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ChineseIt’s All About Culture
[tags]transit, los angeles, la times, car culture, transit culture[/tags]
A 2007 Toyota Sienna on its way to downtown Happyland from Greater New Perfect. Image courtesy of Toyota.
I just finished reading the LA Times 5-day “Dust-Up” debate about traffic congestion between Ted Balaker (of the Reason Foundation) and Bart Reed (of the Transit Coalition) that we reported on last week. As the dust settled from the epic brawl it became clear to me that an important element was missing from the debate between the pro-auto juggernaut and the transit gladiator. The Banksy elephant in the room if you will. That painted elephant in the room is culture. More specifically the prevalence (and global growth) of car culture and the absence of a transit culture.
Throughout the debate Mr. Balaker insists time and time again that building an extensive transit system is wasteful because people who dont’ have to ride it don’t ride it. People prefer to drive their cars. And he’s got a point. Clearly, if no one wants to ride transit, then there’s really no point in building an extensive system. But we have to ask ourselves, why don’t people want to ride transit and why do people want to drive cars?
As with so many things, it comes down to culture.
On Day 1 of the LA Times traffic brawl, Balaker not-so-profoundly states:
“The reason few of us trade in our cars for transit passes is simple: Even with mounting congestion, car travel is usually faster than transit, and additional factors, like time spent getting to stations and waiting for transit vehicles, makes transit trips slower still.”
I believe things aren’t so simple Mr. Balaker. I think the reason few of us trade in our cars for transit passes is complex, and has more to do with the culture we live in than simple time management. Of course, in light of local transit advocate Damien Goodmon’s recent decision to purchase a car for precisely the time management reason, I might be completely wrong, but allow me to press on.
Is time management really what keeps people from riding public transit in Los Angeles? I would contend that the main reason that the “Average Joe” doesn’t ride public transit in LA is because he doesn’t even consider it a viable option. This is well before he even looks into whether a transit trip will be faster or slower than driving. Mass transit is barely on the radar of most Angelinos (and Americans in general) because of the prevalence of the car culture and the absence of a transit culture. Sure people see the buses, but as Balaker confirms, they are seen by most as nothing more than “mobility for the poor and handicapped”. Welfare on wheels for those poor sad souls who can’t afford or physically can’t use that basic necessity… an automobile.
Wait. A car is a necessity?
Is being carless the same as being homeless? Is having your very own set of combustion propelled wheels under your feet the same as having a roof over your head? Have you failed at life if you can’t afford such a basic necessity as a personal automobile? According to our culture… hell yes you have, loser.
The car culture clearly defines the personal automobile as a necessity, on the same level as food, water, and housing. The auto industry spends $20 billion a year trying to convince us of this through advertising and marketing (the auto industry is the #1 advertiser in the world). Everytime we turn on a TV, read a magazine, or go online, we are reminded of how much we need cars. We are told how much cars improve of our lives, define our personalities, and make us better people. Here’s one of my favorite new car commercials for a number of reasons:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B1t3m8aiqc[/youtube]
Obviously it’s beautifully conceived and flawlessly produced (at great cost I’m sure), but what I like best about it is how insidiously it promotes all aspects of the car culture. Of course, the main theme of the commercial is that cars (especially this particular Lexus) are safe. The car culture sometimes likes to gleam over the fact that it’s the number one cause of death for humans ages 5 to 44. Hold onto your air bags. According the the National Safety Council, the lifetime odds of dying as an occupant of a private automobile are 1 in 237. The odds of dying as an occupanat of a bus? 1 in 104,113. And you don’t even wear a seatbelt on a bus. Your odds of dying on a train are even less… 1 in 156,169. Yet people still prefer their cars. Quite a powerful grip this car culture has on us, no?
Of course the other great part of the commercial above is the contrast between high density city living and low density suburban living. The former, where the car is made irrelevant, is portrayed as dark, dangerous, and uninviting whereas the latter, the place where the car IS necessary, is painted as safe, tranquil, and happy. The car culture is not only trying to tell us we need cars to survive, but that we need to live in places where we can’t literally can’t live without a car. So although our jobs may be in the central city, we must live far away from their in order to be safe. Imagine how those transit times Bakaler speaks of would be reduced if our cities were designed in a way that people live near where they work. Maybe the transit times are exaggerated because due to the car culture people are taking transit trips from the distant suburbs to the scary city. My commute time from Downtown LA to Hollywood via the Red Line during rush hour was exactly 16 stress-free minutes everyday. That’s .5 minutes less than Wichita, Kansas, which has the shortest commute time of all big cities according to MSNBC. And that’s a commute where I can sleep, read, or work and let my mind be free of the stress of road rage, traffic, accidents, and all the other things that a private car commute brings.
