Los Angeles, the fragmented city par excellence, is paradoxically witnessing the emergence of a metropolitan-wide public debate on transit policy. This emergence can be explained by the existence of a metropolitan transportation authority (MTA), by the labeling of a bus riders union (BRU) as the legal official representative for transit users, and by the way transit projects are financed – requiring a two third majority of the voters of the entire metropolitan area. However, this public debate is being blurred by several factors. Firstly, community participation at a more local scale, as in particular by home owners associations, appear to have a much bigger say and lobbying power in the way transit policies are shaped and implemented. Secondly, transit service restructuring – though the privatization and the municipalization of bus service and through the decentralization of MTA whose administration is now split into different sectors – leads to an institutional fragmentation, whose maybe desired consequence is the disempowerment of the Bus Riders Union to negotiate with a centralized body over transit policies.