Drug abuse, mental illness, and repeat offenders plaguing L.A.’s trains and buses.
LOS ANGELES—Following a spate of shockingly violent attacks on Metro buses and trains in recent weeks, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority—better known as Metro— declared a public safety emergency April 25 and hastened plans to retrofit its entire fleet of buses with shatter-proof glass compartments to protect drivers, while increasing other safety and surveillance measures.
John M. Ellis, General Chairman of a union representing 5,000 Metro train and bus operators, said the approval came after “countless hurdles.”
“We have reached a critical milestone,” Mr. Ellis said in a statement. “It can’t happen fast enough.”
The board authorized around $5 million to have its 2,000 buses retrofitted with tempered-glass compartments by the end of December.
“You can hit it with a bat all day long, but they won’t be able to break through it,” Mr. Ellis said of their design, which will fully enclose drivers and be welded to the bus frame.
The union has been pushing the county to move forward with the retrofits as attacks on transit operators have increased. A study by research non-profit The Urban Institute published last year found that nationwide assaults on transit workers tripled between 2008 and 2022, steadily climbing and then surging after the pandemic.
“I drove the bus for 35 years and I understand what our members are all up against daily. No one can begin to comprehend what an operator faces during these unpredictable times,” Mr. Ellis said.
But in Los Angeles, spilling over into the transit system is the city’s spiraling homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health crises.
Recent attacks across disparate corners of the county include a string of assaults on Metro bus operators, as well as the brutal April 22 slaying of a passenger—a 66-year-old grandmother aboard Metro’s Red Line.
“This attack was preventable,” Los Angeles Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who sits on Metro’s Board, said in a statement, calling the murder a “terrible and painful reminder of the reality Metro riders are facing every day.”
