8 ms·

L.A.'s Measure M Voters Fund Transit, but Don't Use It

39 points by noobermin 8y ago

T3OU-736 8y ago
Seems like the fairly unambiguous instance of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution. Urban traffic congestion is a difficult, complex problem. So, instead of the nontrivial question posed by the proposition on the ballot of "Would this measure succeed in its stated goal, in the face of evidence that prior attempts have failed, and have the factor(s) which caused the prior failures been mitigated?" the simpler question that the mind solves is (and, given the results, answered in the positive) "I hate traffic. This measure claims it will help. Should I support it?" Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a damned good read on these sorts of things.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Congestion is an unsolvable problem. If there's congestion it just means that those people have a higher tolerance (or less alternatives) for sitting in traffic (or standing on a clusterfuck of a subway platform) than whatever your threshold is for deciding what is and isn't "congestion". Consjestion isn't just about cars. You can generalize it to all forms of transit (MTA anyone?). You can't "solve" congestion. At best you can add additional capacity (of the same type or a different type) in order to reduce the amount of time when congestion is at its worst. Instead of "rush hour" being from 3-7 increased capacity (of any type, people will naturally load balance by choosing the least worst option for their situation) could potentially make it only from 4-6 by allowing the same number of trips to happen in less time. If you add capacity (of any type) and congestion is unchanged that is still a win because it means more trips are being taken which is an indication of more stuff getting done, more commerce, higher quality of life).
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    It is not necessarily a win. In the case of highways, often times new greenfield development that is spurred on is just development being reshuffled across the region, so you spend money to make the same amount. It’s true that transit doesn’t solve congestion; however, it provides an extremely high capacity alternative. Speed and reliability of a highway lane is approx 2k people per hour, but try nudging past that and you start getting phantom traffic jams. The New York City subway has a theoretical peak capacity of 60k people per hour.
SilasX 8y ago
I'm sorry, is this supposed to be some big "gotcha" or evidence of inconsistent decision-making? >Instead, the top predictors of whether a voter supported Measure M were their political party and their frustration with congestion. You can believe the transit will be good for congestion even if you don't expect to personally use it. Are you confused if you're an East Bay-SF commuter who drives and also supports BART capacity expansion? Edit: Furthermore, transit is hard to quickly scale up or down. It can be reasonable to support expansions now, even not realizing you might find it useful later as traffic gets more choked.
- ninth_ant 8y ago
  You are missing an important point of the article. Voters for this measure believed increased transit would reduce congestion for drivers, but it doesn’t usually work that way in practice. Even the most transit-friendly cities in the world have clogged freeways. The benefits of increased transit is significant and worth supporting, but reduced congestion is not one of those benefits.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    It's not an issue of "clogged" vs "not clogged" but "more clogged" vs "less clogged" and "have an option to bypass gridlock" vs "don't have an option". You have to compare to the counterfactual. Yes, transit-friendly cities have clogged freeways, but it's much better than it would be if they didn't have the trains at all -- see what happens whenever BART shuts down.
  - clairity 8y ago
    to expand, adding transit capacity doesn't reduce traffic because we are well undersupplied for (latent and induced) road capacity demand at peak usage. additional supply is swallowed up by overwhelming demand because we're far from market equilibrium. we won't be able to build enough to satiate demand in the near future. but if you look at it economically, adding transit (or road) capacity is a net positive since part of what drives economic activity is the ease with which you can execute transactions in person. so the main benefit of transit is more economic activity, not less congestion. so transit funding was never really about materially impacting transit/commute times. but now that we have transit funding, LA and the state are both working on upzoning around transit corridors. for example, sb-50 (fka sb-827): https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-housing-bill-transit-20180325-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-housing-bill-tr... upzoning can actually reduce some congestion but it's not enough by itself. we also need to properly price in good/timely maintenance and the externalities of pollution. we need to greatly speed up the government agencies/bureaucracies that slow down construcion (permitting, inspection, planning review, etc.). we need to reduce dishonest roadblocks meant to stop development by making it prohibitively expensive (e.g., many ceqa challenges). we need to better control rent-seeking behaviors around real estate. more housing, and a more responsive housing market, means people can move more easily, reduce commute times, and thereby reduce congestion.
