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ChineseSomething I’ll Never Miss
Aside from weekly street cleaning, parking is a complete nightmare. Credit Flickr my f_cking photos’.
There are a lot of things in this world that I’ve regretted. That I try to forget from my past. Events I would rather have not partaken in. Ideas I should have never let come to pass (but his sister was just so hot). And in the end the only thing you can do is be positive and try to learn from all of your past mistakes so that such things don’t happen again. Whoever spoke at your high school graduation probably said it; followed by an evening of intoxication at some stranger’s house you might have sat next to in Marine Biology. Whose carpet got ruined and mother’s votive candles got stolen, and the next day I learned I never need that many votive candles lit at once again.
Such was the case this morning as I was walking to the bus stop. I hadn’t got intoxicated the night before or anything like that, but when I saw some guy from my building running out the front door in flip flops, sweats, an old long sleeve t-shirt and hair awry, that old sinking feeling of a blemished past came racing back. Like an ex-junkie stepping around a chalk lipped maniac talking to a broken pay phone, my god, I thought, that used to be me. That used to be me waking up an hour ahead of my alarm and scurrying out to the street to add change to the meter so I could rush back to my comforter confines to rest for another forty-five minutes. Only to repeat it again so I could get a shower in soon after. Though I usually wore a hat to block some of the light and because I had a slight thing for this Armenian “entertainer” that was always coming back from the gym no matter what time I was coming or going.
However, the worse times were the ones without such silver change. The truly bad times, continuing with the junkie analogy, were probably akin to when he decided crack was so necessary he placed things in his mouth he wished he hadn’t (per Bob Saget in “Half Baked”). Those were the times I had to drive my stupid car around for fifteen minutes to find a different spot on the safe side of the street because of street cleaning. Oh the torture it all was. Twice a week for three years I partook in this absurd game of drudgery. Monday morning after Monday morning and Tuesday morning too if I got extra unlucky and didn’t get home early enough to find a safe spot again. And it was all because I was convinced, like the junkie and his crank, I absolutely needed a car. That I couldn’t live without it.
Live without a car? In LA? Impossible!
But alas, it is possible. It’s all so very possible. In fact it’s not only possible, it’s probably the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Returning an accidentally purchased wired Xbox360 controller to Best Buy is harder and it’s still at my place a year later. All you have to do, and this is really it, is get on a bus. That’s it. I know, I know. Absurd right? Returning a controller you’ll never use is much easier than converting to public transit. But it’s not. It’s not even close. Converting to public transit takes absolutely no effort. Alls you do is walk to your closest bus stop and, wait for it, get on. The bus will actually come to you! You don’t even need to hail it down and beat out other people to get the ride like a taxi. In fact, it’ll take your girlfriend, boyfriend, brother, mother, grandfather, and your squatter room mate from college who refuses to get a job because he thinks he’s the next Wes Anderson too. That’s right, it’ll take everyone you know and more. In fact, it’ll take lots of strangers too and instead of running around looking for a spot frustrated and tired, fighting the girl next door to you for the last remaining spot, you’ll be riding next to her and learning that it’s she who’s cooking and making the hallway smell so good on Wednesday nights. And not only that, but you’re invited because she always cooks too much!
So if you’re that person above. If you’re waking up twice, even once a week so you can drive your car around in a monotony paralleled only by the dull hum of a florescent light, now’s your chance to act. Now’s your chance to see if maybe this whole public transit idea isn’t so bad after all. Now’s your chance to meet your neighbors, meet and see all of LA the way it should be seen. Amongst it and within it. With a book. With a friend. With both. Stressfree and smiling and with a whole bunch of extra money and knowledge that things really can be better in this city. Things can really be everything we want them to be if we all just jump on board. Trains are coming. I swear they really are. And busses aren’t as bad as your co-workers say. They’re better than you can imagine.
And if you’re still not sure, if you’re still so addicted to your car, just think about what delicacies you’re missing out on every Wednesday night.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Why don’t you submit this piece (perhaps after some judicious editing) to the LA Times as a guest editorial?