The car culture has us by the collective balls though, and it’s not letting go. People complain about traffic, congestion, gas prices, etc. but they can’t see that the solutions are out there now. No, we wait for magical alternative fuels and new superhighways and tunnels, basically wait for someone else to do something for us. Mr. Bakaler claims that American’s aren’t addicted to their cars. If that’s true, why can’t they let go of them? Bakaler again brings up that car’s allow people to do things faster and more conveniently. But what’s so convenient about a flat tire? What’s so fast about taking an hour to go 6 miles? If they aren’t addicted, why do they keep driving yet hate it so much? How many people love their drive to work? How many people love searching for parking at the mall? How many people adore fender benders? No one does.
It’s a lot like cigarettes, except the culture of cigarettes has finally fallen to the culture of non-smoking. This is what needs to happen to the car culture. There was a time when cigarettes were as prevelant and “loved” as cars are today. Check out this classic cigarette ad and note the similarities to the Lexus ad posted eariler:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPCMnZ-1HNE[/youtube]
Of course, an ad like this is impossible today and most normal folks would be shocked to see something like this airing on national television, in fact now you are very likely to see anti-tobacco ads on television instead. Why were tobacco ads banned? Because they were seen as promoting a dangerous and addictive product. Keep in mind the earlier statistic about the #1 cause of early death in America: driving. Dangerous. Keep in mind that people continue to drive cars although there are alternatives. Addictive. The car culture is a world-wide phenomenon too, as Bakaler points out with his link to this article about how Parisan transit is falling due to the car culture. Of course, he sees it as proof that even with the best transit system in the world, people still prefer cars. I, on the otherhand, see it as proof of the growing reach of the global car culture and advertising dollars well spent to convince people that life simply isn’t possible without a car.
I see it as a call to arms for those who don’t love their cars. For those who hate sitting in traffic. For those who want to break the addiction. For those who are seeking an alternative. We can’t wait until a “world-class” rail transit system is built here in LA. Nor can we wait for superhighways and alternative fuels. We have to act now if we want relief. It will take sacrifices. Quitting smoking isn’t easy. Neither is quitting the car-culture. But at the same time, it’s not that hard, and the benefits far outweigh the negatives. Sell your car. Move near where you work. Get a bike. Learn the transit system. Ride the transit system. Once we prove that people will take transit, that it will get people out of their cars, that it will improve congestion…they will build it. But we can’t sit and wait for it to be built while we drive around and complain. There’s too many people like Mr. Bakaler who will be more than happy to point that out.
Take the dive. Tell your friends it’s time for a new culture. A public transit culture.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
actually, the core issue – and the elephant in the room, if you will – is in fact the issue of time. using public transit takes far longer than a car, even on the worst traffic days.
here i am speaking from my own experience, as well as that of people I know. while it might be tempting to say that these cases are anecdotal, i bet that a larger survey would yield similar results.
so, no matter how you slice it, riding transit in LA is too slow to be useful. i can drive to work in 20 minutes or take the bus and train there in an hour and a half. this ratio of drive/bus time has been fairly consistent throughout my years working and living in LA.
Amen. and I rarely ever feel compelled to say that. Though, I find myself limited jobwise (I’m starting out in entertainment, where you need a car if you’re at the bottom). I’m doing ok, and my blood pressure is amazingly low.
Well that’s not necessarily true hex. Because as I reported, when I worked in Hollywood it would take me 16 minutes to get to work from Downtown during rush hour, it would take me 35-45 min. by car.
My point is that there is larger issues at hand. And even with extra time spent on transit in certain cases, since time is worth money, is it so much extra time that it offsets the costs of car ownership? In my case, the answer is no. I have saved both money and time by trading in the car for the bus pass.
Furthermore, if it only takes 20 minutes to drive to work then there really isn’t a congestion problem is there? That is a fairly decent auto commute, and if that’s the norm, the what the hell is everyone complaining about?
Hey Christal, if you ever feel like sharing your car-free experiences in the entertainment industry, we’d love to hear! Ironic how even though the entertainment industry congratulates itself on how “green” it is, it doesn’t very much cater to those ideals in practice.
