Truth Squad on StreetsLA’s Bus Shelter Program
By the Coalition for a Scenic Los Angeles
A Chapter of Scenic America
April 9, 2021
StreetsLA, the team in the Public Works Dept. charged with managing street furniture citywide, is doing “public information” sessions via Zoom regarding a planned rollout of 3000 new bus shelters across Los Angeles. The proposed program is called Sidewalk and Transit Amenities Program (STAP), and will start next year. In the proposed program, current bus shelters will be refurbished and repurposed without any advertising digital panels (and likely placed in locations where ad revenue would be poor).
While Scenic Los Angeles strongly supports the expansion and placement of covered bus shelters citywide to protect transit riders, we have grave concerns about the nature of the proposed program and Streets LA’s failure to do outreach to the public prior to the finalization and release of the program’s RFP. After attending four STAP “outreach” online workshops (all of which had similar content), Scenic Los Angeles asserts that these sessions are intended more to sell the program rather than to inform and engage. In promoting the outreach sessions, Streets LA failed to make reference to the nature of the new proposed programs; there was no mention of the digitalization of the bus shelters or of their ability to track information about those who pass by the structures. In other words, those reading a meeting announcement would be completely unaware that the new street furniture program would be any different from the current one.
The following summary provides a complete picture of what is being proposed. All of this information comes from publicly available sources.
Neighborhoods will have very little say in what sort of shelters they will get. StreetsLA has already drawn a map with planned locations. (See note 1 below for a link to the interactive map.) If a Neighborhood Council, for example, voted to “opt out” of the new shelters, that vote would (COULD?) be ignored. Council Members Blumenfield and Bonin introduced a motion, Council File 20-1536, directing StreetsLA to regulate the digital advertising program in order to “ensure compatibility with their surrounding environments, traffic safety, and land use zones such as specific plans and scenic highways,” but this is both vague and inadequate. Opportunities for public engagement were seriously deficient at the beginning of this project last March; since then the presentations have been one-sided.
The full Council File 20-1536 can be viewed at: https://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=20-1536
Your neighborhood council and/or community organization may wish to file a CIS supporting more input into the current process, in working to halt the proliferation of digital signage, and to make certain that your community will have a say as to where new shelters are placed and how they are operated. (See sample CIS statements below.)
In the proposed program, existing bus shelters currently in use will be refurbished and repurposed without any advertising – likely located in areas where ad revenues would be poor. As proposed, it is the new shelters and public amenity kiosks that will generate all program revenues.
Digital ad screens on the shelters will harm street safety. Every new proposed STAP shelter will have a digital ad screen (ONE OR TWO?) facing oncoming traffic, 4 x 5.75 feet in size, which will change its message every 8 seconds in most cases. StreetsLA staff points out that these new signs are much smaller than standard billboards. This is correct but misleading, because they will also be much lower to the ground and closer to the road. They will thus exacerbate the problem of driver distraction. Pedestrian fatalities are already a serious problem in LA, and the STAP shelters will insert themselves in the very spots where pedestrians gather: bus stops and intersections. The city’s Vision Zero program to reduce traffic accidents and pedestrian fatalities, already failing to meet its targets, will suffer further.
Public service content of the digital messages will be minimal. StreetsLA staff says that the screens will also carry public service messages, but again this is misleading because the content will amount to a mere pittance. The city will get five percent of the screen time for free, which amounts to three seconds per minute, to be divided among all of the city agencies and neighborhood councils. No single entity can hope to raise its profile in that environment. Further, there is no assurance as to when the public service messages will be shown.
The city never considered an ad-free version. The Request for Proposals yielded four responses from companies interested in contracting with the city. The plan is for each to erect a demonstration shelter in May 2021. But without a non-digitized version or an ad-free version in the mix, the choice will be false and not fully informed.
Environmental impact is being slighted. StreetsLA promises only an “environmental review,” but this project calls for a full EIR that considers traffic safety, privacy (see below), neighborhood aesthetics, and energy consumption.
If you come within 20 feet of one of the shelters, you will be tracked. The shelters will all have devices that read demographic and location data from passing cell phones. This includes not only bus riders and waiting passengers, but also pedestrians, passing cars and their occupants. The data will be anonymous, but attaching such data to a person is not difficult (Who else goes to your house at the end of each day?).(WHAT DOES THIS LAST LINE MEAN???)
Tracking data will be shared with the contractor that builds the shelters. The staff at the workshop sessions states that such information will be shared “only with the city’s permission,” but the Request for Proposals states that the city is obligated to share the data with the contractor, who can then use it to target advertising messages. In a larger sense, we have no assurances that the city and the contractor can keep our data safe from hacking and misuse. And the city is not forbidden from selling the data.
The current street furniture contract will expire at the end of this year, so this is a good time to have an open and robust conversation about what we want in our street furniture program. StreetsLA says that they should be “world-class” and we agree. But just think about how distinctive an ad-free shelter would be, especially if it did not track your every movement. Such shelters can be seen in cities around Los Angeles County.
It is critical that Neighborhood Councils and community members weigh in on this. File a Community Impact Statement under Council File 20-1536,”(supporting with amendments or supporting if amended) the Blumenfield-Bonin motion. See sample CIS statements below. Contact us for more information and/or to arrange for a presentation for your group – a presentation, not a sales pitch.
