The time is right to re-examine the L.A. freeway
latimes.com
latimes.com
Simply charge people 10 or 20 dollars to drive at heavily impacted times of the day. Take every last cent of that toll to subsidize buses and eventually mass transit on the same route.
People in a hurry win because their time is valuable and they get to buy it back relatively cheaply. People not in a hurry win because they get subsidized mass transit. Everyone wins because traffic and pollution go down.
In a country where we allow people to live in misery just to uphold the "Free Market", why do we allow our streets and freeways to become unusable twice a day just so freeways remain "free"?
Initially, I was going to reply that it was crass. Then, I thought about it and grinned.
But I think that flakmonkey's point is that yes, if you're poor, you'll be stuck in traffic at least just as long. More likely though, you'll be stuck in traffic far more than currently, because people who can afford to pay for it will. Being that freeways use public funds, that probably shouldn't be the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak
It seems to represent everything else in the state of California: you get what you pay for. It creates a classist, elitist society.
They just started implementing them on some freeways, like I-10 (maybe 2 years ago?). They eliminated the (free) carpool lane and put this in place.
I know city workers who brag about getting their transponders subsidised and get to ride in the cool fast lane.
EDIT: The FasTrak lanes/"ExpressLanes" are actually combined with the free carpool lanes. Sorry for the confusion.
EDIT 2: This is how it works: https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml
The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money.
Further info: http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...
Some people are made better off, and nobody is made worse off.
Where things are objectively seems like a fine way to compare.
I would argue that the levels of instability make modern stresses higher. Even though there are many luxuries to help deal with these stresses, they are maintained only tenuously. The slightest disruption to a break-even lifestyle can result in disaster, and even if everything goes perfectly there may not be any spare cash to save for an eventual escape.
Have you tried living in a county with a social safety system?
In earlier times levels of poverty now experienced would have been fatal and populations would have fallen. Today we allow them to live. But in crushing abject liberty. Transmitted to their children.
Which is preferable?
In Ft. Lauderdale we have an HOV lane that you can enter whenever you want and exit whenever you want. Granted, we don't have near as much traffic as LA has, but at least in this system traffic keeps moving forward as people move in and out of the HOV lane. We also have an express lane that you pay for and exit at the end of 595, the equivalent of the 110 to our suburbs. The express lane there has really reduced traffic. When I'm running late, I pay $.50 and fly across, and otherwise I can still go faster than before.
I'm all for thinking about ideas to make transport work better, but this sort of stuff makes it quite hard to come up with good ones.
> It's quite possible to have a socialist
> society in which you get what you can pay for.
> Capitalism is about the means of
> production being privately owned.
Going back to the original comment[0]:
> ... you get what you pay for. It creates
> a classist, elitist society.
Capitalism => private ownership of production
=> operation for profit
=> charging for services
=> only get what you pay for
=> classist, elitist society
(according to kafkaesque[1])
I personally believe that all traffic (including surface streets) should pay congestion tolls when there would otherwise be a traffic jam. Again, spend all that money to subsidize mass transit which would benefit local residents without raising local taxes.
Laws can be changed. (Otherwise, congestion tolls wouldn't be an issue, since they could never be imposed.)
This could have multiple outcomes:
- Change the schedule so that not everyone is on the road the same time;
- More remote work;
- Higher salaries when you have to drive in peak hours.
You don't have less vehicules; just less at the same time.
This was actually what the former Communist authorities from my Eastern European country did back in the late '70s- the'80s, when public transport in the capital city was like this: http://www.ap-arte.ro/fckupload/82_1632%20april%20Tram_super... and http://jurnalul.ro/thumbs/big/2009/06/05/trasee-interminabil... .
Edit: good read: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...
A "24-hour train that goes to every business and every home in the area" is not necessary to achieve this. It is very easy to live without a car in many of the cities which implement congestion tolls, and they don't have 24-hour train service straight to everyone's front door. Trains or buses within walking distance of most people's homes and workplaces, which operate from say 5AM to midnight, would be sufficient, and that is exactly what most great cities in the world have.
If you widen the roads or add lanes, making commutes less miserable, people will move farther from work where it's cheaper and maintain their previous misery level. In other words, traffic volume (demand) will always rise to meet the available amount of road (supply).
In other words, the congestion charge is a constraint on traffic volume, just as road supply is, because it changes the equilibrium of supply and demand.
It isn't like this is a hypothetical experiment that hasn't been tried. It is a fact that people take public transit when it is easier or cheaper than driving. It has happened in cities around the world.
Expanding mass transit isn't going to fix the reasons why people aren't interested in living in the cities hereabouts. It will just add to the subsidies already flowing in to prop them up.
What actually happens is that the level of traffic basically stays static, and people travel using other means.
The level of automobile traffic moving through the downtown core is unchanged since the 1960s even though the population and amount of people working there has massively increased.
That was funny considering I'm now living in LA. I was thinking, "You don't know traffic, buddy".
I do admit that the downtown core gets bottlenecked at certain times of the day. But it's better than traffic all the time at most hours of the day, like in LA.
Seoul actually removed an urban freeway. Result? Less traffic congestion:
http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears...
Go figure.
But when the time came, nothing happened. People adapted.
The majority of people living in Southern California commute via freeway, and generally many people commute 70 mile roundtrips across town or from the valley into LA, and than for nightlife or a trip to a favorite bookstore etc, another ~70 mile round trip across town is totally normal.
Until there's more jobs available near affordable housing, millions of people in LA will continue relying on the freeways. The train is being slightly expanded into downtown Santa Monica, but that's not really a big improvement for LA - what would help the most is better transit lines between the San Fernando Valley and LA.
Because it would be incredibly regressive. The people who can least afford the fee are those that are not at all in the position to change their driving time habits.
This situation would result in a far superior outcome for currently poor people, even if it still has some inequality.
(don't live in LA is probably the answer, ha!)
I'd guess that the rise in cell phones, text messaging, and now smartphones was a big contributor to the decline in early licenses and also in the urgency of teens to get their own car.
Before such easy communications, you generally were not in contact with your friends except when you were actually physically with them at school or at pre-arranged times outside of school. You could call then on the phone, of course, but that only worked if they were home to take the call, and you had to compete with the rest of your family for the phone in your house.
This made spontaneous arranging of rides from friends a rather uncertain endeavor. Unless your parents were very generous in the policies for sharing the family car(s) with you, getting a car of your own meant a tremendous leap in your freedom.
Nowadays, a large fraction of teens have cell phones, largely smartphones. They make heavy use of them for messaging services and social networks (and, I've been told, they sometimes even actually use them to talk!). They update their statuses several times a day, and send on average something like 100 messages a day.
Because of this, today's teens (and younger) are much better informed as to where their friends are and what they are doing when those friends are not physically present. They know which of their friends with cars are not busy, and it is trivial to propose a joint trip to the place they wish to go.
Accordingly, having your own car is not as important as it once was. Your social group is now more efficient at sharing cars than social groups were back before widespread mobile communications.
1) Traffic fines are no longer trivial. Beyond the money, if a teen is part of any graduated licensing program ANY ticket may delay them getting their full license many months.
2) Parking is dangerous. Wrong place or wrong time doesn't mean a simple ticket. Your car may be disappeared to some distant impound lot. The ransom demanded will likely be more than the vehicle's worth (at least given the junkers I had as a teenager).
3) Police encounters. The most likely place for a teen to interact negatively with an officer is during a "routine" traffic stop. Turn on the news. A minor incident can quickly spiral into days or weeks in jail.
4) Teenagers now fear failure above all else. A test failed is far worse than a test not taken. Teenagers are adverse to any test that isn't absolutely necessary. (See many threads here). So they avoid the DMV.
5) Cars increase mobility, but have you seen the streets in most cities? Gridlock makes people feel trapped. For a child in today's world of apparently constant violence, being stuck on a city street is scary. Whereas you or I might see a simple frustration, kids today see physical danger.
Teenagers have plenty of reasons to avoid driving. It isn't because they once needed to physically move in order to communicate. It's because they have good reason to fear the road.
The driving test is stupidly easy. Whereas very smart kids have well-founded anxiety about SAT and AP testing (genuinely difficult, can make or break your life ambitions), only the most incompetent of the fuckups ever came within a thousand miles of failing a driving test. These were the kind of poeple where everyone else wondered how they managed to stay alive, how they would ever be adults. For those above the 5th percentile of general ability level, passing the driving test on the first try was pretty much guaranteed.
I think this is wrong. I'd much prefer a world where some normal people can't get drivers licenses and moat people on the road are professionals or robots, but if the state says, "No, you're not a good enough driver" then you can't really carry on a suburban life. So it has to say yes to all but the most egregiously incompetent, or lose its tax base.
Driving is really fucking easy to do, as long as you have a bare minimum of situational awareness. It's not like most people are even driving stick and so have to keep track of what gear they are in and avoid stalling. Just keep it between the lanes, keep your hands on the wheel, put the damn cellphone down, and keep your eyes open.
Not necessarily! When you go into the city for the driving test and encounter a bunch of crazy shit that doesn't exist on the dirt roads you drive, like stop lights and crosswalks and congestions, it's totally easy to fail a driving test just because you aren't familiar with the mechanics of how traffic works in areas with higher levels of development.
The obvious answer is more mass transit and please, pretty please, protected bike lanes on major throughways.
If Amsterdam can squeeze a dedicated bike lane, cars and trams on roads that haven't changed in hundreds of years, surely LA can figure it out.
You know, in 1960, Amsterdam was the same car-centric hellhole. They didn't always have that transport modal share. They worked on it.
Yeah, it's always a longer process. You still gotta start at some point. 30 years behind Amsterdam and the clock is still clicking on for the process to actually start. Tomorrow it will be 30 years and 1 day without action.
(I'll just say it to be very clear here: when I say Amsterdam, really it's all of the Netherlands, to slightly varying degree.)
the latter being the kicker, most euros do not comprehend the distances that hit you in the US. plus, cali is a desert. try cycling in 40C heat, for 10miles (15km). people use cars because of the AC.
distances also hit as your work rarely is located where you live - US has planned cities with strict zones. you live here but you work there. US commute is very, very different than anything in Europe.
Yeah, we're bigger and more diverse, but so what? It's like people give up on solving problems, and use that as an excuse, without even trying.
When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"
I've quite often heard the "because America!" lines you refer to -- in response to the specific issues you mention -- used by Fox News and similar right-wing outlets. So, I'm not sure the two things you contrast here as sources of the issue are actually mutually exclusive alternatives, rather than closely related facets of the same thing.
Ironically, it was the wide-eyed liberal optimists of their day that inflicted suburbia on us. Disrupting how we built cities to that point was supposed to make everything better.
They won, and the result was the legislation of vast suburban "residential" zones where commercial business was prohibited, with minimum lot sizes and setbacks and minimum space between houses.
Whereas conservatives focus on supposed positive exceptional attributes of America, multiple generations of leftists have now promoted and developed the inverse: the idea that America is forever fundamentally broken (due to the power of big corporations, evil conservatives, Fox News, etc.), and thus certain problems that others can solve are deemed inherently unsolveable in America.
Strange description, because pretty much every example I've seen of this has been someone on the left saying "Of course we can do better in this area, see how it works in <other country>!" followed by someone on the right saying "No, we that won't work here, because America!".
(Sometimes pointing to something that might arguably be a legitimate difference -- I'm not saying that this pattern is universally wrong, just that there doesn't seem to be anything leftist about it, if anything, it tends to be the opposite.)
The closest I've seen from the Left to this is the defeatist version "we could in theory do that here and it would work, but it isn't politically viable because America!." But, OTOH, I've seen that form from the Right, too, just on different issues.
I can't remember ever seeing any left-leaning or progressive type throw up their hands and say, "well, that just won't work here."
I will acknowledge that political conservatives or right-leaning types often do suggest that problems are solvable, but these days I only ever see right-leaning types suggesting that "the free market" will solve a problem (and, conversely, if it's one of the large class of things that the free market can't solve, then it is either not a problem or it is not solvable).
Still, the whole "it can't be done here" is, if not right-leaning, at least a conservative attitude in the sense of not trying to change anything. It just adds in an extra layer of (often irrelevant or nonsensical) defeatism, like the problem is unsolvable, and not just difficult.
It's weird, because we could put people on the moon, but a city can't adapt to a more bike-friendly way of life?
LA traffic rehabilation:
1. Eliminate left turns at lighted intersections and any other place a queue builds up. It's a grid - trip routing should use right turns. Lights should only ever have two phases.
2. Transition most through streets to one-way for cars, scavenging some of that width for generous bike paths protected by parked cars.
3. Eliminate lights at entrances to neighborhoods and shopping plazas.
4. Build more than one light rail line at a time. Keep them elevated rather than needlessly dipping into level crossings.
5. If neighborhood streets remain two-way, paint lines down the middle as people seem to have no clue where the edges of their cars are.
6. Stop putting Brawndo on the plants.
This is a slightly more nuclear option, but a fleet of self-driving cars operated by a third party (like Uber or Lyft etc) could hit the problem at its main cause - too many cars on the road. Most cars spend the majority of their time motionless, if the ownership model changed, the the cars in use could operate nearly all the time, driving directly from one pickup to the next. This could significantly reduce the number of cars required, removing all need for street parking and freeing up the majority of off-street parking.
Less cars on the streets = wider city streets for free, and self-driving cars could more efficiently use that extra space. There would be other side effects too - coordinating carpools would be relatively trivial, and people wouldn't have to worry letting strangers into their personal vehicles. The freeways could operate at higher speeds with significantly less follow space and lower friction at interchanges. Routing optimizations (like what you describe in #1) could be implemented at large scale, and the whole grid could effectively be load-balanced.
