“Out of service,” the driver tells me as I step on the #4 in Downtown Los Angeles.
It is nearly 3 a.m. and Broadway‘s indoor swap meets, electronic stores and jewelry shops sit darkened behind me. Shadowed by the marquee of an ancient movie house my face betrays concern, perhaps even desperation. I’ve waited to catch a bus for nearly an hour alongside the vacant thoroughfare after staying out with a friend and missing the night’s last Red Line subway. It’s cold. The bus already carries about a dozen riders, so I don’t understand why the driver seems to be telling me I can’t board. Not wanting to linger on the street much longer, I pause on the bus’s steps.
“Out of service,” the driver repeats. I step back down to the sidewalk. She laughs, smiles, and rolls her eyes.
A story still in transit
Though much has happened in Los Angeles’ transportation scene since this story was completed last Spring, the central challenges discussed here largely remain the same. Some light edits have been made to the text to reflect some of the changes. More developments include the following: The California Transit Association and allies in local government won a lawsuit against the state’s raids on local transit dollars, though what that means for transit agencies statewide remains murky; Metro hired a New CEO in Art Leahy and opened its Gold Line light extension to East L.A; Metro also released its timetables to Google, allowing travelers to plan trips using transit instead of by car or foot using Google Maps.
Does L.A. Really Love its Cars?
Does LA really love its cars?
Any great city exists amidst a great mythology. Los Angeles, so the tale goes, became the place it is today in a post-war economic boom. As the Cold War fueled a booming aerospace industry, the city grew to become the quilt of suburbia and highways it’s now readily dismissed as. One of the nation’s first freeways, the Pasadena Freeway, was built between L.A. and Pasadena even before World War II. The automobile quickly became a staple of the American dream and the Southern California ethos.
Simultaneous with the auto’s rise, a once robust railcar network known as the Pacific Electric collapsed. Cynics alleged collusion between the oil and automobile industries for ushering in its demise, but court cases making those allegations failed. A more likely explanation: legislative decisions encouraged by a public enamored with the new-found freedom that car ownership brought made the streetcars economically unfeasible.
Another myth: Angelenos love their cars. In fact, The city isn’t the nation’s most car dependent. Residents of four other metropolitan areas drive more miles each day than people in the greater Los Angeles area, according to data from the Texas Transportation Institute. Los Angeles is also fifth in average automobile ownership per household — even residents of eco-minded cities like San Francisco and Seattle own more cars per capita. When it comes to drivers isolating themselves in their cars, Los Angeles ranks ninth in the percentage of employees who drive alone to work.
The same statistics also describe just how extensive the region’s transit network is. Only the New York City area offers more total bus service miles, for example, and Los Angeles still has the most bus-service miles per square mile covered. Los Angeles even ranks in the middle of the pack when it comes to measurements of its rail-based transit (a measurement that combines light rails, subways and commuter rails such as the region’s Metrolink system).
Transportation Terminology
A train is a train and a bus is a bus, right? Not exactly. All the different forms of mass transit can get confusing. When planners discuss transportation, they’re not just discussing whether commuters are carried on wheels or along rails. Each form of transit has champions in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Here are some brief descriptions of the different forms of transportation scholars and policymakers are currently discussing to keep track of the possibilities for Los Angeles.
Heavy Rail: Electric-powered trains carrying multiple cars capable of transporting large numbers of passengers at high speeds along rails separated from foot and automobile traffic. The Red and Purple Line subways are Los Angeles’ only heavy rail mass transit.
Light Rail: While some light rails — such as portions of the Blue Line and the new Gold Line Eastside Extension — can have underground portions, light rail generally travels above ground and is differentiated from heavy rail by short trains (usually electric powered) on fixed railways not separated from street traffic and pedestrians. Trolleys, trams and streetcars are some examples. In L.A., the best examples are the Gold Line, the Blue Line, the Green Line, and the currently under construction Expo Line.
