An Advanced City in Which Even the Rich Use Public Transportation

The Third Avenue El. Watercolor and ink by my aunt, Florence Rosen.

With the Country’s future president, Kamala Harris, finding her groove, I am happy to write again about Los Angeles. It was in LA that I met the future president when she was running for U.S. Senate. I am sure that she doesn’t remember me, but that’s OK. If I could, I’d be voting early and often for the best thing to happen this election cycle. Harris represents the role of hard work and merit in public service rather than legacy and a fat trust fund.

And hopefully Harris’ election in November will be the final nail in the coffin of the convicted felon and the equally weird wingnut he’s chosen as his running mate.

While it’s true that we are still just under 100 days from the final vote count, having Harris leading the Democratic ticket for president has given me hope about the country as well as renewed faith in the American electorate.

But enough about the need to defeat the felon. I am here again to talk about LA and that important city’s improving public transportation picture.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Los Angeles where I lived for many years and worked as an advocate for expanding public transit. You know LA, that apocalyptic hellscape with spanking new trains and bike infrastructure and CicLAvia, a regularly scheduled open streets event that is the best such ciclovía north of México and Central America. I’d take the LA hellscape any day over the still too red parts of this nation.

As a lover of cities and public transportation, I live by the wisdom of Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. In 2010, Peñalosa said, "Una ciudad avanzada no es en la que los pobres pueden moverse en carro, sino una en la que incluso los ricos utilizan el transporte público."

"An advanced city is not one in which the poor can get around by car, but one in which even the rich use public transportation."

What city comes to mind when you read that? In the U.S., I think of New York and maybe Chicago. Sure, not every super rich New Yorker takes the subway but many do. And even before UTOG (remember them?) and Uber, that reality has made New York a transit mecca compared to other cities in this transit laggard of a country. If I hear one more non-transit riding friend from elsewhere tell me that they love riding the trains in New York (but never ride the bus or train where they live) I am going to scream.

Channeling Peñalosa, I say that every city needs to become a public transit mecca for everyone. And LA more than most cities still needs to ditch that long-held belief of too many Angelenos that transit in LA is for the transit dependent and the poor, and not for them. What a short sighted, naive way to view infrastructure investment and what a dumb call if the goal is to make the city as strong and economically vigorous as it can be. What we in LA County achieved in 2016 in passing Measure M, the no-sunset transportation sales tax measure by nearly 71 percent, is a forever tax that is in large part paying for LA’s ambitious transit expansion, for everyone! Measure M was transformational and demonstrated that our too often divided electorate can sometimes find common ground on smart public infrastructure investment and planning aimed at improving everyone’s life, air quality and commute. 

Who still doesn’t think of LA as a traffic choked nightmare shrouded in smog even though it long ago tackled the worst of its air pollution problem by banning wood burning fireplaces, enforcing air quality regulations and, thanks to California, moving the nation away from its addiction to leaded gas?

Plastic animals for sale on Venice Blvd in Culver City. LA still charms me with its eclectic mix of tacky street scenes. In some ways I have endearingly long thought of LA as Brooklyn with Palm Trees.

Think of it this way. While New Yorkers argue over the shortsighted Governor’s billion plus dollar pause of congestion pricing, Los Angeles is building transit lines that are already better tying together the region and making more Angelenos transit riders rather than drivers.

To see the progress that LA is making on its Measure M-funded transportation improvements, I came back to the city recently for the first time in two years.

The new K Line (Crenshaw Line) station in Inglewood.

What did I see?

• A new transit line - the partially completed K Line (Crenshaw Line)  from Crenshaw and Exposition in South LA to Inglewood.

• Healthy, crowded buses including the LA Metro 28, my old Olympic Blvd ride from KTown to downtown LA, as well as a less crowded Culver City bus from LAX up Sepulveda Blvd to Pico and LA Metro and Santa Monica Big Bus buses along Venice and Pico Blvds between the 405 Freeway and Cochran in Mid City.

Take the LA Metro 28 bus to Guelaguetza, a favorite Oaxacan restaurant on Olympic Blvd in Koreatown.

• Progress on the long-delayed Wilshire Blvd subway to the Westwood VA.

• Lots of transit-oriented development along Exposition Blvd, adjacent to the E Line (Expo Line) train from downtown LA to Santa Monica.

Transit-oriented development at the Culver City Station along LA Metro’s E Line (Expo Line).

• Pristine, empty stations and lightly traveled trains sometimes boasting more law enforcement and Metro staff than riders.

The new K Line (Crenshaw Line) Expo/Crenshaw station.

The fact remains, a lot of Angelenos and visitors don’t ride Metro. The transit agency and the Chamber of Commerce need to continue to work to convince more people to Go Metro. Still, I was pleased to see more riders than I had in the past on the E Line (Expo Line) and LA Metro buses. Not so much on the new, partially completed K Line. 

A Prius, à la artist Kenny Scharf, that thinks it’s a bullet train. Venice Blvd in Mid City.

In 2023, LA Metro carried 270 million passengers, a 6.6 percent increase over the prior year.

 No one rides transit in Los Angeles.

As I wrote recently in Cities and Transportation, going forward, LA Metro’s new trains and stations will be the envy of cities like Nashville which foolishly drank the Koch Brothers’ (Americans for Prosperity) Kool-Aid and voted to kill their own past public transit investment.

Little Tokyo/Arts District Station on the A and E Lines.

LAX and the People Mover

Of course it’s not all roses in the dystopian hellscape known as Los Angeles. 

Imagine if your city were hosting the next Summer Olympics on the heels of Paris’ impressive transformation from a world class city into an exceptional world class city of the future for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Oh wait, Los Angeles is up next and most of those visitors will arrive via LAX. Wouldn’t the City of Angels want to make getting from the airport to downtown LA as streamlined as possible rather than adding a People Mover to the transportation mix which will never meaningfully compete with Uber or even airport shuttles?

The so-called LAX Automated People Mover won't move anyone closer to their flight before the end of 2025, another $400 million over budget. $3.5 billion could have built a real K Line station plus moving sidewalks to all the terminals at LAX if we only had the will to do so instead of the balkanized stupidity of LAWA (Los Angeles World Airports) and LA Metro being on different pages. Ah politics…

Why do so many American cities opt for a lousy, toy train airport connector when, as in the case of LAX, LA Metro is already building a new train line that goes right past, but not to, the airport? The unacceptable delays and the substandard solution for an airport as congested as LAX reminds me of the BART joke of a costly connection to Oakland International Airport.

Bundy Triangle

Another very real problem for LA and other cities in the West is the many residents, some of them with mental health and substance abuse issues, priced out of affordable housing in the region. At Bundy Triangle Park in West LA, I was inspired to meet in person with Walton Chiu, a community activist who is working hard with a group of fellow West LA residents and the West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council to activate and reopen long shuttered Bundy Triangle. Back in 2011, “Inspired by the success of CicLAvia II and ever hopeful that LA will soon become a more transit-oriented city complete with streets, parks and bike lanes that serve our multi-modal population,” I  launched a campaign to improve LA by reopening the park.

The park reopening never happened. As inspiring as it was to see the new effort at Bundy Triangle, I was saddened to see that too many Angelenos still can’t find affordable housing in the city.

Bundy Triangle Park at Santa Monica Blvd and Bundy Drive in a park-starved part of West LA. Say it ain’t so!

Here’s to a victory for Kamala Harris over weird in November and for a peaceful and cooler planet featuring more transit-oriented affordable, equitable housing in cities from New York to LA and beyond!

Yours in transit,

Joel

Joel Epstein is a New Yorker and an advocate for public transit, livable cities and public space.

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