It seems to me that all of the arguments represented here boil down to one basic choice. Either infrastructure should be designed to cater to the existing habits of people, or infrastructure should drive those habits. I am reminded of a comment I saw somewhere else on this blog that recommended one solution to these problems was to replace traffic engineers with landscape architects. (I think he must have meant urban designers, but the point is very well taken)

Talking simply about people’s existing transportation habits seems to ignore the the role that the existence of the infrastructure they use to get around had on there being where they are in the first place. To say that people have no choice but to drive 2 hours to work leaves out the fact that the very roads they drive on to get there are what enabled them to see living/working where they do as a viable option. If we had no cars, some people might complain about having to walk or bike 2 hours to work. The problem is not that it’s difficult to get from one place to another. The problem is that people have to travel that far because the roads/freeways/whatever were built in the first place and encouraged everything to be so spread out. Not to mention the asinine zoning laws legally enforcing this separation among uses. I mean, seriously, in whose interest was it to ensure that people lived far away from where they worked and shopped?

It seems to me that government planning (with some notable exceptions) has generally tended toward serving perceived existing needs (LOS, traffic counts, etc), while private development involved the building of infrastructure in order to increase land value for the investors (eg streetcar suburbs). Of course, this dichotomy often becomes perverted, and the government uses its budget and power of eminent domain to serve the private development interests.

All this said, the LA that I live in (Palms/Venice/Santa Monica) is very walkable/bikeable. I have a Ralph’s and two small independent groceries within very easy walking distance. Though I have a small pick-up truck, I’ve put many times as many miles on my bike as on my truck in the last few years. The insurance company for my truck didn’t have a mileage category low enough to cover my actual use. I think their lowest mileage category STARTED in the thousands of miles per year, rather than say, 0-3000 or something.

I was excited to move into an apartment right on Venice Blvd because of the bike lane, but the condition of the road surface scares me MUCH more than the drivers whizzing by to the left.

Moving to the suburbs sucks – and an entire generation realizes that. The exurban world you are describing will apply to two groups in the future: the mega-rich (who can well afford to live in far-flung corners of the earth) and the super poor (these people are already being economically booted out of the inner city in droves).

As each of these moneyed, educated, families move to the city it will make less and less sense to drop so much coin maintaining the boulevard and avenues, schools, etc. in the far flung recesses of the soon-to-be outback of L.A.

The inner city is coming alive again – I don’t believe that dumping the last bits of our wealth into an early- to mid-20th century real-estate-scheme-style transportation network is worth the cost.

It struck me when you wrote this:

“The people I know have to drive (or get on a bus) to Downtown, Culver City, Century City, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Glendale, or LAX/El Segundo if they want to afford to raise a family.”

that all those locations will have gotten or are planned to get rail or BRT in the next ten years. That’s what I see Measure R as doing, resurrecting the rest of the PE interurban system as a hybrid BRT/LRT/HRT system. Nobody should be forced to bear the cost of a car to get to their job. ( Just the insurance cost alone is about the cost of a Metro pass and then you have to add gas, maintenance, parking, etc.) If so, then city planning and the public transit system has failed them. Because if the transit system can’t get them there in a reasonable time, then either the transit is underdeveloped or the planning dept hasn’t provided the tax incentives and regulations to colocate jobs in the regional job centers where the transit goes.

But there are limits to how far transit can go and still be economical. So, what if someone decides to live in a suburb far away from transit? Should those who live in the “inner city” bear the congestion cost and accommodate their automobile commute? That’s what you’re doing when people in the city can’t get around the streets by bike/bus/LRT because cars are blocking their way. That doesn’t seem like good urban policy to me. And the trend is pointing against that thinking, with congestion pricing looming for what were once were “freeways”. This is a good trend because it begins to externalize the costs. The freeways were never really “free”. Besides the billions (trillions?) spent to construct and maintain them (a de facto subsidy for the auto industry) there are health and environmental costs that have never been accounted for.

I’m saying this not as someone who is “anti-car”. I own a car but made the decision to go “car lite” because it made sense on a number of levels. And I realized that once I started using the transit system, I began to care about it and push it to improve. This is the positive feedback loop you want to initiate: get more people to use the system, they start making more demands of it, and resources get redirected to it. To amplify this process you can build out your system (this started in the 1980s and has accelerated) and externalize costs by reducing space on the streets for automobiles (hasn’t happened yet).

I have no illusions about the LA car culture changing overnight. It is pretty strong and alot of it is propaganda that benefits the auto/oil/tire industries. But as we know from history, it wasn’t inevitable. It was only a few generations ago when transit use reached an all-time high when WWII drove up the automobile costs, something conveniently forgotten in the car-centric LA mythology. People aren’t as married to their cars as some would have you think. When costs go up, you begin to see shifts in behavior to use transit like was seen in the gas spike of 2008. Imagine what would happen if the congestion costs begin to be externalized.

