http://citywatchla.com/lead-stories-hidden/9903-la-the-next-great-transit-city-or-how-commuters-get-railroaded-by-transit-trends
By Joel Kotkin, November 6, 2015
TRANSPORTATION BY THE NUMBERS-With more than $10 billion already
invested, and much more on the way, some now believe that Los Angeles
and Southern California are on the way to becoming, in progressive
blogger Matt Yglesias’ term, “the next great transit city.” But there’s
also
reality, something that rarely impinges on debates about public policy in these ideologically driven times.
Let’s
start with the numbers. If LA is supposedly becoming a more
transit-oriented city, as boosters already suggest, a higher portion of
people should be taking buses and trains. Yet, Los Angeles County – with
its dense urbanization and ideal weather for walking and taking transit
– has seen its share of transit commuting decline, as has the region
overall.
Since 1980, before the start of subway and light-rail
construction, the percentage of Angelenos taking transit has actually
dropped, from 7.0 percent to 6.9 percent, while the region (including
the Inland Empire and Ventura County) has seen the transit share drop
from 5.1 percent to 4.7 percent. These reductions in ridership have been
experienced both on the rail and bus lines.
The simple truth is
that this region is just not structured to run largely on rails. We
should not prioritize our transit dollars by trying to remake our region
into something resembling New York, or even San Francisco, but in
serving the needs, first and foremost, of those who remain dependent on
public transit.
History and Legacy
The
primary reason transit does not do well in Los Angeles is historical.
Although Southern California arose with a strong transit base – the
Pacific Electric Red Cars and the Los Angeles Transit Lines Yellow Cars –
that structure began fading by the 1920s as private car use surged in
the region. It’s also critical to recognize that the vast majority of
Southern California’s growth – roughly 75 percent – came after World War
II and also after the demise of the Red Cars.
Since early in the
region’s development, our business and residential patterns reflect the
dominance of automobiles, with numerous economic nodes and residential
districts spread out in largely suburban communities. In terms of
overall settlement patterns, only 10 percent of the LA-Orange County
region – generally the area south of the Santa Monica Mountains and the
San Bernardino (I-10) Freeway, north of Slauson Avenue and between
Fairfax Avenue and the Long Beach (I-710) Freeway – can actually be
considered urban in the traditional sense, with higher densities and a
higher market share of work trips by transit.
Downtown connection
Critically,
Southern California lacks a magnetic center, with Downtown Los Angeles
accounting for barely 3 percent of all employment in the region. As
population and jobs continue to concentrate in the periphery, we should
be wary of building a transit system to serve a geography to which
relatively few commute. Downtown LA may have revived as a destination
and residential area, but not as a job center.
Strong downtowns
are what make rail transit work. All cities with successful transit
systems, notably New York, have powerful, magnetic downtowns.
Manhattan’s business district accounts for 20 percent of all jobs in the
region, many times LA’s rate.
New York commuters may depart from
a host of locations but head generally to Manhattan, a critical
business center back when Los Angeles was little more than a glorified
cow town. Cars came on the scene fairly late in the urban evolution.
But
New York is not duplicable, so much so that roughly two-fifths of all
U.S. train commuters live in the New York City region. Nearly 85 percent
of all the transit ridership increase nationally the past decade has
taken place there.
Although none comes close to equaling New
York, there are several “legacy” cities that have larger-than-usual
concentrations of employment in their central cores. These also include
cities – Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San
Francisco – that developed before the rise of the car, although not
nearly to the extent of Gotham. Together, these places account for 55
percent of all transit work-trip destinations in the nation.
As
for the remaining cities that have built extensive systems, it’s not a
pretty picture. Even those systems that tend to get the widest praise
and positive media coverage have had very limited success. Before
opening its massive light-rail system in 1990, 4.3 percent of Denver’s
commuters rode transit to work. With light rail, the share did rise – to
4.4 percent.
