LOS ANGELES, March 7 (Xinhua) — A lack of bus stop shelters in the U.S. western county of Los Angeles posed a health risk to local residents, among whom poor marginalized Angelenos were hit hardest, a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and local advocacy group Move LA said.
According to the study published on the UCLA website on Monday, most of the bus stops in the most populous county of the United States are located in the hottest areas with low-income, people of color making up the majority of ridership. Only 26 percent of them have a bus shelter.
\”Without shelter, many users of public transportation are at risk of cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory disorders,\” the study said. \”It\’s going to be getting worse in the future as climate change worsens and L.A. County continues to get hotter and hotter.\”
Eli Lipman, executive director of Move LA, was quoted by the Los Angeles magazine as saying that Los Angeles, which has the second largest bus system in the United States, really is heading toward a major health crisis due to the poor infrastructure.
\”Coupled with a lack of access to air conditioning for low-income households, they face disproportionate heat risks both indoors and out,\” the study found, noting Latino and Black neighborhoods are getting the worst of it.
On average, Latino neighborhoods are over 2 degrees centigrade warmer than neighborhoods with low Latino populations, according to the researchers, \”and extreme heat days are warmer in neighborhoods with more Black residents than those with fewer Black residents.\”
Los Angeles is not alone in lacking protection for bus riders from extreme weather conditions in the country.
A report from The Washington Post last May said less than 20 percent of more than 122,000 bus stops in use by 16 large U.S. transit agencies had bus shelters.