Guess I never thought of it, Rick but thanks for the idea. I’ll pull out the ol’ red marker and give this new fangled “editing” thing a try.
This exposure should lead to a “lifestyle” feature in a media forum on the Taft 2.0 carless gang. Keep up the good work.
it’s amazing how simple it all is. i gave up my car in san diego 16 years ago and have never looked back. people think of their cars as a manifestation of freedom and refuse to think otherwise, even while fuming in the morass of traffic - the byproduct of this manifestation. what’s even better than the bus is riding a bicycle, the only expense is the cost of the fuel - food. and it runs 24 hours a day.
indeed cochen,
i’ve only been at it for about a year and a half compared to nearly 2 decades, but the benefits are already far reaching. from financial to health. just the amount of casual exercise you get from walking places is surprisingly huge, especially for those of us that are sitting at a desk all day. and i’ve actually be able to save! an amazing feat i had never thought i could accomplish. and yes, biking is even better. goodogna!
Give me a fair hearing here. I’m not criticizing or contradicting. I just want consideration of a different perspective.
What we see here is not about auto ownership but about urban impediments to auto ownership. Those are real issues but equally they are not about the transportation mode but rather about public policies. Look at the picture. I’m in a minority with this but FHWA funding is very clear that things like preferential access are not allowed. Please, no tinfoil accusations. I know the difference. Still I was wondering about using “district” permits for transit access and the reaction thereon.
I agree it’s an issue about urban impediments to auto ownership, but I think it’s more than just about policy. The district parking policies exist to try to ensure residents of particular district a parking space, so that their spaces aren’t taken by visitors or outsiders. Without the policy the parking situation isn’t improved. The policy tries to combat the fact that car ownership is so prevalent in this city (without any other really viable alternatives for most people… at least theoretically) that people can’t even find places to put their cars in their own neighborhoods. The bottom line is there’s too many cars and not enough places to put them. Reference this post from last week.
District transit permits could be used theoretically to mitigate overcrowding on certain buses, but just like district parking, it doesn’t address the underlying problem. Perhaps the bus won’t be crowded any more, but there will be a bunch of people left looking for a ride. Just like how district parking may help residents park in their neighborhood, but it still leaves visitors circling for spaces.
Of course the solution in my opinion is to offer alternatives. If 10 car drivers are able to give up car ownership, that opens up 10 parking spaces. Or its equivalent space in other uses. If 10 bus riders can walk to the grocery store, that opens up 10 seats on the bus. The more alternatives offered, the more freedom of mobility people get. And in a city of limited space and growing population, those alternatives should be offered in terms of space taken… with walking being the most desirable option and personal auto driving being the least.
I’m kinda strange on this issue. What I see is not enough parking and every solution aimed at less parking.
Again, don’t get me wrong. We all paid for roads with parking and intersections and all the trimmings. Things changed and it turned out we needed more parking. No, my “bitch” is about people who think less parking is the answer.
the district parking thing for the most part is a whole other issue, i think. i assume you’re going against the idea of such policies that allow for this to even exist in the first place. but since i have no car, i personally don’t really care. and even when i did have one i didn’t live where there was any “district” parking nearby. though i’m sure those with cars might have a different view.
aside from FHWA, even if there was no such thing as preferential parking in this city and you could park on any street you wanted, you’d still face the inevitable mornings of moving your car because of anything from from street cleaning to rush hour parking regulations. it’s to those that can relate to this dreadful experience that i’m referencing.
unless of course you got rid of that as well.
Well as noted, more parking requires more space. Furthermore, as Tyke’s post exemplifies, limited parking encourages a search for alternatives. Adding more parking is a solution, but it is a solution that encourages car ownership and car ownership, as I described above, is the heart of the problem. Ultimately, if your answer is to add more parking before other alternatives, there will come a time when the space require to store cars overtakes all other space. If a compact parking space requires 275 sq. feet, and if Los Angeles county adds 3.5 million people by 2050, and all of them have cars and expect to park them, then we will have to add 34.5 square miles of parking spaces just to accommodate those new cars. And that’s just single spaces! Usually people want to park their cars wherever they might take their cars. For reference, the City of Pasadena is 23 square miles.
