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La Sombrita (Spanish: "The Little Shade") is a prototype sunshade designed for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). La Sombritas were initially installed on four DASH bus stops around the city, and officially launched during a press conference on May 18, 2023 at a La Sombrita installation at the 3rd St/Union Ave bus stop in Westlake. La Sombrita was designed to address several studies published in 2021 that had noted busses and bus stops in Los Angeles were designed only for adult male commuters, even though the majority of public transit riders at the time were women. La Sombrita was intended to aid those female commuters by providing shade in the daytime, sidewalk lighting at night, and shelter from the rain while waiting for a DASH bus to arrive.

The public reaction was almost universally negative. The backlash to La Sombrita was immediate and intense, some mocked the design, others mocked the choice to build cheap installations in the first place. Criticism of La Sombrita came from across the political spectrum. On the left, many accused the Los Angeles goverment of systemic apathy towards citizens who ride public transit, while right-wing critics used it as a symbol of the failures of bureaucracy in LADOT; too much regulation in a Democrat-run city.

In the wake of this public backlash, many reporters and transit advocates defended La Sombrita. They noted that it was not funded with public funds, nor was it a permanent solution to the lack of shelters at Los Angeles bus stops. These defenders made note that La Sombrita is a pilot project, and will evolve as public opinion is taken into account. LADOT themselves defended La Sombrita, saying that it was not intended to replace bus shelters or streetlights, merely to ptovide a cheap and temporary solution in areas of the city where permanent solutions were not yet feasible.

Design
La Sombrita's design is compact and lightweight, built from two pieces of 26-inch wide perforated metal bent and welded together at the top to form an angled platform. The structure is painted teal, with a solar panel affixed to the top, and a light underneath to provide light during the night. The entire device is designed to fit on pre-existing signposts that LADOT had installed for their bus stop signs.

Background
For years, California's public transit systems have faced criticism for their lack of shelters at bus stops. In Los Angeles specifically, half a million citizens rode on the bus on an average weekday in July, 2022. And yet, in the same time period, of the 12,200 bus stops served by Metro, only a quarter had any kind of shade or rain shelter. Due to the rising climate crisis, health risks associated with prolonged exposure to intense heat and sunlight have arisen in bus-riding Californians, leading to increased public scrutiny. The Los Angeles City Council primarily focuses on deals with advertising companies to finance the construction of new bus shelters. In exchange, these companies are given advertising space on the shelter itself. This strategy, however, does not produce shelters at speeds that Angelenos expect, leading to increasing frustration on behalf the the population that ride the bus. In the two decades prior to 2022, despite promising 2,185 new shelters, the ad-driven model delivered only 660. Despite this, the City Council signed a new contract with Tranzito-Vector, LLC to install, upgrade, and maintain trainsit shelters in echange for digital advertising displayed on those shelters. Mobility advocacy organization expressed frustration at this decision, as they expect little to no effective change with the new contract.

Changing Lanes
In 2019, LADOT commisioned "Changing Lanes", a study designed to investigate the needs and experiences of women navigating the transportation system in Los Angeles, as the Department lacked substantive data on the subject. Changing Lanes employed a wide variety of research methods, including meta-analysis of existing studies, collecting survey data, conducting individual interviews with women who rode on public transit, and convening community meetings to assess opinions and collect data on how gender and transportation in Los Angeles were connected. The study was led by Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a nonprofit focused on community development, who had worked with LADOT previously for "Play Streets", a sproject which temporarily shut down city streets, turning them into playgrounds.

The study was performed in three Los Angeles neighborhoods – Sun Valley, Watts, and Sawtelle. These areas were chosen for their high proportions of black and indigenous women of color in zero-car households.

In 2021, LADOT published the study's final report, titled Changing Lanes: A Gender Equity Transportation Study. The report concluded that women of color were systemically failed by the Los Angeles transportation system. Namely, historic under-investment, racist housing and zoning practices, and economic disenfranchisement had created barriers for women of color to access safe transportation. Changing Lanes recommended many changes to LADOT policy, including collecting more and better data across Los Angeles and improving travel itineraries to improve the design and safety of women's travel patterns. That same year, in response to the report, LADOT added more on-demand stops on four DASH bus routes during nighttime hours to shorten risky walks in dangerous neighborhoods.

Changing Lanes also noted that the severe lack of bus stop infrastructure, a long-standing issue in Los Angeles, disproportionately affected poor neighborhoods. This issue was especially difficult to overcome, as bus shelter installation had been caught up in years of bureaucratic red tape; the process required the input of multiple city agencies and was routinely sidelined at the whim of City Council members. Instead of pushing for this route of change, KDI decided to tackle two issues that had arisen repeatedly during interviews: shade and light.

Creation of La Sombrita
Kounkuey Design Initiative produced many designs for standing shade structures, some included a rotating installation that would track the sun and provide consistent shade throughout the day, others included seating, but they instead decided to focus on the models that could potentially be installed in minutes on preexisting LADOT signposts. This would bypass additional permitting, streamlining the construction process. The design and prototyping was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. After design, materials, and engineering were paid for, each prototype cost just under $10,000, and with the creation of four La Sombritas to start with, that totalled the entire prototyping process with a finished bill of under $40,000. KDI claimed that if mass produced, the cost would drop to $2,000.

Public backlash
The public's reaction to La Sombrita was almost universally negative, with Twitter users initally beginning the public outcry before it spread to mainstream news outlets across the political spectrum. Critics listed many issues they saw with La Sombrita. La Sombrita is immobile, it does not turn towards the sun, and is therefore less effective throughout the day. The design uses perforated metal, through which sunlight is able to shine, and rain is able to fall. Some critics noted that on the other side of 3rd Street away from the site of the La Sombrita press conference sat a Metro bus shelter and multiple planters with trees, which provided much more shade and comfort. These critics contended that the installation of a proper Metro shelter or the planting of trees would have been far better solutions. La Sombrita's nightime light also gained notoriety, when the Spanish-language broadcasting station Univision 34 aired a report on La Sombrita, showcasing how the device's light was incredibly dim during night hours, rendering the device ineffective at increasing safety after dark.

Public defense
A few journalists and activists came out in defense of La Sombrita in the week after the controversy had died down. The Los Angeles Times published an article detailing why La Sombrita's faults and failures were overblown by the public, followed by an article in Bloomberg News. The journalists detail several points of contention about La Sombrita that had been either exaggerated or misunderstood.

Firstly, the articles are quick to point out that no public money was spent on the prototyping of La Sombrita. All of the money had been obtained from the Robery Wood Johnson Foundation, despite claims that taxpayer money had been wasted. The Los Angeles Times clarified that La Sombrita was never designed to be a bus shelter nor was it a replacement for bus shelters. LADOT does not, in fact, have the public charge to build bus shelters. That responsibility is instead given to the Bureau of Street Services, a subdivision of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. The journalists go on to describe that La Sombrita is still purely a prototype, and that public feedback will be accepted and taken into account while designing new iteration of the design.

Streets For All, a Los Angeles nonprofit project sponsored by the California YIMBY Education Fund, focuses on public advocacy and awareness for car-free modes of transportation, including public transportation. In a blog post, the organization repeated the same points about funding and prototyping, and described more reasons for the public to be less critical of La Sombrita. They praised LADOT for trying new and experimental ideas to fix issues, and they emphasized the need for immediate and scaleable projects that can be budgeted and carried out at a fast pase. They stressed that Angelenos frustrated at La Sombrita should instead focus their anger at the bureaucracy itself that, they argue, made projects like La Sombrita into the only viable paths forward.