I can totally understand why a family would want a backyard in Torrance. But the family who lives downtown and uses transit to get to their job shouldn’t bear the cost of their automobile commute, the Torrance family should bear it. If they don’t want to pay, they can always move somewhere like Orange County which is still stuck in the 1950s, shrinking their transit system and touting their freeway widening projects.

I understand your objections to automobile usage. What I don’t understand is why you fail to see it as an element to an overall urban ecological system known as L.A. It’s as though the anti-car crowd fail to want to recognize that there are several factors that have led to the automobile being so dominant in this city, and that there are reasons people drive 40 miles (or more every day). Simply calling it a “convenience” is reflective of this mindset. It implies that spending 2 extra hours commuting daily on public transit (vs. auto travel) or being late to work 20% of the time is simply an “inconvenience.”

I’m trying to figure out the world you guys live in. Because in the L.A. I live in, people move to Moreno Valley because when they put $2000 a month down for household expenditures they want it to be going towards a mortgage. They move to Torrance because they want their kids to be able to safely walk to a decent public school. And they schlep across town from Willowbrook to Century City, because they inherited their grandparents home and they can’t find a job that pays a decent wage anywhere near them.

You can’t blame the roadway system for the failure to enact any serious housing affordability policies, the vast swaths of land that are devoid of decent paying job and instead have high crime rates and low-quality retail stores, and the crappy inner-city public school system.

Sorry dude, but before I go punishing drivers for responding to this screwed up system (which is far more complex than simple roadway geometry), I’d first begin to handle these issues AND put in place a reasonable transportation alternative for their long-distance commutes.

A city that accommodates toxic automobile traffic at the expense of civil life, health, local economic production, and the basic liberties people have always flocked to cities to enjoy is not one I want to live in anymore. The BBN, and the bike movement, is a counter-balance to the desire to move humans on a street in automobiles above all else.

I think I’m on board with that. The only thing I’ll add is that sometimes “well designed” can be counter intuitive and requires a little risk.

In the Times Sq, NY removed road capacity without doing anything at all to provide alternative transit modes in that specific area. And regardless of any other benefit that may have come from that, A to B travel times improved measurably. I know that this is not the same as removing a travel lane on a cross town arterial. But my point is that these systems are complex and we have to move beyond simple capacity=good argument.

Actually Umberto I’m wrapped up in peak hour commute times – from point A to point B. And those points in Los Angeles are due to a history of decisions, from those as abhorrent as redlining to as stupid as lack of affordable housing and prohibitions on mixed-use are much longer in L.A. than they are in any other city in America. I don’t venture to say the world, because I don’t know the make up for Copenhagen or Amsterdam, as I’ve never been. But I doubt their urban areas stretch 40 miles (the distance from Van Nuys to Long Beach). Heck 25 miles out of Times Square and you’ll begin to approach the Connecticut border. Yet 25 miles is just the distance between Santa Monica and Pasadena!

Different cities, different challenges, different solutions.

And incidentally, Chewie I just don’t see myself ever blaming the people who have to live in this horribly planned megapolis with its inadequate infrastructure for adapting to it so that they can live as comfortable as possible within it. The automobile is the logical mode of transportation and especially for the majority of people it is a work necessity. There’s a huge disconnect between those who rely on transit in L.A. and those who don’t. Those who rely on it – the people who have been late to work numerous times, and been stuck in the cold at 9 p.m. on a dark corner in South LA with grocery bags waiting for a 210 that’s 45 mins late have a completely different approach to Metro – that really outside of the Bus Bench is not heard anywhere on the net or in these forums. My point simply is that there’s a major disconnect between reality in these discussions.

But I digress…the primary point I was making is that LA has a lot of medium density everywhere – it is really spread out. And though many of the kill the car, raise the parking rates to $50/day, congestion pricing zone zealots fail to realize it, the absence of a rapid transit system that connect city centers has been shown to push commercial growth AWAY from the urban core (think Woodland Hills and Torrance). That only contributes to sprawl.

And you need only read anything SCAG has put out in the past 10 year or any Metro EIR that assess where regional trips derive to determine that the vast majority of peak hour trips are long-distance.

And ultimately, our current system does not handle the current peak well anyway.

Based on what metric? If this were a different city perhaps one could say it is not handling the current peak hour. But given the L.A. we live in (our geographic layout, home values/rental costs, disparate public school system, multiple economic centers most of which lack quality affordable housing/communities near them, etc.) isn’t it basically performing as expected?

