MetroRiderLA

los angeles transit oriented lifestyle

There are 3 Responses to “Daily Transit Links Roundup”:

1. That commentary on density, growth and the media is a really good one.

   Steve Lopez, who I normally like, wrote a one-sided commentary this weekend in the L.A. Times about development in North Hollywood. I actually wrote him a letter stating he missed the boat.

   The story is not that people are upset that increased development is happening in the Valley. The story is that NBC is moving to Universal City in the first place. The story is that businesses no longer assume that their customers and employees will be able to drive to any location in Southern California. The story is that a tipping point has been reached. A corporation has factored accessibility to public transit as an important value.

   The car culture is based on the premise that everyone drives a car and, if they don’t, they would if they could, and therefore non-drivers need no thought or consideration, especially if they are poor minorities and the undesirables. In other words, Tom Rubin’s model of public transportation as transportation welfare.

   While many if not most people will still own cars, it is clear that the NBC decision is a tipping point. Businesses who do not have altruistic motives have started no longer buying into the old L.A. car culture model that everyone will have or use a car.

   THAT is the real underlying story.

   If three million more people are coming to Southern California in the next few years, they need to be put somewhere. It makes only logical sense the go near the transit and North Hollywood has TWO transit lines where Century City is still struggling to get one.

   The truth is, and I will vote for any politician with the courage to say this: “The traditional low-density, car culture, suburban-within-urban, lifestyle made famous in popular culture and lore is no longer sustainable in all parts of the city. Sprawl caused rural areas to become suburban. Now some suburban areas are going to become more urban. We should have an honest discussion of what neighborhoods can still be surburban and what one’s have to get more urban. In the decades ahead, there will also be neighborhoods like downtown, perhaps Century City, where it will be considered foolish to drive and park a solo-occupancy vehicle. The best days of the car culture as we have known it are now behind us and we will have to invest as heavily and enthusiastically in our public transit infrastructure over the next five decades as we did in roads and freeways over the last five decades.”

   Of course, that politician wouldn’t win the election. But it the truth. We can responsibly plan for the increased population or we can do what we’ve normally done — let NIMBYS keep their stranglehold on the city, have increasingly worse congestion, increasingly negative impact to our economy and environment, and increasingly reduced quality of life, all to preserve the delusion of a car culture, suburban-within-urban Los Angeles.

   I just roll at the “This is not New York” comment. A false dichotomy that we either have the L.A. car culture sprawl or Manhattan. I think everyone should take a trip to London — a city that proves over and over again that a sprawling metropolis is compatible with extensive heavy/light/commuter rail and bus service.

   North Hollywood and possibly the Warner Center have to be the SFVs contribution. I lived in NoHo for six years. It’s not a suburb, no matter how many holdovers there are from the Sam Yorty / John Ferraro days.

   From the Morris piece in the L.A. Weekly, I really appreciated the following:

   It frustrates me to see these important issues trivialized and distorted through such misinformation and scare-mongering (“density also breeds much more crime”). LA is confronting real, inter-related issues regarding density, growth, and transit, and hysterical, hyperbolic arguments like Morris’ serve only to incite the most reactionary impulses. But also, anti-growth obstructionists always assume that the lifestyle they so anxiously defend is incompatible with higher residential densities. What they never consider is the possibility that higher densities might in fact enhance LA’s quality of life by supporting smaller-scale, local commercial districts and freeing residents of the need for a car.

   Comment by Dan W. on March 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 am »Reply«
   
   

2. Steven Leigh Morris, for whatever reason, has an axe to grind. I think it’s time the LA Weekly gave this car culture proponent his walking papers.

   Here are links to some of the stuff Dan mentioned or referred to:
   Morris: Density hawks are evil changing LA’s DNA
   Lopez: Masses are roused by rampant development

   Comment by johnny on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm »Reply«
   
   

3. Below is a letter to the editor I wrote to the L.A. Times regarding the Lopez article. It probably won’t run out of length (or denial), but here it is.

   Dear Editor,

   I think Steve Lopez missed the story in his column, “Finally, the Masses Are Roused by Rampant Development”. He wrote about a great uprising of NIMBYs near North Hollywood who feel a sense of entitlement to continue to live suburban, low-density, single-occupancy automobiile based lifestyles in the middle of the a major urban metropolis, despite the fact that millions of more people are expected to migrate to Los Angeles County over the next few decades and North Hollywood currently has two transit lines, while neighborhoods like Century City are still struggling to get their first line. The real underlying story is that NBC/Universal made the decision to move its headquarters to the Universal City Red Line station in the first place.

   What this means is that a non-altruistic corporation has seen the future and decided it is in their best business interest to be located next to a transit line, because they no longer expect that their clients and employees will be willing to or be able to drive an automobile to their location in the decades ahead. The infamous “L.A. Car Culture” is based on the assumption that everyone has an automobile, and will be able to drive and park their cars anytime, anyplace, anywhere in Southern California, cheaply and conveniently, and those who don’t have a car are poor people who would buy one if they could, or are marginal people not worth consideration. The decision of NBC/Universal is effectively a death knell to the Los Angeles as have have known it. The great unraveling of the L.A. Car Culture has begun, and the Los Angeles Times, perhaps out of denial, missed the story.

   This is not about Los Angeles “turning into” New York. L.A. is much more like like London, a vast urban sprawl which, but one which has an extenstive network of subway, light-rail and commuter rail, and a comprehensive bus system. But this unfoldment really isn’t about Los Angeles becoming any other city. It’s about Los Angeles evolving into the great metropolis it would have naturally become had automobile-industry lobbying not killed our old mass transit system 50 years ago. We will have to invest as heavily and zealously in our public transit infrastructure over the next five decades as we invested in roads and freeways over the last five, and not everyone will be able to continue to have a suburban, automobile-based lifestyle just because of what their neighborhood was like when Sam Yorty was Mayor. That’s the real story. Let’s hope the Los Angeles Times doesn’t completely miss it again.

   Comment by Dan W. on March 4th, 2008 at 9:09 am »Reply«
   
   

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