Commuter Rail: Regularly operating railroads with trains powered either by diesel or electricity and connecting job centers and urban cores with suburban communities. Los Angeles’ metropolitan area is served by Metrolink, a service run by five county transportation agencies throughout the region. Tragically, the system received nationwide attention in September, 2008, when a Metrolink train collided with a freight train outside of the Chatsworth suburb of Los Angeles. More than 25 people commuting between Los Angeles and Ventura Counties died in the accident.
Bus Rapid Transit: Los Angeles’ popular Orange Line service in the San Fernando Valley is an example of bus rapid transit. This type of transit uses buses (powered by various fuel sources such as compressed natural gas, diesel, hybrid battery technologies) on specialized roadways or lanes dedicated to the buses. The systems can be integrated to deal with local conditions. In the Orange Line’s case, this meant converting an out of service rail right-of-way to carry the line’s buses. Metro also calls its new Silver Line, a consolidation of conventional bus routes using bus-only lanes, BRT as well.
Sources:
American Public Transportation Association
It’s the farebox that’s “Out of Service.” I jump back onto the bus and find a seat along the center of the bus, where its two sections connect like an accordion. None of the other riders pay me any heed. Each haggard face exudes fatigue. Two women, both dressed in identical white pants and white sweatshirts, sleep leaning against one another. Perhaps a mother and daughter, perhaps middle-aged sisters, one rests her shoulder on the other, who is slumped against a rattling window. Their long brown hair tangles together.
It’s becoming clear that the age of the automobile is coming to an end, or, at the very least, changing. Los Angeles, like other cities, loses billions of dollars each year just because of people stuck on the region’s tangled roadways. Scholars, politicians, activists and numerous overlapping government agencies each offer often-competing solutions for how to get the region moving. All the while, the solution might begin not with expensive upheavals and construction of vast new transit networks, but instead with better cooperation, education and mobilization of the surprisingly robust transit network that already exists in the metropolis.
What’s certain: voters in Los Angeles County are fed up with traffic. Confounding expectations, they accomplished an extraordinary feat in November, 2008 and gambled that an investment in the region’s transportation network would pay lasting dividends. Despite an economic downturn, more than two-thirds of them chose to tax themselves to pay for Measure R, a $40 billion expansion of the region's transit system. Since July 1, the county has collected a half-cent sales tax to pay for new rail lines, expanded bus routes, and improvements to existing infrastructure. But a debilitating state budget battle earlier this year put transit in a precarious position across California, including Los Angeles, whose position among the world’s great cities could be at risk.
“We’re going to fight tooth and nail for every penny from the state,” Richard Katz said in January. Katz sits on the governing board of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Metro, by far the largest transit agency in the region. A former state assemblyman, Katz was appointed to the board by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and was a key architect of Measure R. “I think we make a mistake if we don’t recognize that the voters made a clear choice in November. They said transportation is the number one issue in the county. We’re going to give you the resources to fix it and we expect you to fix it. They don’t expect us to be whining about losing $200 million a year.”
As the #4 bus carries me past Union Station it turns westward on Cesar Chavez Avenue. I notice how the prerecorded voice announcing each stop perfectly pronounces the deceased farm labor organizer’s name. A few blocks away, after Cesar Chavez Avenue becomes Sunset Boulevard, the recording stumbles over a cross-street’s name, uttering Micheltorena like a Gringo. The sleeping sisters are oblivious to their surroundings, until a few blocks later, when the bus stops at Sunset and Alvarado. Two middle-aged men drunkenly babble to one another as they board. They stumble in search of a seat, startling the women.
The bus turns down Santa Monica Boulevard. I disembark at Vermont Avenue, where I can connect with the #204, a North-South line with a stop a block from my apartment. A light drizzle falls as I wait in the dark along Vermont. A dozen or so men line the curb, peering north up the street. A few step into the road. If only they could spy the bus, it seems, they could will it to carry us out of this uneasy wait sooner. It’s about 3:30 a.m. The only passing cars are taxis hoping to pick up a few desperate fares. The drunks who earlier boarded the #4 stand next to me, talking about the relative morality of stealing bicycles versus cars and beds. They reminisce on times they’ve had to pull guns, what it felt like with the finger on the trigger and the experience of staring down the barrel of a friend’s firearm. Illustrating one such experience one of the men mimes a pistol with his fingers outstretched.
