As Bike Lanes Expand, Some Fear Traffic Will Only Get Worse
http://www.kcet.org/shows/socal_connected/content/transportation/as-bike-lanes-expand-some-fear-traffic-will-only-get-worse.html
Reporter/Producer: Dina Demetrius
Associate Producer: Alicia Clark
Editor: Michael Bloecher
March 26, 2013
In L.A., who rules the road, cars or bicycles? While the answer
may seem obvious, the bikes may be pulling ahead, at least on paper. A
comprehensive plan is evolving that would create special bike lanes all
over L.A. But as Dina Demetrius found out, not everyone is on board.
TRANSCRIPT
Dina Demetrius: Forget about Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, or Los Feliz.
For most Angelenos, the most precious, in-demand real estate in the city
are the streets we get around on every day, and that includes by two
wheels.
Don “Roadblock” Ward/Cyclist, Wolfpack Hustle: My, how do you say it,
nom de bike is Roadblock. A cycling enthusiast. A livable streets
enthusiast.
Demetrius: Don Ward has been pedaling through the streets of Los
Angeles for nine years, using his bike to get nearly anywhere he wants
to go. Cycling has now become a way of life for him, so much so that
the underground bike rides he organizes have made him a minor celebrity
among cyclists and one of their biggest activists. At 6-foot-8, and with
a nickname like "Roadblock," few things frighten Ward, but a
hit-and-run a few years ago put careless and angry drivers at the top of
that list.
Ward: I was hit by an alleged drunk driver a few years back, who left the scene, left me for dead in the middle of the street.
Demetrius: That scene has been repeated often on L.A. Streets, with
drivers hitting bike riders, and sometimes leaving them. In one recent
incident, dragging the cyclist for 600 feet, causing him to lose his
leg. It's heightened an already palpable "us vs. them" dynamic between
drivers and cyclists.
Ward: When you're on a bike, you're way more alert. And somebody
zooming up behind you is so threatening, that as a bike rider, I kind of
interpret that as a threat, versus, “Oh, this person doesn't realize
they're a threat to me,” you know? So there's definitely an “us vs.
them” in that sense.
Demetrius: Ward has become a vocal advocate of installing more bike
lanes in Los Angeles to make riders feel safer. And he's not the only
one. The city council has been hearing pleas for bike lanes for years.
So in 2010, the city passed its most comprehensive and ambitious bikeway
plan. So ambitious, it’ll take 30 years to cover the 1,684 miles of
planned bikeways from one end of L.A. to the other.
Ward: This time around, there's been enough pitch forks at City Hall
to, I think, that they are actually making an effort to implement it.
Nate Baird/Bicycle Coordinator, LADOT: Our 2010 bike plan was very
visionary. And so it was very important to our advocates that our bike
plan go much farther than others had before, and that we also implement
it.
Demetrius: Nate Baird is the bicycle coordinator for the Los Angeles
Department of Transportation. As a cyclist who rides to work himself, he
says laying down the vast network of new bike lanes in L.A. is
necessary to allow for more biking over driving.
Baird: We've definitely seen more people bicycling as we've put in
bike lanes. A key research study that's been done that shows people
judge the entire trip by the worst part of the trip. And until you have
a network in place, you're not going to have many trips that support
these types of folks. Something like 40 to 60 percent of people would
love to be able to ride their bike to work, but they don't feel
comfortable riding on a street that doesn't have bike lanes.
Demetrius: Advocates say it will decrease pollution over time. But
the main goal of adding these lanes is to make L.A. streets safe for all
types of commuters. Right now, while cyclists are subject to the same
rules of the road as drivers, they can also weave through traffic, being
smaller and more mobile, like Ward here, cruising right past our news
van on Los Feliz Boulevard.
Ward: I have to stay five to six feet away from parked cars because
of the doors. People get out of the car, they swing open the door, you
hit the door and you fly into the street and you die. So I'm gonna be
riding in the lane. A lot of times weaving is safer.
Demetrius: And Baird says that's why a comprehensive network of bike lanes on busy L.A. streets is so important.
Baird: Bicyclists learn very quickly that it's important to just be
in the middle of the lane in a lot of instances, especially in an urban
environment. Being in the middle of the lane is the safest place to be
because you're most visible there. But a lot of folks just aren't
comfortable riding in the middle of the street. And you do get heckled
as a bicyclist when you take the lane when you need to. So, it kind of
benefits everybody to have your own clearly designated space on the
street.
Demetrius: In the past two years, LADOT installed 123 miles of new
bikeways, with the plan calling for 200 new miles being laid down every
five years. The majority of those new pathways are lanes on L.A.
streets, streets where cars rule the road. And it's been fairly
drama-free adding bike lanes on neighborhood side streets for the last
couple of years. But LADOT has now hit a critical point in the plan:
they're ready to add bike lanes to L.A.'s main thoroughfares throughout
the city, what they call "the backbone." And depending on what area of
the city they're being laid down, some L.A. drivers are nowhere near
ready for that.
Unidentified Driver: I think it's crazy! They can ride in the sidewalk.
Unidentified Resident: When it takes away a whole lane for cars, and
especially in rush hour traffic, we need it. I've seen a couple of
streets that now have bike lanes, and the traffic's gotten even worse.
Baird: We have this kind of big vision and then a process to take the
little steps forward that we need to take. And that's what we've been
doing. We’ve been doing kind of baby step after baby step. We’ve done
all the easy bike lanes. Where we can fit them, we've put them in. And
so now is really the time to start having these tougher conversations
about our really major streets.
Demetrius: Bike lanes in the Silver Lake area are among the oldest
and most traveled here in L.A. And residents here on the east side are
happy to see them extend into downtown, with proposed bike lanes
running past Dodger Stadium and through the Second Street tunnel.
Meanwhile, over on the west side, it's a different story, where
enthusiasm for these lanes becomes deflated...and downright aggravated,
as Colleen Mason-Heller describes it. During Friday afternoon traffic,
we talked about LADOT's plan to add a bike lane on southbound Westwood
Boulevard.
Colleen Mason-Heller/Westside Neighborhood Council: This is the main
artery from UCLA. And at any time during the day, it can back up for
blocks and blocks. At this particular time of day, as approaching peak
period, it backs up all the way to Olympic, to Santa Monica Boulevard
and beyond. It's basically a parking lot.
Demetrius: Mason-Heller is the mobility chairperson of the Westside
Neighborhood Council, which has been vocal in community hearings about
the area's proposed bike lanes. She says on this major L.A. street
already bulging with cars, dedicating one of two lanes to bikes will
spell disaster for commuters and businesses, as well as biker safety.
Mason-Heller: If they take away a traffic lane, what we are looking
at is a potential for increased congestion that has no remedy, because
congestion will not decrease. And if you reduce capacity, that
congestion is just squeezed into smaller areas. So you're just looking
at absolute stalling. It increases driver frustration. So when you have
drivers who are frustrated, you're likely to see them cut in and out of
the bike lanes to get where they think they have a right to go. So it's a
combustible mix.
Demetrius: On the west side, the plan calls for bikes lanes on four
major north-south routes: Westwood Boulevard, Sepulveda Boulevard, the
Bundy/Centinela area, and Avenue of the Stars in Century City, all
heavily traveled streets for motorists and buses. At a February bike
lane hearing in Westwood, Heller-Mason and her neighbors made it clear
they didn't think the current plan was worth the added pain to a
majority of commuters.
Mason-Heller: I can tell you that most people live more than three
miles from their jobs in this area. This is not all local traffic.
You're looking at .67 of all transit trips are by bicycle. So we heard
when we went to the meeting that, “Well, all these bike paths will
double the number of bike riders!” Then you're looking at still less
than 2 percent of all transit riders, and yet they're going to take up
an entire lane.
Demetrius: L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz represents much of the
west side, including the Westwood area. He's advocated more bike lanes
for years.
Paul Koretz/L.A. City Council member: We're in desperate need of
alternatives to the automobile to help reduce traffic in the City of Los
Angeles.
Demetrius: But Koretz has found out his constituents can be as
persistent as L.A. traffic, saying it's been a difficult process at
times to balance the needs of different neighborhoods with implementing a
citywide plan.
Koretz: We're getting feedback in both directions. The cyclists are
happy to see all the north-south streets used. In Century City, there's
some problems with easy access to the hotels because those hotels are a
big chunk of the economic lifeblood of Century City, and we're not
trying to do harm to the business community while we improve bicycle
circulation.
Demetrius: So Koretz wants to pull back from the current westside
plan. He sent a letter in March to
LADOT asking them to "proceed with
proposed bicycle lanes on Sepulveda, and delay implementation on Avenue
of the Stars and Westwood Boulevard," saying that traffic "delays and
parking loss along Westwood is unacceptable." LADOT will have to come up
with alternative streets or designs in that area.