Let’s get one thing straight here — public transit in LA is terrible compared to other major US cities (NY, DC, Boston, SF) and of course, the rest of the world. Sure, if you lived and worked on Wilshire Blvd and never needed to go anywhere else you might do alright, but LA is a polycentric city poorly served by public transit. It’s not that we’re addicted to cars, it’s that they’re the easiest and cheapest (when you factor in value of time for most people) way to get around. There’s plenty of la-transplants that don’t have the same transit-phobia native middle class Southern Californians do. I know plenty of people who didn’t own a car while living in NY and now have never taken transit here in LA.
I have a car here in LA and hate traffic so I drive it very little. But waiting 30 min for a bus that’s supposed to have 10 min headways is a frustrating experience and I just don’t have that kind of time to waste. Would I own a car if I lived in London or New York? No way. Do I need one in LA? Yes, if I want to enjoy my time here and not spend all of it traveling or waiting.
Notice how, at the end of the cigarette commercial, the LOSER who isn’t smoking their cigarettes gets on a BUS.
Ha! Loser! Non-smoker! Bus rider! Non car owner!
Get hip! Smoke Newports and drive a Fraud Mustang convertible! Take the top down so you can really breathe the air you’re fouling with your exhaust! Not enough poison? Then light up a cancer stick and inhale smoke directly into your lungs! It’s FRESH, damn it! And hey, forget about that seat belt! What seat belt?
Okay, rant over.
Here’s a point about the car culture:
I can make you a mix CD, no dozens of mix CDs, containing songs that laud the car. Most of them by The Beach Boys.
I’d have a much harder time filling up a CD about songs touting the subway.
Songwriters, get going. Let’s have a song about the excellence and freedom of riding the Red Line.
Scott,
RE: the classic newport commercial
There’s a lot of great stuff going on in that spot. Good call with the bus… also notice the loser is in the dirty dingy downtown area while the “cigarette dream” on the billboard is at the lovely beach. Downtown+Bus=crappy. We can only imagine those two didn’t get to the beach by the bus.
[P]ublic transit in LA is terrible compared to other major US cities (NY, DC, Boston, SF)
By which criteria? I’m asking an honest, open question. You say LA transit is terrible by comparison. Which comparisons are you using?
Steve C.,
I still contend that it’s not the easiest and cheapest… even when time is factored. Maybe breaking even. At least on a personal finance level. Cars are expensive.
And it’s not necessarily the public transit system that makes it worse than the cities you mentioned (although that def. plays a part), but the fact that, like you said, not everyone lives or works in Wilshire Blvd. All the cities you mentioned are pre car-culture pre suburbia cities… LA has the lucky distinction to be one of the major cities to develop and really grow at the time when car-culture really took hold. So everyone lives far from where there work, or far enough that anything involving sitting in traffic in a car or bus will drive a person mad.
My point is that those places have an establish transit culture… whereas LA has an established and powerful car culture.
My point exactly. Most people don’t equate LA with public transit (aka, “you need a car in LA” or “LA has a subway?!?”) therefore even those who are used to public transit don’t consider it in LA.
It certainly is very frustrating. And a big reason that bus takes 30 min. when it should take 10 is because of the damn traffic and the street that the bus has to contend with. But like I said, we won’t get the rail system of our dream or reduced street congestion unless we create a transit culture here. Bakalers and RobDawgs are all over, and they have the might car culture on their side.
If you don’t like sitting in traffic I encourage you to do something about it now, not wait for some politicians or federal money to come in to solve the problem for you. I mean you can, but not me, I don’t have that kind of time to waste.
RobDawg,
I think the comparison he’s using is the “civic penis envy” comparison Wad often speaks of. To me, what he’s saying, is that those places have an established “transit culture”, so residents of those cities use the transit even though it may be just as “terrible”. I mean just ask our contributor and reader Aaron who just moved from Boston about his opinion of the Boston system.
Boston? Gosh, it has been decades so my opinions of the Boston system since then are all of the tourist type observations. Even back then becoming an upperclassman and getting a tiny little murdercycle made me, an uber nerd, a babe magnet by comparison to my transit dependent brethren.
Transit orientation isn’t pure push nor pull. Newton Centre is an awesome TOD conurbation but cannot be replicated. Transit places have just been bypassed much lke al those small towns that didn’t get an interstate.