I hate to use the word, but it’s just not sustainable. How can adding more parking possibly work? I mean this city certainly already devotes a lot of itself to parking and parking is still a bitch. As I type this I know just on my block there are at least 5 surface parking lots and 3 multi-level parking garages and yet if I had a car parking would still cost $180/month.
Space is limited in heavily populated urban areas. Even a relatively large geographic region like Los Angeles County (compared to say NYC) will be strained for space with tens of millions of people, especially if all those people come with their own cars.
mr. dawg, please.
“we” do not need more parking, you do. my bicycle takes up about a tenth of the space that your car does. and fits nicely against any sign and/or meter. also, when i’m done for the day, it lives in my apartment, not taking up 30-50 square feet of valuable public space.
attached to car ownership are the rules and regulations that go along with it. one cannot drive 105 mph in their prius. one cannot park in the middle of an intersection, blocking all traffic. one cannot drive through red lights whenever they want. one must abide by alternate side parking laws by getting up an hour or 2 early and moving it. one must find a place to leave the thing when it’s not in use and feed it money ever day of the week.
call me crazy, but these “urban” impediments, good and bad, are inseparable from auto ownership. tyke decided to rid themselves of this impediment.
kudos.
mr. dawg, please.
“we” do not need more parking, you do. my bicycle takes up about a tenth of the space that your car does. and fits nicely against any sign and/or meter.
How did that bicycle get delivered? Hope you don’t work up an appetite pedaling.
BTW 210 sq ft for a typical parking space in a structure after accounting for ramps and pillars and lanes and such.
“How did that bicycle get delivered? Hope you don’t work up an appetite pedaling.”
I certainly don’t mean to imply that all automobiles should be banished from the earth. Obviously automobiles, especially trucks, are a very effective way to deliver mass amounts of goods. I’m assuming that when you speak of appetite you a referring to the fact that foods is delivered in automobiles (please explain otherwise if I’m wrong, this is the second time you’ve made a reference to bicycles and food). Clearly large quantities of food are not going to be delivered to the market via bicycle. But, a amount of food for an individual, or even a family can be moved from the market to the residence without the need for a vehicle.
The idea is to reduce the need to use/own a personal automobile for things that it’s not really necessary for. Using a 250 HP engine to push two tons of steel and glass (plus a 160 lb human) to pick up a few lbs of groceries a 20-minute walk away is a bit wasteful. Most of the energy is spent moving steel and glass, whereas on a bike or when walking most energy is expended on moving the human. Does steal and glass eat? No, so why are we spending so much energy moving it to get food?
In an ideal world personal cars would be available for occasional, relatively long distance, personal trips or for trips to pick up personal goods that are too large to be reasonably moved without a machine. This is how I currently live. Flexcar’s are available for when I absolutely need them, and there are times when I do need them. But most of the time… I don’t.
Move to the east coast. Cars are not only completely unnecessary, but people laugh at the idea of driving a car around manhattan, boston, etc. Unfortunately LA is way behind on public trasnportation. Look at Portland for an example of a west coast city that is smart enough to provide the right kinds of transportation to people.
The idea is to reduce the need to use/own a personal automobile for things that it’s not really necessary for.
Just so long as we are clear that this is your idea and not some consensus derived societal goal. Let’s face it. It used to be that cars were unsafe until they got safer. Then cars were polluting until they got cleaner and now they waste energy even though they are more efficient. What is the flavor du jour of anti-automobilia? Oh yes, global warming.
Okay, bicycling. I’ve got a comment around here someplace… oh yes, here it is:
> > The energy for an efficient bike ride has to come from somewhere and the path through a person is convoluted. I’ve discussed the true energy cost of electric transit before. This is similar. Without being able to attach exact numbers to the process I’m fairly confident that clearing Amazon Rainforest for cattle grazing and methane release and aquatic deoxygenation so that a diesel truck can deliver the meat to a diesel boat so that the coal fired power plant can run the rendering plant can make the pepperoni that is delivered in refrigerated (no CFCs hopefully) diesel trucks to the natural gas ovens of the pie parlor where the ‘73 Dodge Dart driven by 20 year old who almost hits two bikers as he races with no emission controls to deliver in less than 12 minutes… Repeat for cheese and dough.
—-
That from near a decade previous. Sometime in the last century I was performing total energy budgeting for competing transport modes. What were you doing?
Don’t get me wrong. We need to do some massive improvements in personal transport modes and autos are prime candidates.
well lets all go to hell with the environment. hybrid cars are terrible in the end anyway. where are all those batteries coming from and where are they going? eeeeek? everything is effed. so lets just stave off our own demise as long as we can, the earth is closer to the sun, the worlds gonna melt and our beloved resident transit royal nyc will be under water. but until that all comes to pass, lets at least make it so we can get to places faster and not be stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours on end. that way we can spend our precious remaining centuries (decades?) with our friends and loved ones and not wishing the world would just end on the 101 because we’ve been looking at the same anti-bush bumper sticker on a toyota tacoma for the last hour.
Here’s what is probably a very unusual variation on the theme of living in LA without a car. My wife and I have no made about half a dozen trips to LA, Santa Monica, Riverside, San Clemente, Newport, Venice, etc. without a car. Yes, one can get around the greater LA area without a car, and with relative efficiency if the time is spent planning routes and times. A car in LA–never again for me!
“Just so long as we are clear that this is your idea and not some consensus derived societal goal.”
Clearly it’s my idea, and logically it makes sense. Do you deny that? Just on the space issue alone personal autos lose out. The require massive amounts of space per capita. If a car trip from Point A to Point B can be replaced with a walking trip, per your parking space measurement, 420 sq. feet of space has been saved. So even if we had a completely emission free car made of recycled paper, it would still be wasteful in terms of space used. I know you rally against density, and density is a result of too many things in too little space, so if more space was free, things would be less dense, no?
Let’s take New York City for example. People there have mobility choices. They can take walk, they can bike, they can take transit, the can hire a taxi, they can drive a personal auto. Each has a cost relative to its effeciency. Now imagine if New York City instead catered solely to the car. If NYC’s houses without a car dropped from 55% to 16% (LA’s percentage of houses w/o car)… 3,203,626 cars would be added. If each of those cars requires 210 sq. ft. to be parked (in only one place mind you) NYC would require an addition 22 sq. miles of parking. To put that in perspective… the entire island of Manhattan is 22 sq. miles. So the choice is either Manhattan, home of 1.5 million people and provider of 2.3 million jobs or one giant parking lot. How much more space would L.A. get if the car-free households were increased to NYC levels? If 1,501,254 people were able to give up their cars, that would open up 11 sq. miles of space in the City of Los Angeles. That’s larger than the land area of the City of Santa Monica. And this is only if every car got a single space!
My ideas are strictly about freedom and choice. An auto-centric world limits both of those things. Humans are not born with cars. Mobility is a basic human need, but if mobility is limited to a single mode due to the built environment catering solely to that mode, then humans are no longer able to move as they please. This is why it really sucks when your car breaks down, because you feel stranded. This is also why it’s so hard for people to even consider giving up car ownership, they feel there’s no other option. This is why even though I hadn’t driven my car for a year, I was still hesitant to give it up because… “what if?”.
My ideas are strictly about freedom and choice.
Bull. You want choice? Pay your fair share. Until you are willing to pay the full cost of your “choice” of transit you are not walking the walk.
I did the “What if” a long time ago. I’ll put it up on my blog tomorrow because it is thousands of words. The conclusion is inescapable; transit costs too much, takes too long and serves too few and any attempt to do better would crush the underlying economy and result in even worse results.
I’m not only talking about transit. I’m talking about walking, first and foremost, then bicycling, then transit, and cars last.
Using my example above, what would be the cost to NYC if they got rid of the transit system? What is the cost of turning Manhattan into a parking lot?
