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The city of Pomona only provides 19% of bus benches with shading. With scorching weather around the corner, bus riders need to figure out how to fight against the heat.

Transcript

HOST: Hi, welcome to Pseudo Pop, where we use pop culture to give real life some context. I’m your host Anthony Solorzano and today we are going to talk about the 1994 action/thriller Speed.

MOVIE NARRATOR: For LA cop Jack Traven…

JACK TRAVEN: Tell me again, Harry. Why did I take this job?

HARRY: Come on, 30 more years of this, you get a tiny pension and a cheap gold watch.

NARRATOR: When someone put the city of LA to the ultimate test…

HOWARD PAYNE: Pop quiz, hot shot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is on. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

HOST: Fast forward 30 years and bus riders don’t have to worry about a crazy ex-cop trying to extort the city for his retirement money. Nowadays, cops terrorize citizens on the clock, with no demands. They get paid to do it. Public transportation is being terrorized by a new foe–the sun!

According to Foothill Transit, the city of Pomona has 244 bus stops that fall under the jurisdiction of the city. Altering a bus stop is the city’s job. Pomona’s senior civil engineer told SAC Media the city works with Foothill Transit to decide which stop gets a bench. Pomona has provided 106 benches and only 46 shading shelters for bus stops. That means that 19% of benches are covered from the threat of strong sunlight. Weather Sparks reports that the peak temperature during the months of June through August of 2023 reached higher than 90 degrees.

MATT PILARZ: Through a co-operative process of looking at the lighting, the people that are boarding the buses, and the people that, you know, exiting the buses and we looked at where the benches should be based on that data, similar with the bus shelters. And there, there’s other factors that also come into play

HOST: Bus rider Samuel Hendrix doesn’t think the city provides enough shading at bus stops.

SAMUEL HENDRIX: There’s not a whole lot of shading, besides the natural geographics and the trees. There’s some, there could be more.

HOST: In Speed, the LAPD stops the terrorist from hurting bus riders by hijacking the video feed with a pre-recorded video that allows them to empty the bus. Simple fix. Stopping the current enemy won’t be as easy. How are bus riders supposed to fight against the daily terrorizing from the sun with rays of vitamin C? Shooting it? Spreading a conspiracy theory saying it doesn’t exist? Convincing the masses that heat is a state of mind that can be fixed with pills that alter that way of thinking?

It shouldn’t be up to the citizens to stop the sun from hurting their daily commute. The city of Pomona needs to do a better job at using funds to supply benches and shading for bus stops. With the summer just around the corner and the weather’s unpredictability, commuters are in danger of dehydration, sunburns and damage to the skin. There’s no way to stop the sun from continuing its rain of terror unless the city starts to add shading.

For Pseudo Pop, We out.