I would argue there is more of a bicycling culture than a transit culture in this town. You do see biking get-togethers like that bike drive in they had on the Westside a couple of years ago, Critical Mass, and similar things. The transit users aren’t that militant about transit as a culture (as opposed to BRU-style militancy about Palestine and firing cops). The bicyclists get it with their talk about taking the lane and bikeways and that sort of thing. The transit riding community could learn a bit from the bicycling community and move in that direction while not being Critical Asses.
I’d argue that LA is just too big, too dense, and too polycentric to be served effectively by transit. NY, DC, SF, and Boston are all monocentric cities. You’d have to have something on the level of the London Underground to effectively serve LA. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see it I just don’t think it’s going to happen in my or my children’s lifetime.
There are certain corridors well served by transit in LA, but once you start making people transfer you’ve lost most people who have access to an automobile. And parking is still way too cheap for most activities to make driving burdensome.
I wouldn’t exactly say LA grew up around the car culture because it once had the most extensive rail network in the nation. When the infrastructure was being torn up in the late 40s and 50s the car’s dominance was assured.
sadly many people, if not most, still drive even if they don’t have to transfer. i know many people that could just as easily take a single bus the entire ride to work yet still get in their car every morning. so i’m not sure there’s all that much weight to your argument. however, at this point, i’d say fine, if you have to transfer, drive, so long as all those that don’t have to transfer don’t drive.
wut possible route could this be? i agree that when there’s a transfer involved driving is usually faster, but i can’t even imagine this not being a slight exaggeration. an hour and half to 20 minutes? the only reason i say this is because a 20 minute drive in rush hour traffic can only take you about 3 to 4 miles on average. therefore i find it hard pressed to see how there isn’t a route to take you 3-4 miles in less than an hour and a half, especially since you’re able to use a train.
I’d argue that LA is just too big, too dense, and too polycentric to be served effectively by transit. NY, DC, SF, and Boston are all monocentric cities.
New York, a monocentric city. Are freaking kidding me? Do you have any idea how far it spreads? Do you know that it includes five counties? Have you ever heard of such places as downtown Brooklyn, Harlem, Astoria, Jamaica, THe Bronx, Inwood? None of these places are in lower or midtown Manhatan (the monocenter I’m assuming you’re referring to) and are all “centers” larger than many major cities in the USA. How about Co-Op City, a manufactured city of 37 high rises in the Bronx. My grandparents lived there when it opened. Over 30,000 people live there. (Unfortunately the subway doesn’t go there but there’s lots of bus service). There’s another center. New York is totally polycentric.
How about Boston? Not monocentric either. There’s Cambridge, Newton, South Boston. Many people who work at Harvard or MIT do not live in Cambridge. Plenty of “reverse commuters.”
Frankly, this whole idea of L.A. being “too spread out” for transit is a myth. I will agree that the large distances involved do require a specific TYPE of transit: that would be grade-separated heavy rail.
I drive from Echo Park to El Segundo. I take the 110 South to the 105 West. 20 minutes. 30 on a bad day. Why? I go to work after rush hour, and come home after rush hour. If more people staggered their transit times, we could kill a lot of traffic. But then again, it’s not always a possibility.
Mind you, when I started the job my first thought was: “How can I take public transport?” The answer was to take the DASH from Echo Park to MacArthur Park(15-20 minutes at least), get on the Red Line and meet up with the Blue Line. It would be probably half an hour to do that(including waiting, etc…so at least half an hour). Blue line travel about 20-30 minutes to blue line + green line station. Wait another 10 minutes. 20 minutes to the closest stop to my job. Walk for x amount of minutes. I did not yet do the math, but you get the idea.
But…when I lived in downtown in 2001, I did do that trip from downtown to El Segundo(to a different job) on public transit, so I gave it a whirl for about a year.
Then I bought a truck for $2000.
To work in 20-30 minutes. So saving two hours every day in travel saved me a corresponding amount of money(I bill hourly). That investment in the cheap car has paid for itself multiple times. It’s the same car I drive to work now. It’s been dependable(knock on wood) and maintenance and insurance are not much over $1000 a year, much less than what I would lose in billable hours, and time with my friends and family by riding transit. Even calculating for fuel(it gets great mileage), I still come out ahead financially.
If I lived in a city where transit was a good option, I would take it. I don’t care about my image, I just want the most efficient solution, and in New York you would probably see me on the subway every day.
I don’t know if my situation is very unusual, but I would wager that even if it is…it is not that unusual.