I am sure that someone out there in Streetsblog land can point to a study done that shows that building a connected bikeways network increases the mode split of people using bikes to get around vs. cars and maintains LOS at the expense of maximum speeds on a street.

You’re presenting a strawman argument. I never said that building a connected bikeway network would not improve traffic or increase cycling and other less polluting forms of transportation (walking and transit use). Quite the reverse. I do think it would. I’m challenging HOW that network is built. We disagree on a fundamental point, which I address in response to another poster right below…

Removing a car lane is going to inconvenience someone, somewhere.

I guess my point is this overarching argument that ANY car lane can/should be removed is well false. Many car lanes can probably be removed. Someone mentioned Rodeo Rd; that’s a good example of a street that could probably be reconfigured to maintain current capacity and/or drop a lane at all but one intersection. Adams Blvd. is another. And yes there are SOME PORTIONS of King Blvd that TODAY have excess capacity (King is an uncharacteristically very wide street in some sections and could fit bike lanes in some portions while maintaining the number of lanes). But most of the streets on this map do not have the excess capacity for a lane drop.

It’s not just “someone, somewhere.” We have a very complex transportation grid. (Ever read the memos/articles on the impact of the Rapid bus signal prioritization system on the grid?) Just as you rightfully mention that often a small percentage reduction in vehicular trips can disproportionately improve traffic, so too can a small percentage increase in delay disproportionately worsen congestion.

urban street = “people-moving shitpipe” That’s rich.

I challenge anyone reading this to prove him wrong. In case you take up the challenge, your submission will be judged against those livable streets and boulevards of 100-odd years ago that seem to show several types of transportation modes co-existing–as well as people just living on/around the streets. True, there was horseshit on those streets, but they certainly weren’t solely “people-moving shitpipes” deviod of any semblance of life other than petroleum-fueled metal boxes speeding through them as they desperately try to get to some far off destination paying no attention to the streets and neighborhoods through which they pass.

I definitely think if people perceived the streets as walkable; they would be much more likely to walk. And that quarter mile estimate is BS, in my opinion.

I think there is a cultural element to this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard planners swear up and down that people won’t walk more than a quarter mile. Seriously. A five minute walk. If people in New York City had that attitude they wouldn’t go anywhere.

I can remember the first time I walked to Downtown LA from my apartment on a day off (three miles). Most people would say “that’s impossible” or “you’re crazy”. What I noticed was that it was good exercise, relaxing, and gave me a sense of accomplishment . . . and required zero fossil fuels.

I guess when you grow up here, and get athsma, like I did, you loose a little patience with excuse making. The urban form in LA generally sucks, it encourages people to drive. But you know what, people can resist that if they choose to. Once you build a critical mass of people resisting, you can start to change the urban form so we can finally have what we need and deserve: a city that makes it convenient to do the right thing!

One measure for some stretches of these streets might be to retime light signalization for bicyclist speeds (15mph), which actually improves car traffic flow in addition to making it safer for bicyclists.

The induced slower speeds, when drivers are educated to the fact that the lights are timed to those slower speeds (signage helps), actually creates time and space for drivers to react to each other without as much heavy braking behavior followed by speeding–creating more smoothly flowing traffic. Tom Vanderbilt’s book “Traffic” has good some descriptions of this type of phenomena.

True, although you seem to be saying that the only measure of Level of Service (LOS) to judge this on is cars travelling long distances. Why is that the mode that absolutely cannot be impinged on even if other options are made available? And ultimately, our current system does not handle the current peak well anyway. Rush hour congestion is demonstrably bad, worse than almost all other cities in the US, and getting worse. So show me the plan that is going to even be able to maintain the current horrible LOS. Even if you could expand freeways sufficiently, it doesn’t address the issue of choke points, street level traffic, etc.

it is very hard for me to believe that anywhere near the majority of drivers on the road are only going 2 miles in the PM peak hour.

You’re probably right. But you don’t need to remove the ‘majority’ of cars from the road to have a huge impact on congestion, polution, and other externalities. Traffic congestion is highly sensitive to “tipping points” in demand. So even a small reduction in the number of cars can have large impacts on the overall LOS. (see: http://www.ceosforcities.org/blog/entry/2169)

Bashing cars, complaining about people who drive is not persuasive.
Fair enough, and I think too many people get sucked into the us vs. them, car hating position. But bashing a transportation system that essentially forces people into cars even though they have huge negative impacts is reasonable and persuasive. I don’t believe that Angelinos drive everywhere because they are “lazy” or because of our “car culture”. People drive because they perceive that they have no choice. Some like to act like our current transport system grew up organically and naturally and we have to fight human nature to change it. Not true, very specific decisions were made that gave us what we have now.