“Those days are gone,” he says.
Profit and loss
Three months earlier the stock market was crumbling. News of layoffs increased in frequency. Home foreclosures ticked up. A historic election took place. But it wasn’t Barack Obama who delivered a nail-biter in Los Angeles County. It was Measure R.
It took a month for elections officials to certify the close vote. The requirements were stricter than ballot measures that only need a simple majority to pass, because state law requires new taxes to pass by two-thirds majorities. Measure R barely cleared that higher bar, winning just a bit more than 67 percent of the electorate.
Most of the $40 billion the measure is expected to generate over the next 30 years will go to Metro, which operates about 200 bus routes in the county, the Red/Purple line subway, the Orange Line rapid busway, and three light rail lines (See Transportation Terminology). Each of L.A. County’s 88 embedded municipalities will also get a share for transportation projects. Metro officials are currently hammering out exactly how their share will be spent and when, but it’s expected to pay for new light rail lines, a long-anticipated Subway to the Sea under Wilshire Boulevard, and other projects.
Preliminary estimates from the Federal Transportation Administration suggest the massive economic stimulus package passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in February could pay for about $190 million of transit improvements throughout Los Angeles County.
Yet gains from the stimulus and Measure R may be thwarted by news at the state level. Only days after the stimulus package passed, lawmakers in California ended long-stalled budget negotiations in the state. As many transportation advocates and agency officials feared, in the weeks and months leading up to the deal, millions of dollars in assistance to transit agencies throughout the state were slashed from the final budget.
For hundreds of thousands who rely on the region’s buses (about 75 percent of Metro’s bus riders make $12,000 or less annually), any cuts sting.
“They’re the reason the agency exists,” says Katz. He says government should focus more on transit, especially in a city as sprawling as Los Angeles. “We have people in L.A. who, were it not for our system, could not get to work, could not get to school, could not pick up their kids, could not get to health care. Public transit is an integral part of the fabric of this city.”
Los Angeles’ love affair with the automobile is a myth. It’s not the nation’s most car dependent city, nor does it have the worst transit network in the U.S. (See “Does L.A. Really Love its Cars?”). But while it might be a myth that Los Angeles residents own more cars than inhabitants of other cities, or that the city has no public transit, the metropolis faces harsh realities. Angelenos may not love cars, but they’re stuck in them. Many studies show the metropolis’ traffic is the worst in the country, a situation explored by an Oct. 2008 RAND Corp. study called Moving Los Angeles: Short-Term Policy Options for Improving Transportation. Traffic costs Los Angeles dearly. Each year, the area’s economy loses more than $9 billion simply due to the 490 million hours drivers collectively spend sitting still in their cars. To put it another way, each driver in the region spends three days stuck in traffic annually. During those three days, individual drivers burn 57 gallons of gasoline without going anywhere.
“Reducing congestion should help to improve quality of life, enhance economic competitiveness, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, improve air quality, and improve mobility for drivers and transit patrons alike,” the report read.
So why can’t Angelenos get anywhere if they don’t own many cars and there’s such an incentive to cut down on traffic? The answer can be found by dispelling one more myth, that L.A. is a mecca of urban sprawl.
What an impressive piece of work, Bill. Thanks for painting such a thorough and compelling picture of LA transit for an outsider who’s finally starting to pick up on the fact that LA is not the town it used to be.
I’m not sure how I feel about the BRU, as you portray them. They’re almost certainly the most effective such organization in the country, it seems, and god bless them for that. Do they have a BRT vs. LRT position?
Also, the PIRG guy actually argued that the most underrated reason to build transit is so we can hire more public-sector mechanics? Christ. That’s depressing.