vikingcaffiene 8y ago
I would LOVE to have a viable public transportation option here in LA. Its not an understantement to say it would transform the city. Ridership is not going to increase though until the city deals with the massive safety and sanitation concerns that exist at present. I’ve witnessed fights, muggings, people defecating themselves, drug use, and open harassment while riding. The trains are unpredictable to schedule around and on the average, slower than driving. There’s also the last mile problem which is starting to get solved by scooter services and such but if you look at a city like London you get a glimpse of what could be.
- njarboe 8y ago
  Roads are public transit. Used by the public for transportation. Roads that were open to everyone (the public) were the first major implementation of public transit. This allowed everyone with a good path for quick walking and carts (horses and carriages, if you were wealthy). Fast, private, point-to-point transportation is what people desire (that is what walking is) and I don't think they are wrong wanting that option. Historically people in LA love their cars and the fact that cars allows most people in LA to own a piece of land (your home is your castle) while still being part of one of the largest cities on earth. Not every place needs to try and be like all the others. Los Angeles is not like London and should not want to be. Give me something different. How about a LA basin wide measure that supports the building of a huge network of tunnels that can carry electric trains, buses and small vehicles a la "The Boring Company". I bet people would get behind that if the city leaders could, for just a moment, get past the idea that evil "cars" (ie. their constituents) would use those tunnels along with "public" transport.
- diffeomorphism 8y ago
  Which lines? I mostly use the red, purple and expo lines whose schedule is fairly frequent and easy to schedule around. Also, I have not really noticed these concerns in my rides. The worst thing so far were some people selling incense on the train and some drunk people arguing on their way home.
- angmarsbane 8y ago
  A man was pissing on my bus stop at Venice/Centinela a few weeks ago. This bus stop is right next to a Starbucks, everyone can pee at Starbucks and he was pissing on the bus bench.
MiddleEndian 8y ago
Semi-related hypothetical question: Say two conflicting groups (perhaps one electrified light rail plan and one DMU plan that basically follow the same path) get their questions on the same ballot, and both pass. What happens?
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Nothing. These plans aren't put to voters for approval on the ballot.
thescriptkiddie 8y ago
Public transportation works best as a dense and highly interconnected network. When you're first building out a system, it's just a patchwork, and so not very useful. At some point you reach a certain "critical mass", and suddenly your low ridership turns into overcrowding. Low ridership doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of interest in public transportation, it just means that for most individuals it isn't the most practical choice yet. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense to support expansion of the network even if you don't use it.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  This exactly describes LA compared to places like Munich or Paris. In Munich I can easily get to most places using public transport without much planning and it will overall be competitive with driving time in a car. In Los Angeles there are a few lines here and there but it requires a ton of planning and often takes three times as long as a drive would take. My commute takes 35 minutes by car and would take more than 3 hours with public transport.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    In LA, it highly depends on the commute. For example, friends who work in Hollywood have a 10 minute commute by public transportation (20 min round trip)...but would have a 30-60 minute commute by car (1-2 hours round trip). My commute in the morning takes is 30 min longer by rail than by car, but the commute home is 30-45 minutes shorter by rail...
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      True. If you are close to City Hall you are golden. Tons of options. But as soon as you are a little away the situation is horrible.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Clearly we should make your drive take 3 hours 15 minutes to make public transport competitive. /s. Unfortunately it seems some people actually believe this.
RobLach 8y ago
I don't see how the effectiveness for something like public transit could be measured so quickly, especially over a phone call. It's barely been 2 years. After it's built it'll take a couple decades for housing developers and businesses to properly exploit the ease of transportation to them.