Let’s say again that New York City had the same percentage of car-free households as LA - 16%. That means there are 6,900,118 households with cars. If each household spends $2,000 a year on personal car expenses, the resulting total cost is $13.8 billion. $2000 is probably a low number (this website shows the cost of a used car to be $3278 per year if driven for 5 years and then sold at market value). Of course, this is just personal cost, it doesn’t take into account cost of roadways, emergency services, pollution, traffic congestion, etc. Purely what it costs to own and operate a single used car. The yearly operating budget for the NYC MTA (including NYC Transit, Staten Island Railway, Long Island Railroad, Long Island Bus, Metro North Rail Road, Bridges and Tunnels , and MTA buses) is 10.3 billion. Divided by 8,214,426 New York residents, that comes out to $1253 per person per year. That’s almost three times less to the individual than the cost of owning a used car. And that doesn’t even take into account that well more than 8,214,426 people use the system. According to the NYC MTA, 14.6 million people us the system. Using that number the total cost per person per year comes out to $705. Even if you add another 14.4 billion (the capital costs of planned project) and add it to the 10.3 billion operating costs, and divide it by the 14.6 million riders, it still comes out to $1,691 a year per person. Even if you only divided it by the 8.2 million NYC residents you get $3000 per rider per year, still less than the personal cost of owning a used car.
You want to crush the economy? Take mass transit out of NYC.
True LA is not NYC. But, because of it’s reliance on personal autos, it’s in a really bad place. Either massive investments must be put into creating car alternatives, or massive investments must be put into expanding the infrastructure for autos. As I’ve noted, expanded auto infrastructure uses massive amounts of space and encourages further auto usage which renders all advances temporary. To tie it all into Tyke’s story, if you add more parking, you take up more space and you encourage more people to own cars, which fills up those spaces, which leaves Tyke and so many others running around for spaces that do not exist.
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.
When you give him the milk, he’ll probably ask you for a straw.
When he’s finished, he’ll ask for a napkin.
Then he will want to look in a mirror to make sure he doesn’t have a milk mustache.
When he looks into the mirror, he might notice his hair needs a trim. So he will probably ask for a pair of nail scissors.
When he’s finished giving himself a trim, he’ll want a broom to sweep up. He’ll start sweeping. He might get carried away and sweep every room in the house. He may even end up washing the floors as well!
When he’s done, he’ll probably want to take a nap. You will have to fix a little box for him with a blanket and a pillow. He’ll crawl in, make himself comfortable and fluff the pillow a few times.
He’ll probably ask you to read him a story. So you’ll read him one from one of your books, and he’ll ask to see the pictures. When he looks at the pictures, he’ll get so excited he’ll want to draw one of his own. He’ll ask for paper and crayons.
He’ll draw a picture. When the picture is finished, he’ll want to sign his name with a pen.
Then he’ll want to hang his picture on your refrigerator. Which means he will need…scotch tape.
He’ll hang up his drawing and stand back to look at it. Looking at the refrigerator will remind him that he’s thirsty so…he’ll ask for a glass of milk.
And chances are if he asks for a glass of milk, he’s going to want a cookie to go with it.
How did that bicycle get delivered? Hope you don’t work up an appetite pedaling.
and how do cars get delivered? Dramatically less resources are needed to deliver bikes than to deliver cars.
Cars are to some extent more efficient than before, but that doesn’t mean they are clean, or as efficient as other forms of transportation.
When it comes to the food aspect, I bicycle regularly, and I don’t eat significantly differently than I did before, although it does help keep the weight off instead, which keeps me healthier, which keeps down the societal costs of me living…
Bull. You want choice? Pay your fair share. Until you are willing to pay the full cost of your “choice” of transit you are not walking the walk.
and who said we aren’t paying our fair share. So much more of my tax money goes into paying for roads that I barely use or put a dent into, as compared to the typical car user, who doesn’t come anywhere close to paying for their usage of the road. If car drivers had to pay the full cost of driving their cars on the road, then I would have no problem paying specifically for me to bicycle or for transit (but relative to my impact as compared to a car), but since I don’t see car fees rising to that level in the near future…