Patrick: I don’t think we want to offend the chair of the Public Works committee by opposing his motion…
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Send your CIS / comments to the Public Works Committee c/o the Committee’s legislative assistant: michael.espinosa@lacity.org, and to your own City Councilmember:
Meeting info: The audio for this meeting is broadcast live on the internet at https://clerk.lacity.org/calendar. The live audio can also be heard at: (213) 621-CITY (Metro), (818) 904-9450 (Valley), (310) 471-CITY (Westside) and (310) 547-CITY (San Pedro Area).
Members of the public who would like to offer public comment on the items listed on the agenda should call 1 669 254 5252 and use Meeting ID No. 160 073 2397 and then press #. Press # again when prompted for participant ID. Once admitted into the meeting, press *9 to request to speak.
In addition, you can email your comments and/or concerns about the program on a comment form to StreetsLA staff/Public Works Dept. that can be found at: https://streetsla.lacity.org/coordinated-street-furniture-program-feedback.
Sample CIS / Motion 1:
The _______ Neighborhood Council supports Council File Motion CF 20-1536 made by Councilmembers Bonin/Blumenfield with amendments, and further requests that: prior to STP Program contract finalization, the City conduct an extensive and open public process, in which detailed information about STAP, the RFP and the contract negotiation process is made widely available and members of the public, community leaders and neighborhood/community councils are invited to provide ongoing input on community impacts, problems and ridership needs with respect to STAP in connection with any contract that is eventually negotiated. That the City: 1) respect and abide by Community Plan, Specific Plan, Scenic Highway and Coastal Zone protections and requirements, including in the public right of way, and 2) address constituents’ concerns about preservation of community character, protection of residential neighborhoods, public safety and driver distraction, environmental impacts, privacy infringement, all protections for scenic corridors, for local street furniture preferences and for neighborhoods with Specific Plans and codified prohibitions against digital/changing messaging, off-site advertising, and any prohibitions that were negotiated and included in the JCDecaux contract or bus bench program be carried forward in any new contract that is negotiated, and that the City restrict any new digital signs in or near bus shelters to sign districts in the 22 areas already zoned as Regional Commercial for high-intensity commercial use. Additionally, that a clear “opt-out” process be defined.
Sample CIS Motion 2:
The __________ Neighborhood Council opposes the resolution of Council File 20-1536 as written because it does not grant enough power to Neighborhood Councils over the streetscapes in their areas. The Neighborhood Council is very concerned about the safety/related liability and aesthetic impacts of digital advertising screens in bus shelters. Studies have shown that changing digital ad screens are particularly dangerous as they are designed to distract drivers and results in harm to traffic safety. We also adamantly oppose provisions for cell phone tracking in the bus shelter plan. This data can be shared with the contractor for ad targeting, and we have no assurance that the data will be safely kept by the City. Further, before any new bus shelters with digital technology are installed in our neighborhood, we request a full Environmental Impact Report that considers safety, power usage, aesthetics and has a stronger and clearly defined opt-out provision for neighborhoods.
Note 1: The interactive map can be found at: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=114922520e2e4713be75c4188028e205&extent=-13163271.6962%2C4035719.0167%2C-13162340.1199%2C4036273.7824%2C102100
Another version (I am putting this in my next email blast):
Sidewalk and Transit Amenities Program
StreetsLA is developing a successor bus shelter program being touted as “a world-class, self-sustaining program that provides shelter, shade, safety, and comfort with furniture that supports increased use of transit and alternative transportation, local economic activity and the shared use of City sidewalks.” What their program announcements and meeting invitations fail to say is that the program is proposed to include digital billboards/advertisements on the shelters and will also contain tracking devices to gather information about all who frequent the shelters and those who pass by them and the three-sided ad kiosks placed on our sidewalks. (The three-sided ad kiosks are referred to as “public amenity kiosks” and will continue as they have from the prior street furniture program.) The Sidewalk and Transit Amenities Program (STAP) will replace and expand upon the existing program whose 20 year contract ends in December 2021.
Streets LA (that operates under the City’s Bureau of Public Works) has received 4 responses to their RFP issued in November for operators of a new program. Rather than do public outreach PRIOR to releasing the RFP, they are doing it afterwards. While it is clearly critical that transit riders be provided with protection from the elements, does that need require that our sidewalks become the homes for digital signage that distracts drivers and shelters that track our presence? The proposed program will see digital shelters placed in areas where advertising revenues are greatest with the current program’s shelters being refurbished and relocated to other areas of the City without advertisements or digitalization where ridership warrants shelters (but where they weren’t provided under the current contract because the shelters were placed to increase revenues rather than to prioritize serving transit ridership).
Another interesting fact about the program: Regardless of the numbers of shelters or income generated in/from an area, the revenues from the program are shared between the City with half of those revenues being equally divided amongst each of the City Council districts to a councilmember’s discretionary account.
As part of its response to criticism for having failed to do outreach prior to release of the program’s RFP, StreetsLA is now doing outreach. They invite Angelenos to “attend” their next public information session to the Harbor Gateway NC on May 13. Sign in info will be available at the NC website: