Streetsblog Los Angeles

Miami’s conversion of HOV lane space to new high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as part of the federal Urban Partnership
program, which also prompted New York City’s congestion pricing push,
is cutting travel times for local transit and boosting use — but
overall bus ridership in the corridor has stayed static, according to a
new report from the U.S. DOT.

The
U.S. DOT, working alongside the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute,
found that the city’s 95 Express project has trimmed travel times by as
much as two-thirds for users of the bus service on northbound HOT
lanes.

But the picture is murkier for transit in Miami’s
I-95 corridor, which saw static levels of "mode share"
(transportation-speak for the percentage of area travelers using a
particular option) between 2008 and 2009.

Overall bus
ridership in the I-95 corridor decreased by 4.6 percent, even as 95
Express bus ridership rose by 30 percent during the same period,
according to the report.

Why did broad transit use fall while
single-occupany vehicles flocked to the new HOT lanes? Service cuts and
fare hikes of as much as 33 percent for monthly transit passes played a
big role, the U.S. DOT found, as did the economic recession and lower
gas prices that made auto travel more appealing to locals.

However,
the report did contain some positive signals for transit mode share in
Miami’s I-95 area. Half of the bus riders surveyed by the U.S. DOT said
they had switched over from car travel, "which suggests that the 95
Express bus service in general has had some success over time in
attracting private auto users," the report stated.

Moreover,
the U.S. DOT noted that 95 Express buses constitute just one-fifth of
the corridor’s total transit ridership — meaning that even a
30-percent increase in popularity can’t carry the whole system. That
could change this month, however, with the current northbound 95
Express HOT lanes adding a southbound component and the state starting bus service connecting Miami-Dade with Broward County, its northern neighbor.

Here comes one positive side benefit of the L.A. budget crisis:
Gridlock. Our tight budget means the city can no longer afford to pick
up the tab to make driving easier — by providing free traffic officers
for events at the Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Bowl, and other major
venues.

So now, most of these venues plan to pick up the tab — but also to reduce the number of traffic officers working — which according to the L.A. Times, “could lead to congestion.”

The change doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll have more congestion.
Perhaps more people will simply take public transportation to these
events, as L.A.’s Principal Transportation Engineer Alan Willis is
apparently encouraging people to do — though it’s unclear from the L.A.
Times article what concrete steps, if any, Willis plans to take to
actually get people on buses and rail. But even if we do get more
congestion, this is good news for both the environment and alternative
transit advocates, according to David Owen, a staff writer at The New
Yorker whose latest Wall Street Journal article expounds on “How Traffic Jams Help the Environment.” (via Idea)

“Traffic jams can actually be environmentally beneficial if they
turn subways, buses, car pools, bicycles and walking into
more-attractive options,” Owen points out. That may be a rather obvious
observation, but Owen’s arguments that both ramp metering and
congestion pricing aren’t necessarily good for the environment will be
surprising at first for many alternative transit advocates:

Advocates of congestion-fighting strategies usually
argue that traffic jams waste gasoline. That’s true, but the energy
waste and carbon output attributable to idling cars is smaller than
that attributable to the overall transportation network. There’s
nothing green about fighting congestion if, by distributing traffic
more efficiently, it results in an overall increase in traffic volume
and extra miles driven by vehicles avoiding the fee areas.

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As Washington conventional wisdom has it,
raising gas taxes or creating a vehicle miles traveled tax to pay for
transportation is impossible during the current recession. After all,
who would want to squeeze cash-strapped commuters during tough economic
times?

As it turns out, the public is very willing to pay for the
shorter commuting times that result from less traffic — and they’re
willing to pay top dollar, as IBM’s new Commuter Pain Index (CPI) shows.

When
asked what value they would place on every 15 minutes sliced from their
daily commute, 36.5 percent of CPI respondents said between $10 and
$20. That’s about five times the recent trading price of a ton of carbon emissions on the nation’s climate-change exchanges.

And
the price of a shorter commute was higher in more congested cities. In
Los Angeles, 22 percent of residents said every 15 minutes not spent en route to work would be worth between $31 and $40 — or more than $100 per hour.

What
does the data mean? For one thing, those who fear that voters would
revolt if asked to pay more for a more efficient, less congested
transport network shouldn’t let that stop policy-making. As every
successful politician knows (and the president is re-learning on health care), messaging is the key to winning over the public.

In
other words, Democrats who feign unwillingness to subject voters to
higher gas taxes are ignoring their ability to control the message.
When a greater contribution to transportation is pitched as a way to shorten commutes and give workers more free time, the prospect becomes more desirable.

And
it’s not that lawmakers don’t know how to decrease congestion,
particularly in the urban areas that were polled to produce the CPI.
Reducing the number of car trips and lowering demand during peak travel
times are proven to be a cheaper and more effective method of battling congestion than expanding highway capacity.

Is it time to nickname the White House’s Sustainable Communities Initiative the "Shorter Commutes Initiative"?

This week's Metro Board Meeting, the meeting where much of the transportation related news for the entire month comes to a conclusion, has a lot of interesting items.  Highlighted by the potential passage of the "2009" Long Range Transportation Plan and the potential extension of the AnsaldoBreda light rail car contract.  However, some smaller items, such as a discussion of Asm. Lieu's proposal to extend HOV access to cars with the magic "fuel efficient" sticker, a setting of the fares for the Silver Line and setting the prices for Metro's Express Lanes will also be discussed.

Highlighting the agenda is an expected vote on the 2009 Long Range Transportation Plan.  Technically, the LRTP is a document required by the federal government before agencies can request federal funds, but traditionally it is also a visionary document where an agency spells out its priorities and its vision for the growth or transit and transportation in its area.

You may remember that Metro delayed a vote on the 2008 LRTP until this year so that it could take into account whether or not Measure R had passed when creating its project timeline.  Over eight months after the transit tax's passage, the Board is finally ready to vote on the LRTP.

Or are they?  At a "workshop" on the LRTP last month, then Board Chair Antonio Villaraigosa moved to hold off passing the 2009 LRTP until July so that Metro could do more outreach.  Tt had been eighteen months since Imagine campaign had kicked off and the Mayor claimed he wanted to make Metro's vision clear to county residents before its passage.  If there's been any new outreach in the last six weeks, I'm not aware of it. Based on email conversations; neither is the Bus Rider's Union or the Southern California Transit Advocates.  So.CA.TA's  Dana Gabbard took a humorous look at the lack of any new outreach efforts on behalf of the LRTP.

...previous Plan preparation included convening stakeholder groups to provide input while the draft plan was being formulated and a round of public meetings in the region (held in the evenings) on the draft plan were conducted seeking input.

This current plan has had minimal to no substantive means by which to comment. A poorly publicized hearing held during a weekday in downtown L.A. falls far short of what used to be common practice.

That said, I should note the old way of doing things still mostly resulted in what you would expect they planned to do anyway, so I am not claiming it was paradise or some such. But at least the niceties were observed.

As best I can tell, with the exception of the addition of some clarifying language on bicycle and pedestrian funding; the current draft plan is no different than what was presented at last month's workshop.  So if they weren't going to change anything, or do more outreach, than what was the point of the delay?  I'm pretty sure they didn't just hold-up the process so that they could release the new bicycle and pedestrian funding numbers.

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Anyone trying to catch up on Metro's Express Lanes plans for the I-10 and I-110 by reading the transcript from last week's live chat would have stumbled upon a surprise.  For nearly a week, the answer has been changed now, it seemed as though the agency was planning to deliberately refuse Express Lanes entry to households of lesser means.

Question: What happens if you are in the lane without a transponder in your car? Or if the person runs out of money on their pre-paid account, do you bill them? Is there a payment plan to be set up to pay for the transponder or some kind of notification, if funds are low? Mello S.

Answer: When a person registers for the Rewards program or opens a transponder account, we will be able to link their address to U.S. Census household income data and be told if they qualify. The qualifying limit will probably be something like $35,000 per family.

This answer was pretty shocking and sort of crazy.  Not only would this be an unprecedented policy, but it was going to require the largest mea-culpa of all time.  After all the mocking I did of Times' columnist Tim Rutten's non-sensical sob story about a poor single mother having to choose between being at her son's emergency room bed or eating for the next month; I'd probably have to show up to his house and buff his car to get his forgiveness.

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Poor Tim Rutten.  Last week the Times' columnist wrote an "opinion piece" that attacked congestion pricing and now everyone is attacking him.  Some hack blogger pointed out that congestion pricing actually would make life easier for the fictitious poor people he used to argue his point.  Now, a USC professor has pointed out that he didn't really do any research on congestion pricing and his own newspaper has printed an editorial that basically talks the opposite viewpoint that he expressed last week.  Heck, even Metro itself took the time to take apart Rutten's argument piece by piece.

The Times officially backs road pricing in yesterday's editorial, "Congestion Pricing on Freeways Benefits All."  It starts out slowly, noting that "proponents of economic justice" are concerned about the plan (translation: Tim Rutten is pretending to be concerned about the poor), but that it makes sense for everyone.

