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ChineseDraft 2008 Long Range Plan Video Presentation
Contributed by Fred Camino on March 29th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Blogger Ubrayj02, of the bicycle activist blog Brayj Against the Machine, attended Thursday night’s Community Workshop put on by Metro to discuss the Draft 2008 Long Range Plan. At the workshop, DVD presentations were given out, the contents of which are presented above. You can also view the presentation directly by visiting Google Video. Ubrayj also has a detailed recap on the workshop on his blog, and his conclusion is that the long range plane continues to orient Los Angeles around the automobile.
Discussion
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“The long range plan continues to orient Los Angeles around the automobile.”
The MTA cannot get ahead of the politicians. That’s why it’s important to let politicians know not just about general projects we support, but we support a reorientation of the city to make it transit, bike and pedestrian friendly.
Too many people look at amazement when we say we live transit-oriented lifestyles in Los Angeles (which would be considered just normal living in any other Metropolis. “Don’t you want a car? I know where you can get one cheaply.” “Uh, no thank you. Would you instead write a letter to the MTA and to your elected officials saying to you support increased public transit funding — that would be more helpful.”
I wish we would enter the decades ahead consciously, deciding where we want the transit-oriented areas to be. Northridge, Redondo Beach, Downey, Cucamonga, and Woodland Hills will probably always be suburban in flavor. The areas that will become increasingly less car friendly are the triangle between Downtown, Westwood, and Hollywood, Santa Monica & Venice and North Hollywood. (North Hollywood is ground zero between the automobile-entitled still living in Sam Yorty’s Los Angeles and objective reality.)
Instead of random sprawl and sixty years of social engineering in favor of the car culture, followed by random infill caused by millions more migrating to Southern California over the next several decades, why can’t we have an open discussion about where that density goes? Because too many people who’ve grown entitled to an atypical for a a metropolis, low-density, suburbanesqe, automobile-based lifestyle where they drive and park anytime, anyplace, anywhere on demand in every neighborhood. Why not state where the growth is and that people who want continued suburban lifestyles should plan on moving to the suburbs? I know, de-nial isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Look at this map from 1928 that Fred posted in the forum. It’s not about Los Angeles “turning into” New York or any other city. It’s about Los Angeles becoming the world class Metropolis with transit-oriented areas it would have been had mass transit not been abandoned or left to rot in favor of a no longer economically or environmentally sustainable city around the automobile.
An advocacy group centered about transit-oriented lifestyles could not only advocated improved transit, bike and pedestrian amenities, but get the word out that there ARE such people in Los Angeles (yes, really), and not everyone will become a full-time motorist as soon as they can afford a car. Los Angeles, like New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo will never become car-free, but it will never again be car-only.
Think where we would be if this hadn’t been dismantled, but had planned growth around.
One more thought. The MTA cannot get ahead of the politicians who control the funding. How long has it been since Henry Waxman actually lived here? The Mayor’s chief transportation guy drives a hummer. The political and economic elite will be the last to use public transit. Of course, they will listen to the automobile-entitled first. That mirrors their own experience of Los Angeles.
Everyone check out Siel’s wonderful de-carring series on Emerald City, but forget the Bottleneck Blog, where the comments are updated so rarely, probably because there is no automobile or road based solution to preserving the car culture.
The denial throughout the entire Los Angeles establishment runs deep. It’s much easier to just pretend that public transit is for poor people as a form of transportation welfare. Show them that 1928 map. Rail isn’t foreign to L.A. It built it.
The saddest part of the whole mess, our public transportation system (and yes, the includes auto roads) is controlled by a bunch of people whose main mission is not to move people efficiently, but to get votes and stay in power. They are free to steal our money and use it for their own personal gain. That’s why I hate these workshops, meetings, and public comment periods. It’s like shouting down a rat hole, because what we say doesn’t really matter because they already have our money. The decisions have been made, the rest is just formalities.