- mturmon 8y ago
  I think the article is not in disagreement with you - probably the headline was drafted to generate clicks, but the substance of the article is different in tone. Mostly the article points out that the transportation system is complex, and building capacity is a necessary but not sufficient step. IMHO, the congestion that we see now in LA freeways - much worse than in, say, the 1990s - will provide a slow incentive toward re-orientation of business and homes along transit lines.
- lincolnq 8y ago
  I agree. I’m certainly holding out lots of hope. It would be interesting to survey people who recently moved to or within LA, and figure out what % moved to anticipated subway accessible locations — that should at least be a leading indicator of willingness to use transit.
vamos_davai 8y ago
I've lived in LA for 3 years and voted to support Measure M. My take on this is that by increasing the capacity for public transit, we'll be able to support a continuously growing city. One of the ticket items that got me to support Measure M is funding for the Sepulveda Transit Pass, which will build a train route from Sherman Oaks to UCLA and down to Culver City and ultimately connect to the Purple Line. The problem with the graph is that it doesn't factor in population growth, which seems to have grown from 3.2 million to 6.9 million from 1970 to 10 million 2013. If you calculated the miles travelled in transit per year, you'll interpret many folks in LA benefit from the Measures. As a result, I believe the article is disingenuous by attacking a successful measures by relying on poorly interpreted data.
vkou 8y ago
Anybody who drives benefits from public transit, by the fact that it keeps cars off the roads.
futureastronaut 8y ago
What a nonsensical conclusion. Here's the crux: > Demographically, the average Measure M supporter resembled someone with a very high likelihood of driving: They owned cars, enjoyed free parking at home and work, and had higher incomes. Most people in LA drive. They own at least one car, and parking is not scarce. Are we supposed to be shocked and dismayed that people who want to fund competent mass transit don't use a system that fails to meet their needs? > So party identity strongly swayed voters. It might be fun to call transit supporters a bunch of party-first limousine liberals, but the dull conclusion is that Republicans reflexively vote against taxation measures. The article does get at that, but the headline is clickbait and consideration of "likelihood to use transit" in a place with mass transit as messed up as LA is a red herring.
byproxy 8y ago
I can't say the findings presented in this article are surprising. That said, I currently reside abouts Downtown Los Angeles and have no car. I find I'm in walking distance to most places I'd like to go, though I realize I have a much higher tolerance for walking than most people. I've found it usually takes no more than one bus/train route to get to places outside of my walking range, say an hours ride or so (which I don't mind as I usually read during this time). Public transportation has been serving me well. Granted, I'm in the densest part of Los Angeles. I'd like to see the survey results overlaid on a map of the county. Those in the more sprawled out portions of Los Angeles County probably don't feel any benefit to increased public transportation spending. An aside: I find the typeface this website uses for its headings to be terrible.
ravenstine 8y ago
Well yeah, when there's never any cops to kick off the homeless insane, people are going to prefer the privacy of their own car.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  what I love about LA's governance is that there's no solution to the "there's never any cops" problem. it just cannot be fixed.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Could you elaborate on that?
    - HillaryBriss 8y ago
      I think it's an accounting problem, or a flow of funds problem. IOW, the flow of benefits from hiring more police officers goes in directions that make it politically difficult or impossible to get the additional money. And you need a lot of it. Though adding officers would benefit rider safety and increase the quality and pleasantness of the rider's experience, the increased taxes would fall mostly on people who do not use the system much or at all. (To raise fares would discourage ridership.) And police officers aren't cheap - each one costs about $150,000 per year (according to a 2011 article which estimates that adding 725 officers to the LAPD added 110 million dollars a year in costs. [0]) [0] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/22/opinion/la-oe-ridgewayheaton-police-20111122 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/22/opinion/la-oe-ridgew...
      - magduf 8y ago
        The increased taxes would be cheaper than the effects of traffic, the deaths caused by cars, the cost of building and maintaining more roads for cars, etc. Public transit will never be a profitable enterprise. It must be subsidized. But we already subsidize roads for cars, but somehow the car-lovers just ignore that.
inetknght 8y ago
People won't use a service if they don't know it exists as an alternative. Show advertisements demonstrating how long it takes to get from A to B and when the service is available to accomplish that.
gok 8y ago
Has any metropolitan area ever gotten car usage to meaningfully decrease? Yeah there are cities that have high (and increasing) transit ridership, but they never had high car ridership. Once someone starts tasting driving, they're hooked on it. The best bet for transit would be to market to the next generation.
SilasX 8y ago
What the fudge happened? This story was posted yesterday, as was my comment (shows one day ago in my profile [1]), but now that same comment is showing "1 hour ago" if you go directly to it[2] and this story, 3 hours ago. I know mods move comments, but I've never seen them reset the timestamps. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SilasX&next=18968338 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SilasX&next=18968338 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18968338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18968338
wwweston 8y ago
I voted for Measure M. I'm a "sometimes" user of transport. I own a car and it's probably my most frequent form of transport outside my legs. I'm lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where I can walk to a grocery store, two restaurant/retail dense streets, a mall, and even a university, so that's fun. If I'm meeting/visiting friends across the city, though, there's rarely public transport options that aren't going to triple or quadruple travel time. So, I often drive. But not always. Some routes have convenient travel times -- for example, I can get from LAX to my house for $1 on a bus. Metro to downtown LA or Santa Monica is pretty convenient and lets me skip parking hassles/fees. Throw a rideshare into the mix and you can get pretty great coverage. And as a sometimes transit user, I can tell you that buses and trains are definitely not empty -- sometimes they're uncomfortably crowded. People are absolutely using them, even if not everybody uses them all the time. So I was happy to support Measure M, be a sometimes transit user, and hope that I can become a more frequent one as options expand. About the only real complaint I have isn't really a transit network one per se -- the modern society-wide issues of homelessness, mental health, and drugs spill over into every public space. Cars and curated neighborhoods can give you a bubble of comfort, but don't solve the problem. So I voted for Measure H (among others) in hopes of seeing solutions there, too.
- similarInLA 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm in a similar position. When the Expo line was expanded to Santa Monica, I was actually working in the building next to the final Santa Monica stop. But my house wasn't on the train line, so I would have had to somehow get to the train to take it in, but I would have only been riding like 3 stops. It doesn't make sense to drive to the train in that case, and riding a bike wasn't a realistic options because of the traffic I'd have to get through. (There were parts that would have been dangerous for a bike.) On the other hand, my yearly mileage is around 4-6k miles, so I don't feel like I'm contributing too badly to the problem. A coworker of mine was out in South Pasadena and tried taking the train one day. His normally 45 minute commute turned into an hour and 50 minutes one way. There's no way that makes sense. I've since moved, as has our office. I still live about 3 miles from work, so overall very low mileage each year. I looked up bus schedules as both my house and work are near bus stops. My one-way commute time would go from about 15-20 minutes to 50-60 minutes. That's just stupid. I have a family I'd like to see and making my commute 3-4 times as long just isn't worth it. I'm all for public transportation, but if it doesn't go where I need to in a timely manner, it's useless.
northerdome 8y ago
Has there been enough time for Measure M to succeed? It was passed very recently.
rossdavidh 8y ago
Uh, the graph in this very article shows rail ridership increasing from 1% in 1991 to 25% in 2016. So, if that's what "don't use it" means, ok, I suppose 25% is still less than 50%, so perhaps most trips aren't taken using rail. But It sure seems like progress to me, if we assume that a train can hold more people than a bus, and so do better at peak times. This seems like an article trying to hold off an increasing support for transit rail, perhaps worried by the fact that urban support for it (in L.A. at least) seems to be increasing.
jlarocco 8y ago
I think the premise of the article is nonsense. If I'm reading the chart correctly, rail trips have steadily increased since the city started building it. And that's with only 110 miles of track, which seems absurd for a city the size of LA. For comparison, Denver's RTD has 90 miles of track, and I know from living there that it's not nearly enough. People would love to take it, but it's such a limited deployment most of the time they can't. We've even voted for tax increases to build track between Denver and Boulder, but RTD and the other government agencies are dragging their feet. So the voter behavior seems completely logical to me. People want to use transit, but they can't until it's built up.

39 points by noobermin 8y ago

Seems like the fairly unambiguous instance of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution. Urban traffic congestion is a difficult, complex problem. So, instead of the nontrivial question posed by the proposition on the ballot of "Would this measure succeed in its stated goal, in the face of evidence that prior attempts have failed, and have the factor(s) which caused the prior failures been mitigated?" the simpler question that the mind solves is (and, given the results, answered in the positive) "I hate traffic. This measure claims it will help. Should I support it?" Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a damned good read on these sorts of things.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Congestion is an unsolvable problem. If there's congestion it just means that those people have a higher tolerance (or less alternatives) for sitting in traffic (or standing on a clusterfuck of a subway platform) than whatever your threshold is for deciding what is and isn't "congestion". Consjestion isn't just about cars. You can generalize it to all forms of transit (MTA anyone?). You can't "solve" congestion. At best you can add additional capacity (of the same type or a different type) in order to reduce the amount of time when congestion is at its worst. Instead of "rush hour" being from 3-7 increased capacity (of any type, people will naturally load balance by choosing the least worst option for their situation) could potentially make it only from 4-6 by allowing the same number of trips to happen in less time. If you add capacity (of any type) and congestion is unchanged that is still a win because it means more trips are being taken which is an indication of more stuff getting done, more commerce, higher quality of life).
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  It is not necessarily a win. In the case of highways, often times new greenfield development that is spurred on is just development being reshuffled across the region, so you spend money to make the same amount. It’s true that transit doesn’t solve congestion; however, it provides an extremely high capacity alternative. Speed and reliability of a highway lane is approx 2k people per hour, but try nudging past that and you start getting phantom traffic jams. The New York City subway has a theoretical peak capacity of 60k people per hour.

SilasX 8y ago

I'm sorry, is this supposed to be some big "gotcha" or evidence of inconsistent decision-making? >Instead, the top predictors of whether a voter supported Measure M were their political party and their frustration with congestion. You can believe the transit will be good for congestion even if you don't expect to personally use it. Are you confused if you're an East Bay-SF commuter who drives and also supports BART capacity expansion? Edit: Furthermore, transit is hard to quickly scale up or down. It can be reasonable to support expansions now, even not realizing you might find it useful later as traffic gets more choked.

ninth_ant 8y ago
You are missing an important point of the article. Voters for this measure believed increased transit would reduce congestion for drivers, but it doesn’t usually work that way in practice. Even the most transit-friendly cities in the world have clogged freeways. The benefits of increased transit is significant and worth supporting, but reduced congestion is not one of those benefits.
- SilasX 8y ago
  It's not an issue of "clogged" vs "not clogged" but "more clogged" vs "less clogged" and "have an option to bypass gridlock" vs "don't have an option". You have to compare to the counterfactual. Yes, transit-friendly cities have clogged freeways, but it's much better than it would be if they didn't have the trains at all -- see what happens whenever BART shuts down.
- clairity 8y ago
  to expand, adding transit capacity doesn't reduce traffic because we are well undersupplied for (latent and induced) road capacity demand at peak usage. additional supply is swallowed up by overwhelming demand because we're far from market equilibrium. we won't be able to build enough to satiate demand in the near future. but if you look at it economically, adding transit (or road) capacity is a net positive since part of what drives economic activity is the ease with which you can execute transactions in person. so the main benefit of transit is more economic activity, not less congestion. so transit funding was never really about materially impacting transit/commute times. but now that we have transit funding, LA and the state are both working on upzoning around transit corridors. for example, sb-50 (fka sb-827): https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-housing-bill-transit-20180325-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-housing-bill-tr... upzoning can actually reduce some congestion but it's not enough by itself. we also need to properly price in good/timely maintenance and the externalities of pollution. we need to greatly speed up the government agencies/bureaucracies that slow down construcion (permitting, inspection, planning review, etc.). we need to reduce dishonest roadblocks meant to stop development by making it prohibitively expensive (e.g., many ceqa challenges). we need to better control rent-seeking behaviors around real estate. more housing, and a more responsive housing market, means people can move more easily, reduce commute times, and thereby reduce congestion.

vikingcaffiene 8y ago

I would LOVE to have a viable public transportation option here in LA. Its not an understantement to say it would transform the city. Ridership is not going to increase though until the city deals with the massive safety and sanitation concerns that exist at present. I’ve witnessed fights, muggings, people defecating themselves, drug use, and open harassment while riding. The trains are unpredictable to schedule around and on the average, slower than driving. There’s also the last mile problem which is starting to get solved by scooter services and such but if you look at a city like London you get a glimpse of what could be.

njarboe 8y ago
Roads are public transit. Used by the public for transportation. Roads that were open to everyone (the public) were the first major implementation of public transit. This allowed everyone with a good path for quick walking and carts (horses and carriages, if you were wealthy). Fast, private, point-to-point transportation is what people desire (that is what walking is) and I don't think they are wrong wanting that option. Historically people in LA love their cars and the fact that cars allows most people in LA to own a piece of land (your home is your castle) while still being part of one of the largest cities on earth. Not every place needs to try and be like all the others. Los Angeles is not like London and should not want to be. Give me something different. How about a LA basin wide measure that supports the building of a huge network of tunnels that can carry electric trains, buses and small vehicles a la "The Boring Company". I bet people would get behind that if the city leaders could, for just a moment, get past the idea that evil "cars" (ie. their constituents) would use those tunnels along with "public" transport.
diffeomorphism 8y ago
Which lines? I mostly use the red, purple and expo lines whose schedule is fairly frequent and easy to schedule around. Also, I have not really noticed these concerns in my rides. The worst thing so far were some people selling incense on the train and some drunk people arguing on their way home.
angmarsbane 8y ago
A man was pissing on my bus stop at Venice/Centinela a few weeks ago. This bus stop is right next to a Starbucks, everyone can pee at Starbucks and he was pissing on the bus bench.

MiddleEndian 8y ago

Semi-related hypothetical question: Say two conflicting groups (perhaps one electrified light rail plan and one DMU plan that basically follow the same path) get their questions on the same ballot, and both pass. What happens?

gamblor956 8y ago
Nothing. These plans aren't put to voters for approval on the ballot.

thescriptkiddie 8y ago

Public transportation works best as a dense and highly interconnected network. When you're first building out a system, it's just a patchwork, and so not very useful. At some point you reach a certain "critical mass", and suddenly your low ridership turns into overcrowding. Low ridership doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of interest in public transportation, it just means that for most individuals it isn't the most practical choice yet. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense to support expansion of the network even if you don't use it.

maxxxxx 8y ago
This exactly describes LA compared to places like Munich or Paris. In Munich I can easily get to most places using public transport without much planning and it will overall be competitive with driving time in a car. In Los Angeles there are a few lines here and there but it requires a ton of planning and often takes three times as long as a drive would take. My commute takes 35 minutes by car and would take more than 3 hours with public transport.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  In LA, it highly depends on the commute. For example, friends who work in Hollywood have a 10 minute commute by public transportation (20 min round trip)...but would have a 30-60 minute commute by car (1-2 hours round trip). My commute in the morning takes is 30 min longer by rail than by car, but the commute home is 30-45 minutes shorter by rail...
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    True. If you are close to City Hall you are golden. Tons of options. But as soon as you are a little away the situation is horrible.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Clearly we should make your drive take 3 hours 15 minutes to make public transport competitive. /s. Unfortunately it seems some people actually believe this.