If you’re going to argue for reduced vehicular capacity (dropping vehicular lanes) better be able to argue that at the worst it will be a neutral move with respect to travel time.
Removing a car lane is going to inconvenience someone, somewhere. You can’t design a transport system if the rule is that existing capacity for each mode, at each individual square foot of the entire system cannot be reduced, only expanded. Sometimes you have to reduce capacity for one mode in certain areas in order to improve the overall system. Does it suck if it’s “your road” that gets “degraded”? Sure. But tough luck, we’re all in this together and there are bigger issues than any one individual’s current driving route. And that’s even before you talk about externalities. Increased auto capacity takes away my right to live, breathe, walk, afford other necessities, etc. etc. Maybe that isn’t as simple a public policy argument to make as “if we expand the freeway, your commute time drops.” But if we’re going to base policy on only simplistic (and often untrue) soundbites, I think we’re in for trouble.

Average Daily Tris in Liemert Park along Exposition Blvd range between 1,000 and 13,000 (with the majority ranging in the 10,000 ADT range). Martin Luther King Blvd. is doing around 30,000+ ADT at it’s major intersections, but is half that at non-signalized intersections.

I’m not sure about Expo’s designation, but it isn’t carrying the minimim for a Major Highway Class II, and isn’t carrying enough cars for a Secondary Highway either.

MLK is a Major Highway Class I – 50,000+ ADT is it’s designed capacity.

I’m sorry I didn’t analyze the other arterials, but their numbers look similar.

So, let’s move on to the idea that bicycle facilities will worsen “congestion” (reduced LOS for cars?). I cannot think of any evidence to bring to bear on this, but I am sure that someone out there in Streetsblog land can point to a study done that shows that building a connected bikeways network increases the mode split of people using bikes to get around vs. cars and maintains LOS at the expense of maximum speeds on a street. Anyone?

I can’t accept this. Cars need to be bashed. They kill almost 40,000 people per year in this country, they create pollution that is disproportionately experienced by the poor and people of color, not just in the U.S. (e.g. Hispanic families near oil refineries in Wilmington), but globally (e.g. Bangladesh and climate change), and they are a contributing factor to America’s sedentary lifestyle and obesity epidemic.

I say all this as a person who owns a car and has held jobs in LA County that I wouldn’t have been able to get to without driving. I know what the deal is. But somebody has to stand up to this system. The fact is, regular people can and should do more to drive less in greater LA. As long as PM peak hour driving speed is our only transportation policy priority, we’ll keep having a deadly, unjust, and unsustainable transportation system.

In this thread I didn’t say it was a better option. I said grade separated transit adds necessary capacity to our transportation system that perhaps allows the vehicular capacity to be reduced without drastically worsening commute times.

Understand, unlike most activists that frequent these forums I’m a transportation advocate. Yes, I’m pro lots of grade separated rail in the urban core, but that support is not (unlike some) because I have a train fetish, but rather because if done right a grade separated urban rail system can meet the objectives of improving our city and economy. (Note the qualifier “If done right.” Most of the lines we’re building are not being “done right.”)

There are many arterials in LA that see traffic well below their designed capacity.

Not anywhere near where I live (Leimert Park). And those stretches of some streets that see traffic below their designed capacity today aren’t expected to stay that way much longer. One of my talking points in arguing for a tunnel under Crenshaw Blvd for the Crenshaw Line was the projected LOS E and F map for 2030. It was the whole length of the boulevard and every major intersection. I understand Crenshaw, like Wilshire, Santa Monica and others are the spine of our arterial network, but I see a lot of these boulevards on this very map.

It is absolutely true that few people will commute by bike from Santa Monica to downtown every day. But the majority of trips (even in LA) are under two miles. Remove a portion of those trips from the car lanes and you will improve travel times for those who must or choose to drive.

Now someone is beginning to answer my question, which again was: your argument rest on an assumption that existing vehicular demands, which is QUANTIFIABLE, can instead be fulfilled by cycling. What is your basis/support for such a claim[?]

But is that 2 miles a general throughout the day stat? I don’t think we care about daily averages, at least I don’t. It’s the peak hour conditions that our roadway/transportation system is and must be designed to handle. At least where I live, it is very hard for me to believe that anywhere near the majority of drivers on the road are only going 2 miles in the PM peak hour.

This is either your strongest pillar or your Achilles’ heel. Bashing cars, complaining about people who drive is not persuasive to me nor a lot of other people. If you’re going to argue for reduced vehicular capacity (dropping vehicular lanes) better be able to argue that at the worst it will be a neutral move with respect to travel time.