of riders waiting in the sun without any shade is a public health issue, said Eli Lipmen, executive director of Move LA, a nonprofit working to improve mass transit in L.A. County and California.

Extreme heat is responsible for killing more Americans than other natural disasters, he wrote in a prepared statement.Bus stops » Page 4

From 1980 to 2000, Los Angeles County on average experienced six extreme heat days every year. That number is expected to rise to 22 days by 2050, according to data from a proposed state bill addressing bus stops and street infrastructure being considered in the Legislature.

“This is about how to build more climate-resilient bus shelters,” Lipmen said on Wednesday. “It’s a real opportunity, when we are seeing more extreme weather incidents, to ask, ‘How do we create more resilience?’ Having more street furniture with shade is a solution to that.”

Of the 10,500 LA Metro bus stops, only about 26% have a shelter, according to the study. And most of the bus stops are in the hottest parts of Los Angeles County, he said.

A study in 2020 by LA Metro and the Aging and Disability Transportation Network found that only 5% of older adults were using Metro’s discounted pass program. Their most frequent complaint was that bus stops lacked a shelter or shade.

Of the 12,000 people in the United States who die of heat-related illnesses each year, about 80% are at least 60 years old, according to data from Climate Central, a journalism resource quoted in the Autumn 2021 issue of Harvard Medicine, a publication of Harvard Medical School.

“This isn’t just about bus riders. It is about a senior walking on our streets in 100-degree weather getting groceries who can’t find a place to sit for a few minutes to get out of the heat,” Lipmen said.

Bus shelters are not built or maintained by Metro. They are managed by the cities where the bus stops are located, he explained. The cities, or L.A. County, are responsible for their public streets, sidewalks and rights of way where shelter structures can be built.

A large majority of Metro bus routes stop at bus stops in the city of Los Angeles, Lipmen reported. But L.A. has been slow to build new bus stops or add overhead roofs to existing shelters to block out the sun’s rays, according to studies released last year by other transit watchdog groups.

Shade structures can lower the temperature of surfaces by 25 to 40 degrees, Lipmen wrote.

The new study points out that some cities do a faster, better job of providing bus shelters. New York City and Los Angeles used the same contractor but New York installed twice as many shelters in the same five-year period as Los Angeles, Lipmen said.

Lipmen said getting a bus shelter built in the city of L.A. requires approval from the City Council, the city Department of Public Works and eight other city agencies. The red tape has slowed the construction of new or improved shelters.

But a new contract recently approved by L.A. could speed up the process, said Lipmen, who noted that he is “cautiously optimistic.”

Some cities are doing a better job than others, he said.

For example, the city of Bell has made bus shelters a priority. Of the bus stops in this small, southeast L.A. County city, 89% have a shelter.

Beverly Hills only provides shade at 10% of its bus stops, the study found. Most of the bus riders in Beverly Hills are service workers, Lipmen said.

Move LA wants to incorporate data on bus shelters into mapping and directional apps. AB 364 would require Caltrans to develop guidelines for sharing this data with local transit agencies.

The agencies would submit the data, such as the locations of bus shelters, public toilets and benches to be used on mapping and directional apps “so that transit users can make an informed decision on their transit trip based on available infrastructure,” according to a statement from Lipmen.

Move LA is reaching out to the app designers to see if they would include such information. “That way when you open up an Apple or Google app, it would also say you are walking to this location where there are two shelters on the way,” Lipmen said.