What’s most important to remember about the 1928 map posted above, is that the 1,100 miles of urban rail was privately constructed, owned, and operated. Opponents will be quick to point out that the lines were rarely profitable, and often operated at a loss. But when is the last time you saw a profit/loss report for an auto-roadway? For that matter, when is the last time you a saw a privately built and maintained auto-roadway meant for mass usage? The Pacific Electric may have been operated at a loss, but profits were made for the owners for side projects (namely real estate sales) as direct result of the train operations. Just like how video game companies produce consoles at a loss to sell games, or movie theaters play films at a loss to sell popcorn and candy.
Even today, freight railroad is privately operated in the US, with at least 7 private companies operating Class I railroads. On the other hand, our public auto-roads give freight trucking companies a free ride. This is while you’ll see railroad tracks owned by Union Pacific, but you’ll never see a highway owned by Ryder. So trucks will clog our roadways, damage them, make them dangerous, and never have to pay the full cost.
It’s bullshit.
We lost 1,100 miles of urban mass transit in Los Angeles due to government intervention and unfair competition. Now we have no choice but to purchase expensive polluting wasteful vehicles and drive them on pathetic subsidized auto-roads or, if we are “lucky” (or too poor to pay the entry price to drive on the roads we pay for), ride in pathetic lowest common denominator mass transit welfare provided as a half-assed apology for destroying the system that once existed. These are our mobility options today, in the freakin’ 21st century. Why anyone trusts government to do anything right is beyond my cognitive capabilities.
Fred, I have an idea. The group of advocates and activists that make up these forums, and the folks over at the Transit Coalition, might just be the support system that one of the group could leverage to run for public office on a transit first platform. Wanna be that candidate?
I’d like to get our group more organized, but honestly I’m not interested in politics. Those who are, go for it, there are people meant to play that role, the Damien Goodmon’s of the world. My goals are simply to try and promote and popularize the idea of the alternative transportation lifestyle to the masses (not the politicians, but if they want to listen, all the better). MetroRiderLA grows in popularity daily, and so does the alternative transit message as more people wake up to the sad truth about car-culture. I have plans for those who wish to be involved in the process of popularizing this lifestyle, but as far as getting political, that’s for the politicians.
I would be glad to help you support any candidate that you think is truly “transit first”, Bert. I’ve done a bit of political work, and I wouldn’t mind helping to organize cyclists around more general transit issues.
Stephen Box is another guy you should talk to about putting a transit politician in office.
The beauty of a transit first agenda, if done right, is that designing roads for people (and measuring the positive benefits of those roads) is the bedrock of local politics – fewer traffic fatalities, better business foot traffic, and a more pleasant and civil public realm.
Though I guess it’s silly to start off a political debate right after you just said you’re not interested in politics, I would like to disagree for a moment with your previous comment, Fred.
Los Angeles and California are fairly libertarian places, and I think the fact that we all distrust government so much is part of the reason so little progress is made.
Yes those 1920 streetcar systems were privately constructed, but as you noted, they went bankrupt. The free market is an incredibly powerful system, but it doesn’t have answers to every problem. As you also noted, the real profit of urban transit was in the development and business growth it spurred, but that’s a diffuse profit that doesn’t directly go to a private company trying to make money operating the trains. To run a profitable mass transit system today would either involve ticket prices so high as to discourage use or government subsidies to guarantee corporate profits (never a very healthy relationship and basically just hiding the lack of profit through taxpayer money). In my mind (and I think yours), the real problem is expecting mass transit to turn a conventional profit when the real profits are the benefits it provides to every other part of the economy and a city.
