MasterPlanning!: Do You Believe in Sacrifice?
by Tony Chavira
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro’s) Long-Range Transportation Plan is rightfully trying to please all of the people, all of the time. The plan outlines the possibility of dramatically improving the quality and flow of all transportation in Los Angeles in 30 years, including improvements and additions to roads, freeways, light rails, bus ways, and alternative transportation solutions. The transportation planners at Metro assume that they will spend roughly $152 billion, and that's only on the improvements that they will absolutely need to make in order to keep our traffic congestion from getting worse by 2030.
Despite my fervor for light rail projects, only $25.6 billion of the full $152 billion is going toward the development of light rail alternatives. This is, in large part, due to the standard by which Metro measures the effectiveness of their plans: specifically by measuring traffic speed and the number of people in transit. Since most measurements are based on these car-focused statistics, the measurements of success are also based on car-congestion improvements. Train and bus ridership are important to Metro because they provide money that will go directly back into the system (albeit, not that much), but at the time same the front-loaded cost for a fleet of buses or a new rail way is more dramatic on paper when you’re already tightening your belt. Los Angeles County has already projected that there will be a population increase of two million people (on top of our existing ten million) by 2030, so we can already assume that there will be a certain increase in the number of people on the road and in their cars by that time. Whether we like it or not, traffic will increase and we’ll all need to deal with it.
But that’s just fine as long as we have options. $62.5 billion (out of the $152.5 Metro will spend over 30 years) is going specifically to improvements and additions to our bus fleet, and I cannot stress enough just how significant this will be to reduce traffic and increase accessibility to light rail. Just about every major city in the world has a massive and coordinated bus system that people use casually, the way we use our cars. New York City has buses that practically stop at every corner. Walk through London and you’ll see buses fly in every direction; you may even see the lazier city-walker get on the bus at one stop only to step off at the next. The size of our bus fleet isn’t smaller; it’s just that Los Angeles County is spread out far wider than Manhattan, and is more amorphous than London. Not only does Los Angeles require more buses, but (because of the physical limitations of our light rail system) we also require better-coordinated buses. To this end, the Long-Range Transportation Plan also calls for localized coordination centers to manage bus and car traffic. These should serve as both a public information service and a nifty way to keep data for later research and optimization. It’s actually called “Intelligent Transportation Systems,” and essentially uses computer programs to maximize efficiency using past data to predict problem areas and reduce congestion by coordinating traffic signals. Computers can do it all these days.
The Intelligent Transportation System isn’t outlined as its own piece of the budgetary pie, and instead falls under “Other.” Understandably, the biking and walking trails through the city also fall under that $3.3 billion budget. Also understandably, communities that prefer more bike access look at the incredible discrepancy between money spent for car traffic and money spent for “Other” with anger or resentment. Yes, it is absolutely more “green” to take public transit to work than to drive your car. Yes, it’s more “green” to bike to work than to take public transit. It’s probably safer and greener still if everyone just walked to work every day, but we’re not going to close down the freeways to use as trails any time soon.
One of the most interesting things about the plan (for me anyway) is that there are a long list of recommended projects that Metro knows it will not be able to fund. It’s easy to label Metro as an enabler of our fuel-guzzling car culture when you see that they direct almost 30% of their 30-year budget to highways, roads and streets. But what else can they do? The sad fact is that most residents in Los Angeles use their cars to get around, and public transit options just aren’t comprehensive enough to efficiently bounce around town. Now, as gas prices slither toward $5.00 per gallon, that glossy car culture allure is fading for many residents who will ultimately pay more annually in gas than they did for the one-time purchase of their used car. When you’re just going to end up siphoning gas into the air one gallon at a time while sitting in traffic on the 405 freeway, buying a new car seems entirely pointless.
It’s about time that Southern California residents became more self-serving. When you look at how Metro plans on allocating their budget for the next 30 years, I want you to be very very self-centered about your priorities. You probably don’t want to pay $100 a week for gasoline, and you probably want to improve the air quality in Los Angeles (considering that Los Angeles had the worst air quality in the nation in 2007). What’s great about this Long Range Transportation Plan is that it doesn’t have to be completed 30 years down the line, with several large projects filed under “Maybe, if we have the budget.” If Metro had the money, they’d do it all right now, and you’d see many of the benefits right away.
But what are you willing to sacrifice right now in order to see better public transportation options, reduced traffic and cleaner air quality? Would you go to your neighborhood development council or public planning meeting and talk about what you want and how to get it? Are you willing to take the bus and train more often to offset gas and environmental costs? Are you willing to accept a new, dedicated tax specifically for Metro projects? Would you go to a city council meeting and advocate for more money to Metro projects? Would you stop using your car for a week? How about a month?
What are you willing to sacrifice right now in order to see all of these changes in 30 years? Nothing comes free, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t see our investments pay off down the line. I’d rather invest my money now in Los Angeles’ transportation future than watch it spill into the pockets of oil company executives. But would anyone else?
www.racaia.com | tony@fourstory.org
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