Even Portland, Ore., considered the mecca of “smart
growth” strategy, actually has seen a decrease in its transit market
share, from 7.9 percent before light rail to 6.4 percent in 2013. San
Diego, arguably with one of the more successful light-rail systems, has
seen its transit market share stagnate, from 3.3 percent in 1980 –
before light rail – to 3.2 percent in 2013.
All Southern
California’s Sunbelt rivals have done poorly in terms of transit share.
Atlanta, which built its subway earlier than most, has seen its transit
market share cut by more than half.
Or, take the Dallas
light-rail system – DART – which serves growing Dallas and Collin
counties, an extensive area where just 2 percent of metropolitan area
employment is downtown. DART expanded its lines by approximately three
quarters from 2000-14, but still lost commuting market share.
The
story is similar in Houston, where the light-rail system opened in
2004. From 2003-14, the population in Harris County, which includes
Houston, grew 23 percent, but transit ridership decreased 12 percent,
according to American Public Transportation Association data. This means
that the average Houstonian took 30 percent fewer trips on the combined
bus and light-rail system in 2014 than on the bus-only system in 2003.
Finally,
in each of these cities, driving alone has increased, and all of them,
most recently the Los Angeles region, now have more people working at
home than riding transit to work. Commuting time is a big reason. Few
transit trips in most cities take less time, door-to-door, than
traveling by car, not to mention the convenience of working at home. The
average transit rider in Los Angeles spends 48 minutes get
21st century transit
In
the future, we need to focus on the people, largely poor, who should
benefit most from transit investment. Transit commuters in the Los
Angeles metropolitan area earn approximately 60 percent less than those
in the six metropolitan areas with legacy cities.
These people
should be the primary concern of transit agencies. But in the planning
drive to re-engineer Southern California by building much more expensive
rail systems, bus lines have been cut back, which also has occurred in
many other cities embracing new train systems. As one former transit
agency head recently explained, in confidence, this is
part of a strategy to promote high-density real estate investment along transit routes. Trains, he explained, also can attract a more affluent rider, who could also easily drive to work.
Perhaps
rather than trying to recreate the transit city of the early 20th
century, planners should seek solutions that make sense in the dispersed
environment of this century. Ideas that promote underinvestment in
roads, supposedly to encourage transit use, are akin to inflicting cruel
and unusual punishment on motorists. In Los Angeles, with the nation’s
second-worst roads (the Bay Area is doing even worse,) this translates
to more than $1,000 in annual repair and maintenance costs per typical
driver.
This cost particularly affects poorer populations, who
tend to have older cars and have to steer through the most congested
areas. LA Councilman Gil Cedillo, a longtime labor activist, made this
point while objecting to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s gambit to expand bike
lanes, reduce vehicle lanes and not invest in adding road capacity.
Cedillo claims this “elitist” plan would hurt his constituents, few of
whom would be using bike lanes to get to work, by assuring continual
gridlock.
Rather than underspending in our road networks, perhaps
more attention might be paid to making them work better for transit
commuters. Rapid transit by bus could certainly be cheaper. But we also
could explore using Uber-like door-to-door ride-booking services more
often, with perhaps subsidies for poor riders. Such a step, or even
buying cars for these low-end commuters, would greatly expand the range
of jobs and locations available to them.
Further in the future,
we might see the influence of autonomous, self-driving taxis and buses,
which could be much cheaper, more reliable and less traffic-snarling
than their current iterations.
Rather than commit our region to ever more expensive transit systems, we need to focus primarily on
serving the transit-dependent population
as efficiently as possible while looking to improve transportation
outcomes for the vast majority of people who are likely to remain behind
the wheel.
ting to work,
compared with 27 minutes for people driving alone.
N PLANNING-In general, the public pays little attention to
the City of LA’s legally required General Plan, including its mandatory
and optional Elements. But the required Circulation Element,
called the Mobility Plan or MP 2035, is different, at least among that
small minority of Angelenos who care about local government. This might
be why the Los Angeles Times and KPCC have regularly reported on the
Mobility Plan.