New York is a good example of all this, even though their system is so successful. The New York Subway was likewise privately constructed with long-term private leases granted to a private corporation to build the first line. At the time (the 1890s), the idea of any government involvement was considered shocking and inappropriate, so government stood at arms length setting a few basic restrictions on ticket prices (a nickel) and where the subway could operate. It was tremendously successful, but it took fifteen years of fighting to extend past that first line. The company had just spent an incredible amount of money building it and was only now reaping the big profits, and they had no interest in extending their debt before they’d made enough profit (a perfectly reasonable standpoint for a private business). So they bought up their only real rival and dared the city to do something about it. Eventually the city found another partner and used the pressure to create a dual-subway contract with two companies operating independent subway lines that were incompatible (different sized trains, etc).
Eventually as costs rose and inflation took a bite, the five-cent fare was bleeding the companies dry and turning the system into the poorly kept, dirty system New Yorkers know today. They tried to raise the fare but no one would let them, so then they asked for subsidies and everyone considered this completely beyond the pale in the 1940s. They probably should’ve just let them raise the fare, but even if they had, that would’ve continued to weaken the subway’s use as a development spur and it seems likely that the fare would have had to be much, much higher for long-term stability. Eventually LaGuardia bought both systems and integrated them into an independent government agency, but that didn’t fix the problem, not because government is inherently inefficient (they did briefly increase revenues and cut costs), but because he and New York still expected the subway to turn a profit. They wanted the greatest public transit system in the world, but they didn’t want to pay for it! Eventually politicians just ignored the Subway as an issue because they knew what people wanted (low fares, excellent service) was completely incompatible with what they were willing to do about it (nothing).
I’m sure I’ve written too much, but my point is that I don’t think reflexively blaming the government is the right move. You first noted that the systems weren’t profitable and then noted that why should we expect them to turn a profit since roads don’t, but you haven’t really outlined how you then expect to a private company to make a profit running public transit. In a case like public transit where the profit is so diffuse and belongs to all of us in a city, I think government is really the only path we have to a real, integrated system, so I’m not sure the best attitude is to say screw government, they can’t do anything right and I won’t count on them for anything. We all want those big beautiful transit maps for the future to come true, and I just don’t see any path for them outside of lobbying people and government for the money. They don’t do anything about it because people don’t want them to.
I guess all I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure the blanket anger towards all government is constructive when there’s no successful alternative to improve Los Angeles public transit.
I think one of us has to write up a draft testimony that people can cut and paste into an email, like an action alert that an advocacy group would put together and get a couple hundred people to send it in. With our combined reach we should be able enough people to get some serious testimony in….
Absolutely… you’re a profesh writer, wanna volunteer?
Another approach is to look at the work of the Transit Coalition and their role as advocate. They could use help, and most of the people here have the brains, the energy, and the desire to make a difference. Bart Reed would love to have the assistance.
would that have happened tho if the gov’t hadn’t gotten involved in mass socialization of highways and automobiles, thereby creating an opponent the rail car companies had no way of competing with. completely gov’t funded (with an endless bankroll), marketed, and built vs. privately funded, marketed, and built. sadly, the former won hands down and it was far and away not a fair fight. now, we have even more gov’t control and more roadways and automobiles while rail is at the bottom of the bucket looking for the scraps that the entitled car driving politicians see fit throwing them.
Southern California Transit Advocates has been around longer (two decades compared to less than one) and has built a considerable amount of credibility … especially at Metro.
Bart’s forte is in dealing with legislators (although I do a fair amount of that as well).
However, the Long Range Transportation Plan is not something where a huge rally makes the difference. The LRTP is a document where the more individual voices that comment, the better. And while I understand Damien’s suggestion, a cut-and-paste statement is going to be seen as exactly that when comments are evaluated; this isn’t a “vote” or a “show the politicians how many people we have” situation, it is one where every person needs to say what their own position is.
Each of the advocacy organizations — So.CA.TA, TTC, Sierra Club, Friends4Expo — will send their position statements. But it would be pointless for their members to send xerox copies of those position statements.
So my advice is, submit your own testimony, in your own words. Don’t worry about whether you phrase it right or whether you have spell check. With the LRTP, that is less important than being heard.
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