BTW, I especially appreciated your lucid explanation of the multicentric city. Maybe that’s old hat in LA transit circles, but it has interesting implications for those of us who live in aspiring LA Counties.
Michael,
Thank you for your comments. L.A. is definitely not the town it used to be. Then again, it’s never the town it used to be.
As far as the BRU, I wasn’t attempting to portray them in one light or another, but I do agree they have been effective. Exploring their history in L.A. and on the L.A. transit scene, though, is another story.
When I first conceptualized this piece it was Fall, 2008. My initial goal was to explore — at a time when the scope of the recession and remained unclear — whether the response to the economic crisis would offer an opportunity for a real Green New Deal. Obama hadn’t yet been inaugurated, and it was still unclear what the stimulus would entail. At first I wanted to discover whether the moment would be an opportunity for actual structural change in how we manage both economy and society.
Of course, I had to narrow my scope and look at specific examples, so I wanted to see how or whether Measure R — and LA transit priorities in general — offered an opportunity for a green revolution (at the outset of my reporting gas prices were still high, too, and I wanted to know whether record ridership levels would maintain once they dropped, and whether leaders would take steps to maintain the public focus on transit even after fuel costs dropped). Just as the resultant story didn’t have as much as one might want about the BRU, I don’t feel it had quite enough about the environmental nature of this discussion, and I’d still like to write more about how society could actually make the shift away from the individual passenger automobile and what public leaders could do to encourage such a shift, if indeed it is seen as a priority.
I think I can say something about the BRU’s position on BRT vs. LRT, with the caveat that I don’t speak for them and didn’t speak with them too deeply about this. What I’d imagine they’d argue is that LRT, or any transit modality, shouldn’t take resources away from functional, existing transit systems relied upon by tens of thousands of Angelinos. With limited transit funds, resources should go toward those systems already depended upon for commutes to work, school, health care and other necessities.
As to Erin Steva of PIRG, well, she did make that argument, but it’s clearly not her, or PIRG’s only reason for promoting transit. As she notes in the story, she experiences its functionality every day (still, you rightly noted the point about it being an “under-rated reason” for building transit). It’s worth noting that our interview took place in February, when the economic picture was quite unsettled (not that it’s particularly settled now) and my guess — and this didn’t come up in our conversation — is that the job creation element of her position might have had something to do with making transit expansion politically palatable.
As I noted in the “A story still in transit” sidebar, this story has evolved very much since I reported it. Unfortunately, the realities of establishing my freelance career since May, applying for jobs, etc., kept me from keeping the concerted focus on transit I was able to have during my graduate studies, and that others like Damien Newton of Streetsblog or Steve Hymon (first of the times, now of Metro’s The Source) continue to keep. I’m not trying to make excuses, but to note that it’s certainly an evolving subject. What I can say confidently is that it remains an underreported subject, even though transportation is so crucial to modern life.
Thanks a lot for the thoughtful response, Bill. (And sorry about the mix-up on Erin’s gender. I was reading and commenting on my phone last night and couldn’t easily refer to the text.)
On the BRU, I didn’t mean to dispute your characterization, only to say that I came away with a vaguely negative impression of them after reading this, the most detailed description I’ve yet read. That’s more because of my pro-train bias than your actual writing.
Good point about the ever-changing LA. As somebody who’s planning to start a transportation-only publication up here in PDX, I think and hope you’re right that this is an underreported subject. We definitely need to talk more about this when you’re up here.
Bill, excellent piece. i learned a lot; too bad i don’t live in LA! the most useful idea in the piece for Portland is that of “multicentric” cities. we’re like that here, obviously not to the extent of LA, but still most of our transit goes thru downtown. those that run outside use transit centers that may or may not serve local communities. i’m not sure we’ve addressed transit in terms of multicentricity (or as Michael said, maybe it’s just us non-transit planning types what don’t know this term), but it has given me a lot to think about.
see you soon! good luck with the move.