Los Angeles’ Mass Transit System Is a Form of Neo-Apartheid
by David Deutsch
I know, this is an extreme and incendiary statement, especially coming from a former Federal transportation auditor. You might be surprised to learn that not all Federal bureaucrats are gray, depressing loners and, more often than not, are (gasp) passionate human beings. Well, this ex-government stiff has been known to exhibit emotions from time to time, and L.A.’s transportation infrastructure is just one of those things that gets me riled up.
My first brush with L.A.’s public transportation system came on September 10, 2006. Just four weeks before this day, I had quit my job as a Federal auditor at the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, DC; put all my stuff in the back of a U-Haul trailer; attached the trailer to my 1998 Honda Civic; bought a ton of camping gear; drove across the country for six days; found an apartment in L.A. (try driving down the 110 in a 4-cylinder car towing a trailer ... better yet, don’t); and settled in Koreatown.
On September 10, 2006, I woke up early, ready to visit the Getty Museum with two friends, one being FourStory writer Mike Plunkett. As I walked to my car, I noticed it was distinctly no longer there. I could not fathom why it would have been towed or stolen, so I flagged down a cop who was driving by, and asked him what happened.
“Was that your Civic?” he half-snickered, not even trying to conceal his amusement.
“Uh, yes.” I replied.
“Oh, so you are the last piece of our puzzle.” Snicker chortle snort.
To make a long story even longer, some unlicensed, uninsured drunken kid smashed my car with his uncle’s van, thus transforming me from stressed-out local resident to an inanimate puzzle piece.
As I said, at the time I was brand-new to Los Angeles and fresh from the mass-transit culture of Washington, DC. Determined, stubborn and newly carless, I was determined to get around town exclusively by mass transit. It made sense at the time: I figured I could save money on gas, insurance, and repairs, and take the money I got from my insurance company and put it in the bank. Some newfound friends in my K-Town neighborhood snickered at my decision, but I was determined, and nothing was gonna stop me.
That is, nothing except for L.A.’s bus system was gonna stop me.
It didn’t take long to discover that at 10-minute drive to USC took nearly an hour by bus. And, that bus route stopped running shortly after I got out of class, thus potentially leaving me stranded in South Central without a way to get home. That of course does not even take into account other concerns, such as dating. I was single at the time, and while it is not impossible to meet that one-in-a-million woman in L.A. who actually prefers a guy without a car, the actual odds of meeting that special person are, shall we say, small without wheels.
The sad fact is that I have it relatively easy: I am a single guy living alone without kids. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for a single parent to get to and from work via bus, take care of the children, cook all the meals, and still find a way to pay all the bills.
Whether by design or by accident (I want to think it’s the latter), this town’s transportation system keeps poor people poor regardless of race or ethnicity. After all, it is equally difficult for a carless white person to navigate L.A. as it is for a Hispanic or black person. Thus, I call it neo-apartheid. How else could one describe this situation?
So yes, I am an extremist. Indeed, I am such an extremist that I don’t think that L.A. residents must be bound to the albatross of a freeway-turned-parking-lot culture simply because that’s how things have always been done. Granted, I am very much an outsider in this town, so sue me for naiveté. But, it seems to me Los Angeles needs a transportation infrastructure overhaul, and this overhaul has to include a massive mass-transit project.
So, let’s assume for a moment that a plurality of Angelenos agree that L.A. should develop a comprehensive mass-transit infrastructure. Yes, I know, this is a huge assumption, and probably a false one, but just bear with me for the sake of argument. Assuming most Angelenos are open to overhauling our transportation system, how do we do that?
In a nutshell, we need willpower. People in this region need the willpower to develop a new mass transit program that extends throughout the Southland. And to do that, we will need to tap Federal funds. And to do that, you have to put a plan together and present it to the Feds. (This process is called the New Starts program.) Part of that plan requires a dedicated source of revenues, voted upon and approved by the people.
In other words, we need the willpower to pass a dedicated tax hike.
I don’t think it will be difficult to convince most locals that it would be really cool to reduce traffic and smog in the next 10-15 years. But convincing them we have to raise about $20 billion in dedicated tax revenues—just for the L.A. metro area alone, not to mention the rest of the Southland—will be a lot more difficult.
Additionally, we need to convince Angelenos that building more highways is not the way to decrease traffic. Granted, building new roads is cheap and politically popular, and on paper looks like the best way to reduce traffic. But building new roads is not an effective long-term solution: studies have shown that building more roads inevitably leads to increased demand for cars and driving. The best way to ease Los Angeles traffic is to reduce the number of cars on the road by giving people an incentive to get around without a car. And the best long-term way to do that is to overhaul our mass transit system, whether it’s through rapid-transit buses, light rail, metro rail, high-speed trains to the airport, or whatever. Even more important, said mass-transit oriented has to be built into the hearts and minds of Angelenos, which of course is easier said than done.
One final point: L.A. should learn from the mistakes of other transportation-oriented cities, such as Washington, DC. While DC’s mass transit system is fantastic, the city made a huge error that they probably will never be able to resolve. When the Metro system was being built way back when, the residents of Georgetown protested. Rich Georgetownites feared those scary, dark-skinned folks would show up in their neighborhoods, steal their televisions, and take the Metro back to Southeast DC with their newly-acquired prizes. Georgetown is now a transportation nightmare. Driving through that part of town is just plain awful, easily rivaling downtown L.A. during rush hour. And parking there is even worse. So such a transportation plan cannot exclude the upper-class areas like Beverly Hills and Brentwood, despite their inevitable howls of dissent.
By no means would such a program be easy, as successful implementation of such an enormous project would require more than a tax hike. It would also involve enlisting a wide variety of stakeholders, including business leaders, nonprofits, local politicians and, above all, the community, to be a part of the process. And it would take a great deal of patience, not to mention even more traffic jams, as building the transit system would almost certainly involve closing down roads for extended periods of time.
No matter the means, the end cannot be just “to revitalize this town’s transportation infrastructure.” This must be a plan to end neo-apartheid and give everyone in L.A. the chance to succeed.
But then again, I am an extremist.
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