Some people will still probably want control over their vehicle; individuals could still own private cars alongside the shared model. Those cars would just be like private autonomous limos. This option could let people who could afford it use their car as a private office during the commute, without having to take all of their things out after every use. Families could more effectively share a single vehicle, because it could drive back home after the daily commute. I'd imagine that most consumers would opt for low cost and no ownership risk over that convenience.
For neighborhoods, the streets wouldn't be getting any wider which is a larger speed factor. Driving on your side of the line, you'd feel pretty close to driveways etc. And if you're stradding the line because nobody else is coming the other way, I don't see how that would encourage you to go any faster than you do currently.
That's why everyone cycles. And that's why Amsterdam squeezed it in because they knew they were going to be used.
I cannot stress how much of a difference it makes everywhere being flat.
The image that sticks in my mind when I think of LA is a flat, wide, road that goes completely straight for many miles. Something like https://goo.gl/maps/DRjBP or https://goo.gl/maps/30hg3.
[0] https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/city-by-city/los-angeles...
http://media0.trover.com/T/4f3d11615dc4e65d9000005c/fixedw_l...
LA would have all the space it needs if freeways were one way. Yeah, I'm serious. Separate the two directions of traffic by a city block or two and suddenly four lanes will fit in more places, the interchanges become less complex, and there's no spillover delays from rubbernecking the other side of the freeway.
Also, they only recently realized that freeways need to obey the pressure principle: lots of exits, few entrances with meters and long acceleration lanes. That discourages short-distance trips and gives many outlets for relieving congestion in the case of accidents. Long acceleration lanes reduce merge pressure and help reduce the jamming caused by fast traffic hitting slower traffic.
While I agree with you now and have always done so, the point made in the article was that cultural norms have changed so greatly these decades. Our antagonistic view was once exceptional, but it has become mainstream.
As a parallel, I still see immense beauty in the internet's form and function, but many of those of a younger generation who grew up with it might already be seeing the internet as a ubiquitous, soul-destroying, immense fuck-up.
The other day, I overheard someone, who is 'non-minority', tell someone else that they took public transit (bus) to work. The other person was slightly dumbfounded, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to that.
I really do want to see a more bikeable Los Angeles (see link below), and I do want to see the freeways as not part of the problem in this city.
http://www.williamha.com/bike-commuting-to-work-in-los-angel...
The crowds and the lack of cleanliness on the busses are usually mentioned as well.
Dirty, crowded, loud, and slow? No thanks. I've taken the bus numerous times in LA out of necessity, usually when my bike unexpectedly broke or I was just too tired to ride home, and it always sucks. I avoid it at all costs.
The subways are better, but not by much. They're still insanely crowded during peak hours and not really any faster than driving when you factor in the time and effort it takes to get to and from the stations themselves. However, I'd take the subway downtown more often if it just ran later.
I used to commute regularly from Palms to Downtown on Venice Boulevard on the 733 and never found getting stuck in traffic to be a major problem.
I lived in a very rural area so for me car ownership really did represent freedom. But if that weren't the case then I think that calculus would have been pretty attractive to me. Having the freedom to not spend so @$@#% much time doing menial crap like flipping burgers? Heck yeah.
Most garages were 2-car, and you don't want a car outside of a garage in snow. I was actually offered my grandmother's car for free when she died, but my parents refused it because they didn't want to deal with 3 cars in a 2-car driveway and garage.
No one else had any say in what car they would drive; 99% of the time it was Mom's minivan or Prius, with constant tension over when the keys would be brought back home. 95% of my graduating class went to college, and all but a few of them lived in dorms (at least for the first year) where car ownership was neither necessary nor permitted.
None of us will be thinking about buying cars until we graduate. And even then, those who will have money to buy cars they want, instead of the cheapest thing that starts, will be the San Francisco software engineers and the Manhattan investment bankers, i.e. the people who don't need them. I know a few people who got cars out of necessity for internships in remote places, and on all accounts it was a ~10-year-old, boring, practical castoff of a middle-aged relative who wanted an upgrade, to be sold when no longer necessary.
Personally, I'd love a Jetta but I can't imagine what I'd use it for, and for the same amount of money I can get a fully-loaded rMBP, an iPhone, and less student debt.
Why not? It works fine, and there are few places in the US cold enough to even require a block heater, let alone actually endangering the engine. Just have to brush it off sometimes, but it's hardly a dealbreaker. I lived almost 20 years in Alaska and never had a garage that we used for cars.
Computer hardware isn't much better.