RobLach 8y ago

I don't see how the effectiveness for something like public transit could be measured so quickly, especially over a phone call. It's barely been 2 years. After it's built it'll take a couple decades for housing developers and businesses to properly exploit the ease of transportation to them.

mturmon 8y ago
I think the article is not in disagreement with you - probably the headline was drafted to generate clicks, but the substance of the article is different in tone. Mostly the article points out that the transportation system is complex, and building capacity is a necessary but not sufficient step. IMHO, the congestion that we see now in LA freeways - much worse than in, say, the 1990s - will provide a slow incentive toward re-orientation of business and homes along transit lines.
lincolnq 8y ago
I agree. I’m certainly holding out lots of hope. It would be interesting to survey people who recently moved to or within LA, and figure out what % moved to anticipated subway accessible locations — that should at least be a leading indicator of willingness to use transit.

vamos_davai 8y ago

I've lived in LA for 3 years and voted to support Measure M. My take on this is that by increasing the capacity for public transit, we'll be able to support a continuously growing city. One of the ticket items that got me to support Measure M is funding for the Sepulveda Transit Pass, which will build a train route from Sherman Oaks to UCLA and down to Culver City and ultimately connect to the Purple Line. The problem with the graph is that it doesn't factor in population growth, which seems to have grown from 3.2 million to 6.9 million from 1970 to 10 million 2013. If you calculated the miles travelled in transit per year, you'll interpret many folks in LA benefit from the Measures. As a result, I believe the article is disingenuous by attacking a successful measures by relying on poorly interpreted data.

vkou 8y ago

Anybody who drives benefits from public transit, by the fact that it keeps cars off the roads.

futureastronaut 8y ago

What a nonsensical conclusion. Here's the crux: > Demographically, the average Measure M supporter resembled someone with a very high likelihood of driving: They owned cars, enjoyed free parking at home and work, and had higher incomes. Most people in LA drive. They own at least one car, and parking is not scarce. Are we supposed to be shocked and dismayed that people who want to fund competent mass transit don't use a system that fails to meet their needs? > So party identity strongly swayed voters. It might be fun to call transit supporters a bunch of party-first limousine liberals, but the dull conclusion is that Republicans reflexively vote against taxation measures. The article does get at that, but the headline is clickbait and consideration of "likelihood to use transit" in a place with mass transit as messed up as LA is a red herring.

byproxy 8y ago

I can't say the findings presented in this article are surprising. That said, I currently reside abouts Downtown Los Angeles and have no car. I find I'm in walking distance to most places I'd like to go, though I realize I have a much higher tolerance for walking than most people. I've found it usually takes no more than one bus/train route to get to places outside of my walking range, say an hours ride or so (which I don't mind as I usually read during this time). Public transportation has been serving me well. Granted, I'm in the densest part of Los Angeles. I'd like to see the survey results overlaid on a map of the county. Those in the more sprawled out portions of Los Angeles County probably don't feel any benefit to increased public transportation spending. An aside: I find the typeface this website uses for its headings to be terrible.

ravenstine 8y ago

Well yeah, when there's never any cops to kick off the homeless insane, people are going to prefer the privacy of their own car.

HillaryBriss 8y ago
what I love about LA's governance is that there's no solution to the "there's never any cops" problem. it just cannot be fixed.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on that?
  - HillaryBriss 8y ago
    I think it's an accounting problem, or a flow of funds problem. IOW, the flow of benefits from hiring more police officers goes in directions that make it politically difficult or impossible to get the additional money. And you need a lot of it. Though adding officers would benefit rider safety and increase the quality and pleasantness of the rider's experience, the increased taxes would fall mostly on people who do not use the system much or at all. (To raise fares would discourage ridership.) And police officers aren't cheap - each one costs about $150,000 per year (according to a 2011 article which estimates that adding 725 officers to the LAPD added 110 million dollars a year in costs. [0]) [0] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/22/opinion/la-oe-ridgewayheaton-police-20111122 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/22/opinion/la-oe-ridgew...
    - magduf 8y ago
      The increased taxes would be cheaper than the effects of traffic, the deaths caused by cars, the cost of building and maintaining more roads for cars, etc. Public transit will never be a profitable enterprise. It must be subsidized. But we already subsidize roads for cars, but somehow the car-lovers just ignore that.

inetknght 8y ago

People won't use a service if they don't know it exists as an alternative. Show advertisements demonstrating how long it takes to get from A to B and when the service is available to accomplish that.

gok 8y ago

Has any metropolitan area ever gotten car usage to meaningfully decrease? Yeah there are cities that have high (and increasing) transit ridership, but they never had high car ridership. Once someone starts tasting driving, they're hooked on it. The best bet for transit would be to market to the next generation.