The toll lanes will provide people of all incomes with a choice they don't currently have. It's true that choosing to pay the toll will be easier for people of means, but it's senseless to argue that even low-income people are better off having no choice at all.

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As Metro’s "Express Lanes" project starts to make headlines, you can expect to see more and more of these types of articles; misinformation dressed up as altruistic concern for others, appearing in local papers everywhere.  For those of us who love the idea of congestion pricing on highways we’re left with an unsavory choice: defend Metro’s week anti-congestion pricing program or let non-believers slam congestion pricing altogether.

Fortunately, today’s piece in the Times by Tim Rutten, the same journalist who wrote a very similar piece last year, is so tortured in its logic that it doesn’t require a lot of ammo to rebut.  In it, Rutten argues that Metro’s Express Lanes plan is bad because it is part of a conspiracy to bring road pricing of any sort to Los Angeles County, it won’t do anything to reduce congestion because it won’t apply during rush hour, and because it’s anti-poor people.

First off, let’s cover where Rutten is right.  Because Metro lacks the guts to require a toll from hybrids with the anti-logic clean air stickers or "HOV-"2 and because federal law requires that HOV lanes move at 45 miles per hour; the pricing plan will not be in effect when roads are most congested.  This is a very cogent argument.

However, Rutten’s defense of the single-working mother who will be forced to choose between being with her sick child or paying the rent because of Express Lanes; is beyond eye rolling.  Last year when Rutten rose to the defense of his imaginary working-class friends, I pointed to the fact that when actually asked, the working class and working poor living in areas with congestion pricing prefer having the pay lanes than not having the pay lanes.  Personally, I’ll believe what the less-well-off highway driver says when asked over what Tim Rutten has decided they think without having done any research.

This year, Rutten creates the following imaginary nightmare scenario which is even more easily debunked.  This time I didn’t even have to use a search engine.

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Yesterday, the Metro, aka LACMTA, announced the details of it's HOT Lanes FAST Lanes Express Lanes proposal to take existing carpool lanes on the I-10 and I-110 freeways into and out of Downtown Los Angeles.  While the new plan has been tweaked from the one outlined last August in one aspect, it is still missing one of the basic precepts of congestion pricing: congestion pricing should reduce the demand for car travel.

First, let's outline the basics of the plan.  Toll Lanes on the I-10 and I-110 will be converted to toll lanes for non HOV and transit vehicles.  Using variable toll technology, commuters of any type of will be able to use the new toll lane for a price ranging from between twenty five cents and $1.40.  However, the toll lanes will close to non-HOV and Transit vehicles if average speed in the toll lanes falls to below forty-five miles per hour.

The variable toll lanes are part of Metro's pilot program to experiment with congestion pricing that will begin in December of 2010.  The rest of the plan involves using hundreds of millions of federal dollars to increase transit options, widen on ramps and Adams Ave where much of the 110 traffic will funnel into City streets.

So here's the rub, there is nothing in the congestion pricing plan that encourages people to drive less.  The plan removes no current drivers from the current car pool lane, even "HOV-2" vehicles at any point.  Then taking the "congestion" out of congestion pricing, the lane will actually be closed to paying vehicles during the most congested periods.  In other words, this plan will not effect traffic during the most congested periods.

The difference between this plan and the one outlined in August of 2008 is that this plan closes the Express Lanes based on traffic volume instead of on whether or not it's rush hour.  I guess you could call this plan anti-Congestion Pricing.  If it's congested, it's not priced.

But, the plan isn't finalized yet.  In fact, starting Saturday, there will be a series of hearings on the proposal.  For a full list, read on after the jump.  I'll be going to one next Monday, if you want me to carry your thoughts with me to enter into public comment, leave them in the Streetsblog comment section below.

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A lot has been said over some of the items on today's City Council Transportation Committee hearing, most of it bad, but there is one agenda item we haven't yet touched on that could have a huge impact on traffic and congestion in Los Angeles.

Under the innocuous headlines "Funding Agreements for Congestion Reduction Initiatives," the LADOT outlines a plan to bring congestion parking to Los Angeles.  Under congestion pricing, the cost of metered car parking changes throughout the day to go up and down with demand.  By pricing parking so that there will always be between ten and thirty percent of on-street parking capacity available; the city hopes to improve mobility, optimize revenue and even encourage a modal shift away from single-occupancy vehicle driving.

The LADOT plans to pilot congestion pricing in the Central Business, Chinatown, Civic Center, East Downtown, Little Tokyo and Washington-Broadway Districts

The LADOT explains how congestion parking can benefit the downtown:

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