Today at the LA MTA Board meeting, the Board will take action on a couple of really important issues. One I covered earlier–the extension of the Bus Rapid Transit into West Los Angeles–and the other is the addition of a station for historic Leimert Park on Crenshaw Line.

Leimert Park is a beautiful community in mid-Los Angeles, a place with lovely homes, walkable streets, and a long, understudied history. It was designed by the Olmstead brothers, for all you urban planning geeks out there.

African Americans in Los Angeles have been loyal MTA customers for decades. The money we spend on stations in southern-middle communities tends to pay back in riders because these areas have riders already.

Transit advocates are fond of telling me that costs don’t matter, or at least costs don’t matter as much as poopyhead economists think costs matter. If that’s true when it comes to everybody else’s pet projects, it needs to be true of investing in black communities in LA, too.

Go, Mark Ridley Thomas, Go. And then run for mayor. And then governor, and then president. Because you have been great at your job.