Yes, NY is spread out and Manhattan isn’t the only center in that huge city, but when you look at jobs, that little island dominates the region. Same with downtown SF, central DC, and downtown Boston (you could probably include Cambridge because they are so close). Those cities have lost jobs to the suburbs, that’s obvious, but it’s nothing like the decline of downtown LA. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I think downtown LA makes up less than 10% of regional employment. And we know what trip transit serves best: the home to work trip, in areas where there is significant employment density. Even though work trips make up only 20% of total trips I think that’s the problem here in LA: employment is simply too dispersed to attract most people to transit who have cars. There’s plenty of examples in this post of why transit just doesn’t work for many commutes.
If you blanketed the region with grade separated heavy rail things may change. But where is that money going to come from? I say charge more to drive, more to park, and work on a true BRT network (like Curitiba or Bogota).
Right, massive constructive projects need money. What would be the point?
But I wonder: why would you feel the need to actively charge more for driving? How would that work? What would be the goal? To artificially promote a shoddy alternative?
There’s no need to actively charge more for driving.. That’s going to keep happening naturally at the same alarming pace.
Look, I agree with the real point of Fred’s post here. I think it’s great that some of you guys seem to have weighed the benefits of driving vs going car-free, but the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of drivers out there never even think about which might be better for them.
Public transit isn’t even an option to be considered. It’s not on the average drivers radar because as Fred was saying, we are so indoctrinated with the myth that every person needs their own personal vehicle.
Its true!
Where does the more money to pay for more transit come from? Are we not already testing the limits of the golden goose?
- Our freeways are too good and too efficient. Face it, we do have the greatest roadway system in the world. You can get anywhere by freeway (try that in NY or SF, where the freeway doesn’t enough tough the urban core). Thus, LA rely’s on the transit-needy to fill it’s bus seats, which is really sad.
- Suburban jobs. If more people worked in downtown, traffic would reduce b/c we do have trains coming from just about everywhere (sans the westside) to get you into downtown. Unfortunately, people have this belief they’re “escaping traffic” by moving their businesses away from downtown. Personally, I think Century City is the biggest reason for westside traffic. At least on Wilshire, you can take the 720 Rapid up and down the street (if they made a bus only lane, that would help)
- Downtown connector. This is critical. The reason why people take trains in NY/SF, b/c the freeway ends before the urban core. In LA, it’s the opposite, trains end before the urban core (sans the Red/Purple lines). If we can get the DT connector completed, we’d offer 1-seat rides through downtown. I’m near the Pico station, w/ the connector I’d definitly take transit to get to old town pasadena, b/c it’s a 1 seat ride, right now it’s a 3 seat ride, thus the car is more convenient. And vice/versa for people wanting to go from Pasadena to staples center/la live.
But Fred, as you very well know the difference between your commute, and the majority of Los Angeles mass transit riders is that you’re on a 100% grade separated train. It travels 55 mph-plus between stations. Meaning, it doesn’t just compete with the automobile, it BEATS IT!
How long would your commute be on the bus? A whole lot slower than the train, and significantly slower than the automobile.
The problem is simple: our expansive mass transit system lacks a rail backbone. Our buses are doing the job that in all other “world cities” is done by rail – 100% grade separated rail for the most part. There’s simply no better way to transport people in a megapolis.
Our 50-year experiment that’s made cars AND BUSES our major mode of transportation has failed on so many levels. The only way we bring mobility back to Angelinos is by embarking on an ambitious and aggressive construction project for rail similar to the 19 billion dollar school building commitment. School overcrowding wasn’t a problem that was created overnight, nor is it one that could have been solved with band-aids. We needed major life-saving corrective surgery. It’s the same case with rail. The people know it – they’re willing to make the investment. We just need to get our boneheaded politicians to support it and go after the highway mafia…I mean lobby, with all our force.
Great piece by the way.
Oh of course I totally agree Damien. Obviously the transit system is far from ideal. My issue is that many of the “boneheads” you speak of use the fact that people still prefer their cars as ammo against the rail construction problem you dream of.
My main goal with this site is different from Get LA Moving or the Transit Coalition. You guys lobby and fight for the transit system that we all dream of, I’ll be right there with you. But the point of this site is to lobby the people… the culture. I want to create a culture of public transit. One that will convince people to use what there is today, and because of it join your fight for what we should have tomorrow.
At this point it’s going to take certain sacrifices… but all choices to go against the status quo typically take sacrifices. We just have to make those sacrifices desirable… “cool” even.
Change will require a two-pronged attack… the lobbying (or activism) that you speak of (to tackle the rational), as well as an image campaign (to take on the irrational).