Software though, that's where I'm convinced this spirit is more alive than ever. Instead of racing his car your nephew may play racing games, and instead of working on his car to make it faster/better/cooler, he might become interested in making a game, or other software, and the bars of entry for that are lower than they've ever been, and are just getting lower.
>Younger drivers see cars less as tickets to freedom and connection and more as obstacles to those things, in part because the one time that they can’t tap out texts or post pictures to Instagram is while they’re behind the wheel.
* The bus still takes longer (2-3 times as long)
This might change, but only if normal traffic gets worse.
* Loss of freedom
I have the option of visiting friends/family in other locations if I drive.
Loss of freedom is also related to the very poor intra-networking; the entire transit system in the area is designed as a star pattern for getting workers to the city.
* Commuting in a carpool is hard when you aren't a shift worker: your hours and those of other workers aren't the same, you might not even have multiple workers from the same area at a small company.
* Commuting in a carpool is hard when you aren't a full time worker: (I don't have this problem, but friends do) if your hours aren't consistent or you might be called in at a moment's notice.
I think the answer to all of this is flexible pooled transit. Probably an extension of what we know of today as taxi/ubur; but much more Johnny Cab (80's Total Recall).
As you could imagine, native Angelenos are culturally disposed towards car-as-identity thinking. But the value shift away from that is definitely visible amongst younger people, and trends and values in LA have a tendency to spread at an accelerated pace. So it's possible after a certain tipping point, this could become reality much sooner than we think.
But I'm doubtful we'll be turning the 10 into a park anytime soon. Much more likely that it will just shave off some of the stress of trying to get to a meeting in Santa Monica from Downtown on time
We may end up with even more sprawl and more cars on the roads.
I'm reminded of the guy in Snow Crash who hooked himself up into a repurposed fire truck that smashed through the LA freeways like a tank.
Of course, it wouldn't be built in the US.
However, I hope people won't make the mistake of trying to get rid of cars in rural areas and small towns. Public transportation does not work well here.
Many left-wing politicians don't want cars anywhere, whereas many right-wing politicians want cars everywhere. Some people seem to have difficulties seeing that different solutions work well in different situations.
--SoCal is not like NYC or SF where you can walk a few blocks and take a bus or a subway. SoCal blocks are incredibly large. I get in my car to go 2 blocks away, because those blocks are huge. Two of those SoCal blocks are like 6 of my old NYC blocks.
--SoCal is made up of many, many cities over a large, large area. There is no way to get from one corner of Fountain Valley, in a subdivision, to a job in Irvine (relatively close) where the office in an office park is no where near a bus stop. And that's just Fountain Valley to Irvine. This is definitely not an easy situation like covering Manhattan (a single, centralized destination where many of the jobs are.)
--There is no way to setup a workable network of busses/trains to mesh all the cities involved. What's the solution for Costa Mesa to El Segundo? Torrance to Burbank? West Covina to Anaheim? Newport Beach to Norwalk? And so on.
--The bus system we have usually covers a single city and maybe an adjacent city. Going to work for most folks involves going thru 7-10 cities. A simple commute from Costa Mesa to Manhattan Beach could involve going thru (winging it here from memory): Costa Mesa to Fountain Valley, to Huntington Beach, to Westminster, to Bellflower, to Long Beach...(catches breath since I'm not even half way there on the 405 Fwy) to Wilmington, to Carson, to Torrance, to Redondo Beach, to Lawndale, to Manhattan Beach. And you're only at the freeway exit -- now you need to get to the exact office location which means driving thru Manhattan Beach. Take a series of buses, if even possible at all, and you're looking at a 3 hours commute one way.
I would love to take public transportation. It's just not possible. I can't even walk to get lunch. In centrally planned Irvine, they put the housing in one area, the commercial offices in another and the retail commercial spots in another. Even when they are semi-adjacent, the blocks are huge. It would take 30 minutes to walk to the nearest strip mall to get a burger. It's 5 minutes by car.
It sucks, but it's not just an issue of freeways. It's how SoCal is designed.
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Edit: adding my solution ---> tax breaks for businesses that allow telecommuting. Keep us off the road and the problem goes away.
+higher quality of life
+less wear and tear on the cars
+less pollution
+less expenses on gas, eating out for lunch
+less maintenance on the roads
+less need for new buses/trains/employees to run them
+less congestion for those that need to be on the road
Get rid of carpool lanes and add some dang lanes in the meantime.
The key to traffic is to REDUCE the amount of cars on the road, not increase it.
* http://transportationist.org/2015/03/02/elements-of-access-i...
* http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.ht...
With this extra congestion it is moving more people than before.