Transportation Justice

The mission of the LA Forward Transportation Justice team is to work toward a Los Angeles where everyone has access to safe and effective mobility. This includes the ability to move freely around one's environment, including on foot, on a bicycle, or via bus and train. We consider opportunities to fight for such policies broadly, but focus special effort on the LA Metro, the largest transportation provider in the region. This also means fighting for more just planning and decision making moving forward.

Our Principles:

  • Provide usable and effective public transportation service: We must provide Los Angeles residents with an effective transportation system that provides reliable service users can depend on without undue burden.

  • Provide fare-free access to such systems: Ensure that public transportation systems be made accessible to those who need them, without complex means testing limiting usability or cutting out those who need transportation most desperately.

  • Reassess how we consider safety on public transportation: We must re-examine what we consider safety in transportation, including citations for fare-evasion and jaywalking, and examine the role played by police and the disproportionate harm caused in transportation-dependent communities.

  • Build a city designed for mobility: Pursue policies that make Los Angeles a safe and functional environment that supports walking, biking, driving, and public transportation, while acknowledging and taking into account the unequal distribution of such safe infrastructure in the past. 

  • Move to eliminate pollution in transportation: Cease the construction of new highways and the expansion of existing highway infrastructure, noting the legacy of racist highway construction and the impact, spatial and environmental, they have had on marginalized communities.

  • Advocate for prioritization in policymaking of public transportation-dependent communities, including vulnerable residents previously overlooked and/or exploited in Los Angeles’s history of rapid growth and sprawl: Push for more consideration of communities who have suffered previous harm in land use decision-making related to transportation at city and state level that have had a detrimental effect on their ability to have a safe, healthy and prosperous quality of life.

We partner with local transportation work like ACT-LA, Investing in Place, and Los Angeles Walks to provide opportunities for our members to take actions that will systematically improve Angelenos’ mobility across Los Angeles County.

Examples of some of our initiatives:

  • Evaluating Metro board actions as a group.

  • Providing grassroots support for equitable transportation initiatives,

    • Particularly support for bus service, ensuring it serves communities where it is most needed.

  • Encouraging and advocating for positive change in Los Angeles street space, such as making Slow Streets permanent.

  • Reassessing how we consider safety in transportation in public space, particularly policing on Metro, jaywalking citations, and traffic stops.

    • Reimagining public safety in relation to how mobility happens in Los Angeles, specifically walking, biking, driving, and taking public transit .

    • Examining the role the police play and disproportionate harm caused in transit-dependent communities.

  • Supporting elimination of pollution in transportation, a big-picture vision for a fuel-free, fully electrified transportation sector in Los Angeles.


Click here to view a short presentation on the Transportation Justice group’s mission and goals.

A majority of our budget comes from our members’ monthly donations. In 2024, our goal is to raise 70% of our budget from dues-paying members. That will enable us to be 100% accountable to people like you. Your gift allows us to respond rapidly to emerging issues, to take on powerful interests, and spend as little time possible on fundraising so we can focus on the crucial work that needs to get done every day.