A Los Angeles Teen is Fighting to Get City Buses to Run on Clean Energy

This is an opinion piece for the Sierra Club by Milton Paez, a high school student from LA.

Like most US cities, the majority of the people taking public transportation in Los Angeles County are low-income. My Canoga Park neighbors and I use the bus to get to work, the grocery store and our friends' houses, which is why my community is situated in one of the busiest bus corridors in Metro's service area. Our reliance on public transportation brings pollution-spewing buses to our streets, which contributes to our notoriously bad air quality-- a problem that also disproportionately damages low-income communities across the country. It's a double edged sword. We need the buses to get around, but the buses' pollution contributes to our poor air quality that makes us sick.

Canoga Park sits in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley where a cloud of smog hangs above the community. It seems like almost everyone has a breathing problem where I live, including myself. Asthma was so common that when I was little, I thought inhalers were toys that almost all kids -- and many adults -- had. Like most children in my neighborhood, I struggled with asthma constantly and it got in the way of doing the things a normal kid should do. I remember I could never run around outside without stopping to use an inhaler of my own. Now that I am older and understand the main sources of pollution in our city, it's hard not to get on the bus without thinking "what's more important? Our health or getting around on the bus?" It's an impossible question to answer.

When I was a kid, the buses ran on diesel fuel. Our air quality was so bad that Metro made a switch to gas-powered buses because it was cleaner. But today our air is still unsafe to breathe and is actually getting worse. Meanwhile, Metro's buses are still running on fossil fuels when 100 percent pollution free buses are transporting people elsewhere.

Cities across the country like Antelope Valley, CA, Seattle, WA, Buffalo, NY and more are making the switch to clean, electric buses that don't leave behind the dirty smog and emissions like Metro's gas-powered buses do. There's no reason why communities like mine should be saddled with polluting public transportation when affordable, zero emission buses exist. We are the people using the bus, and we deserve better.

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The gas industry has long sold itself as a "clean fuel" when it really just is another polluting fossil fuel. Metro should reject the gas-industry's spin and acknowledge its contribution to our air issues. Metro's gas-powered bus fleet spews the same amount of carbon dioxide and 120.8 tons of nitrogen dioxide (a key ingredient to lung-searing smog) as 60,000 cars. Imagine if that pollution was brought down to zero. Electric buses emit no emissions, and the region's electricity grid that Metro's electric fleet would plug into is generating power from more and more clean, pollution-free energy sources.

In addition to improving air quality, electric buses could provide good, local job opportunities to this area. Southern California now has two of the biggest electric bus manufacturers in the country, and they stand ready to build more than 2,000 new clean buses for Metro. I think about what those job opportunities would have meant to my struggling family when my dad was out of work when I was younger.

For my community and the region, a lot is riding on whether Metro decides to make the shift to an all-electric bus fleet. Community health depends on the commitment. Our continued climate leadership hinges on it as well. And a new generation of workers are waiting for the opportunity at family-supporting jobs and the pride in knowing their work will drive the region toward a better future. Metro led the nation when it stopped using diesel-powered buses, and it can be a leader again by bringing the cleanest bus fleet to Los Angeles County.

Make the right call, Metro. Commit to zero emission buses.

Sign up to urge LA Metro to shift to electric buses powered by clean energy.