Let the world breathe 5 fare increase.pdf

Impact Report (EIR) for a fare increase that will pay for more rail

construction. If successful the lawsuit can temporaliry stop MTA’s fare increase until the EIR is conducted.  We
think the EIR will expose how toxic MTA’s fare increase truly is and help us in the struggle to repeal it. We calculated that MTA’s fare hike would force over 100,000 bus riders to leave the buses. Our estimate is that at least a third of these, over 33,000 people, will choose to drive leading to almost half a billion more car miles on the road in the next 3 years.  The impact on public health is alarming, it will mean more premature deaths, more asthma attacks, more heart attacks caused by rising emission of oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter (see chart).  

MTA’s fare increase also adds to carbon emissions that cause global warming and climate disasters.  People in the Pacific islands, in the Gulf of Mexico, and Black people in New Orleans are dying from “extreme weather events” in which coastlines suffer supersized hurricanes and flooding. MTA’s fare increase adds to L.A.’s global warming assault on the third world.  

But remember stopping the fare hike will take more than a court order.  It’s going to take a movement in the
streets of people like you.  Join the Clean Air Campaign and let’s repeal this toxic fare hike!
MTA is not only balancing their exorbitant rail budget on the backs of poor Black, Latino, Asian and white working
class bus riders, but now they are kicking in more lung disease, heart failure and fueling the global warming
climate crisis.

Last May 24th, 1500 people came out to demand the MTA Board reject the racist and environmentally disastrous fare
hike.  We think such a dramatic fare increase will push people off public transit in droves, forcing many poor
people to purchase old polluting clunkers and adding to L.A.’s public health crisis and indiscriminate emission of
greenhouse gases.

The BRU’s Clean Air Campaign and the Natural Resources Defense Council are suing MTA for violating the California
Environmental Quality Act by not conducting an Environmental