SilasX 8y ago

What the fudge happened? This story was posted yesterday, as was my comment (shows one day ago in my profile [1]), but now that same comment is showing "1 hour ago" if you go directly to it[2] and this story, 3 hours ago. I know mods move comments, but I've never seen them reset the timestamps. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SilasX&next=18968338 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SilasX&next=18968338 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18968338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18968338

wwweston 8y ago

I voted for Measure M. I'm a "sometimes" user of transport. I own a car and it's probably my most frequent form of transport outside my legs. I'm lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where I can walk to a grocery store, two restaurant/retail dense streets, a mall, and even a university, so that's fun. If I'm meeting/visiting friends across the city, though, there's rarely public transport options that aren't going to triple or quadruple travel time. So, I often drive. But not always. Some routes have convenient travel times -- for example, I can get from LAX to my house for $1 on a bus. Metro to downtown LA or Santa Monica is pretty convenient and lets me skip parking hassles/fees. Throw a rideshare into the mix and you can get pretty great coverage. And as a sometimes transit user, I can tell you that buses and trains are definitely not empty -- sometimes they're uncomfortably crowded. People are absolutely using them, even if not everybody uses them all the time. So I was happy to support Measure M, be a sometimes transit user, and hope that I can become a more frequent one as options expand. About the only real complaint I have isn't really a transit network one per se -- the modern society-wide issues of homelessness, mental health, and drugs spill over into every public space. Cars and curated neighborhoods can give you a bubble of comfort, but don't solve the problem. So I voted for Measure H (among others) in hopes of seeing solutions there, too.

similarInLA 8y ago
Yeah, I'm in a similar position. When the Expo line was expanded to Santa Monica, I was actually working in the building next to the final Santa Monica stop. But my house wasn't on the train line, so I would have had to somehow get to the train to take it in, but I would have only been riding like 3 stops. It doesn't make sense to drive to the train in that case, and riding a bike wasn't a realistic options because of the traffic I'd have to get through. (There were parts that would have been dangerous for a bike.) On the other hand, my yearly mileage is around 4-6k miles, so I don't feel like I'm contributing too badly to the problem. A coworker of mine was out in South Pasadena and tried taking the train one day. His normally 45 minute commute turned into an hour and 50 minutes one way. There's no way that makes sense. I've since moved, as has our office. I still live about 3 miles from work, so overall very low mileage each year. I looked up bus schedules as both my house and work are near bus stops. My one-way commute time would go from about 15-20 minutes to 50-60 minutes. That's just stupid. I have a family I'd like to see and making my commute 3-4 times as long just isn't worth it. I'm all for public transportation, but if it doesn't go where I need to in a timely manner, it's useless.

northerdome 8y ago

Has there been enough time for Measure M to succeed? It was passed very recently.

rossdavidh 8y ago

Uh, the graph in this very article shows rail ridership increasing from 1% in 1991 to 25% in 2016. So, if that's what "don't use it" means, ok, I suppose 25% is still less than 50%, so perhaps most trips aren't taken using rail. But It sure seems like progress to me, if we assume that a train can hold more people than a bus, and so do better at peak times. This seems like an article trying to hold off an increasing support for transit rail, perhaps worried by the fact that urban support for it (in L.A. at least) seems to be increasing.

jlarocco 8y ago

I think the premise of the article is nonsense. If I'm reading the chart correctly, rail trips have steadily increased since the city started building it. And that's with only 110 miles of track, which seems absurd for a city the size of LA. For comparison, Denver's RTD has 90 miles of track, and I know from living there that it's not nearly enough. People would love to take it, but it's such a limited deployment most of the time they can't. We've even voted for tax increases to build track between Denver and Boulder, but RTD and the other government agencies are dragging their feet. So the voter behavior seems completely logical to me. People want to use transit, but they can't until it's built up.