LADOT's Nate Baird says that bike lanes there are inevitable, but
they are working with council offices to make some changes because of
neighborhood concerns. But he believes what really needs to change is
how people think about commuting.
Baird: There's going to be some costs involved. We can't continue to
use our streets in the same way we always have. And so we know that
adding bike lanes on these streets is going to have to change how we use
these streets. They're not going to be able to use the same capacity
that they had before. We're not going to be able to move the same amount
of cars on these streets as we did previously. That's why we have to go
through the hearing process.
Demetrius: And the long-term question still remains: If you build it, will they come? Koretz says “yes” -- sort of.
Koretz: I don't think it's worth it for the number of people that are
riding bicycles now. But if we really have a system that's viable, and
people feel safe to get on their bicycles, I think for the number of
people that will ride in the future, I think it's absolutely worth it.
Demetrius: So this is an investment in the future?
Koretz: It absolutely is an investment in the future.
Demetrius: And trusting that people will change their commuting ways.
That's a future Don Ward hopes will stretch well beyond the streets of
Los Angeles.
Ward: If we could redesign our streets just a little bit to
accommodate human beings and have the public space be free for everybody
to use, not just car drivers, I think it would transform America, you
know?
LOS ANGELES -- City Council President Herb Wesson on Tuesday
cautioned against prematurely abandoning support for professional
football in Los Angeles, saying he is convinced billionaire Philip
Anschutz is sincere in his plans for bring a team to the L.A. Live site.
Perhaps I am misinterpreting what Yonah was saying (it would be great if he replied himself).
For mass transit to not redistribute wealth, it would have to be profitable. This requires the areas that it serves to resemble Hong Kong in density and built form. This is not immediately likely on this continent.
The thing I found interesting is that the study quoted tracks a correlation between income and level of transit spending. Yonah reads into that causation: poorer cities choose to spend less on transit.
But causation can equally work the other way with good transit attracting higher-income jobs and employees, and connecting marginalized populations to employment and educational opportunities in parts of town they'd otherwise be unable to reach, increasing their wealth too.
In reality, there's probably a bit of both at work, in a virtuous cycle of increasing transit and increasing incomes. But it would make taking the early steps an easier sell at city hall if it can be demonstrated that an investment in transit will pay itself back in increased local incomes (and presumably related increased future tax revenues).
The principal impact of the elimination of most transit subsidies and most state control outside of London in 1986 has been to provide more frequent service to areas of high transit dependence. All matters of density and urban form being equal, transit dependence maximises transit ridership, and the market responds to that.
Pre-1986, a regressive redistribution was common in the UK. Cross-subsidies were used to extract profits from high-ridership service to low-ridership service; this principally meant better service to wealthy suburbs than otherwise merited.
While differences in urban form exist between the UK and US, both have suburban concentrations of transit dependence as well as inner city transit dependence. Indeed, the major gain for many UK cities post-1986 has been serving those suburban areas (especially social housing projects) with very frequent service by minimising shortlining and branching.
The major downside is that riders have to pay the full cost of their good service, leading to fares (very) roughly 2x those of equivalent cities in the US. But this leads me to conclude that if the Federal Government wished to undertake redistributive transit subsidies, the best outcomes would involve distorting the market as little as possible.
I suspect that may be best achieved through a uniform subsidy as a percentage of fares paid (with regulations forbidding reallocation of that money outside of transit operations). That would distribute money to cities where demand for transit is high, and incentivise them to maximise ridership. Meanwhile, coverage service failing to break even under a fare subsidy would be funded locally according to local coverage goals, as now.
However it would be done, I strongly suspect that the best outcomes for the majority of transit dependent riders across the US would be delivered by letting ridership determine the majority of service provision and subsidy allocation, which in turn would be delivered by operational subsidies that distort the market to a minimum.
It would be great if some number cruncher type would take the data on metropolitan income and transit service and add in some factors relating to density, concentrated employment centers, and other relevant factors. Fresno, for example, is considerably less dense than San Jose, and in that way is harder to serve with transit.
While the argument about certain costs of sprawl infrastructure building is one up for discussion and serious consideration, it can't, alone, explain economic development.
Let's take an extreme case: if you built 200 miles of subway lines in Detroit in 3 years, for instance, and nothing else changed, that wouldn't make Detroit a place booming in terms of economy or population just because of its flashy transit.