25 Comments on “One Day Soon”   rss feed

1. Henry Holland on Nov 14th, 2005 at 7:52 am

   Ah, public transportation in Los Angeles.

   People who hate LA (and gosh, there are many aren’t there?) usually hate it because they don’t know it. From the car they’re in, they see highways, and strip malls, and think that’s all there is. The great stuff is best seen on foot, or by bike, or moving at the slower, deliberate pace afforded by a city bus, on real city streets instead of highways.

   Whenever someone rags on this city I call home, I say “Which Los Angeles? There’s about 10 of ‘em”. I actually had this co-worker who moved here from New York a few years ago say “LA all looks the same”. After I finished picking my jaw up off the floor I said something like “Bel Air is nothing like Compton which is nothing like Manhattan Beach which is nothing like Pasadena”. She said “Where’s Manhattan Beach?” so I just laughed and said I had work to do and left. Translation: “I only really know downtown where I work and the Hollywood/Sunset Strip area where I live and party but I’m going to make a sweeping generalization anyway”. It’s like this ass that I worked with in the 90’s–came out here from corporate HQ in New Jersey for 6 months on an assignment, spent his time away from work either a) at the beach or b) at the gym working out to get rid of his flab because he was c) at clubs on the Sunset Strip trying to pick up “the hot Cali babes” but who, at his going away party, said in response to how he liked his time here said “It’s nice, but the people are kind of shallow”. No, he I don’t suppose he was big on the self-awareness thing.

   I think I read somewhere recently that you could fit Manhattan, Boston and some other eastern city in to the San Fernando Valley alone; that’s the kind of scale we’re dealing with here.

   As for the USC extension, yeah, I was happy to see that announced, even though I’m a Bruin. If nothing else, that could be a boon if the Coliseum lands an NFL team. The mayor has said he’s strongly in favor of the Red Line Wilshire extension but unless they solve the problem of the methane gas deposits in the Fairfax District, it’s simply not going to happen. There’s a very, very strong culture of NIMBYism here and it derails, as it were, a lot of things that would be good for the whole city. I’m trying hard to find a job downtown so that I only have to use my car on weekends, because I could take the #18 bus that’s across the street from me. I sure have had some interesting conversations on the bus with fellow patrons, that’s for sure.

2. Hektor Bim on Nov 14th, 2005 at 10:00 am

   A lot of people don’t ride public transportation in LA for a simple reason: classism. Riding the bus in LA means your are poor.

   I visited LA for a wedding once. First time I was there. I rode the bus to Santa Monica and around the city. The coverage wasn’t great, but I got around. When I talked to native Angelenos about it at the wedding, they were amazed. They had never ridden the bus. That was for nannys and gardeners.

   I was amazed myself. Living in a big city for 25 years and never riding the bus. That was crazy.

3. Clifford on Nov 14th, 2005 at 11:18 am

   Henry, Hektor - You’ve got it right. A lot of it is due to classism. It is sad. Several of my colleauges think I’m nuts when I tell them I take the bus. When I mention the subway, some of them express surprise that we even have one! And then they start telling you all the horror stories they can think of about how dangerous it is. But they’ve never gone to find out that it is in fact perfectly safe. The buses are just full of poor people getting on with their lives. But you know what’s worse? As soon as someone works themselves up to the point that they can afford a car, they stop taking the bus, buy a car, and go and sit on the highway. They buy into the class division, because the car and the status associated to it is so strongly part of the culture.

   -cvj

4. janet on Nov 14th, 2005 at 11:45 am

   Hey, anybody who’s seen Speed knows that there are buses in LA.

   Clifford — Mazel tov! I remember how thrilled I was when the new BART extension opened up a couple of years ago, which meant there was a station walking distance from my workplace. It was a huge improvement to my commute.

   The class issue is not limited to LA — I think one of the main problems with promoting public transport in the US is that middle class people, by and large, will not take the bus. There are exceptions (commuter buses and workplace shuttles, which by their nature are filled with white-collar commuters), but for whatever reason middle class Americans find regular city buses scary. Unfortunately, the result is low ridership, and a ridership that consists mainly of disempowered people. Thus, funding for public transport is not a high priority at election time, which leads to cuts in service and/or fare increases, which just exacerbates the problem. Buses are the most flexible form of public transport and require the least investment in infrastructure, but it’s easier to sell middle-class people on more expensive options such as light rail. Not that there’s anything wrong with light rail, but it’s not a substitute for a good bus system.

5. Belizean on Nov 14th, 2005 at 2:29 pm

   Clifford,

   You are correct. LA’s effective public transportation system has long been one the city’s open secrets. I grew up in LA. As a child I was able to go anywhere in the Southland (LA’s local nickname) by bus.

   I have particularly fond memories of busing to USC. They hosted a “gifted” students program that I was somehow allowed to attend one summer as a pre-adolescent. I began reading my first college physics text on an LA bus. [I bought it at USC's bookstore.]

   When I had a science project in the LA County science fair in Exposition Park, I used LA buses (administered in those days by what I think was called the “Rapid Transit District”) to get there.

   High-school chemistry competion at Caltech? Physics competion at UCLA? No problem. The bus would get me there. I never had to rely on my parents.

   As wonderful as the bus system is, it is totally inferior to travel by car, however. I haven’t been on a bus since I obtained my driver’s license. It’s not a matter of classism, it’s purely a matter of convenience. LA still doesn’t have the population density to make bus travel an attractive alternative for most people.

6. Kaleberg on Nov 14th, 2005 at 11:49 pm

   Los Angeles is a great city, and it is building what will some day be a great mass transit system. You can see the wave of the future already in NYC. People who can afford it live in the central city, where people like to live, and commute out to the suburbs where people like to build offices and shopping malls.

   Right now, Los Angeles transit is a bit raw. I’ve ridden the buses there, but buses have their limits. Subways go faster, but are less likely to go exactly where you want. Real cities need both, and a city the size of Los Angeles needs a subway. It may even need a TGV.

   One of the few laws of urban planning states that cities warp to exploit transportation facilities. If you build a canal system, as in 18th century England, you get cities built around canal junctions. If you build a railroad, you get cities, like Atlanta or Chicago. If you build a subway system, it will warp the city around it, using property values as the force vector. This works much as mass warps space and time in general relativity. Over the years, the city will reshape itself to minimize the geodesic.

   This process is already starting in Los Angeles, with the increasing popularity of downtown living. Right now, hardly anybody lives downtown, but no one lived in Tribeca or Soho fifty years ago. There are apartment buildings going up along the line near Fairfax, and supermarkets to serve the apartment dwellers, and so on. In fifty years you’ll have Angelenos arguing that they cleverly built the subway to exploit an existing dense linear formation of housing, offices and shopping malls.

   But, just as we can recognize how dark matter helps determine galactic form, we can recognize how the subways will have shaped the city.

7. Henry Holland on Nov 15th, 2005 at 6:45 am

   As wonderful as the bus system is, it is totally inferior to travel by car, however.

   Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with that in a lot of ways. I do temp work and I recently got a gig in North Hollywood. Of course, as soon as I accepted the job, I thought about the transportation choices. Take my car (101 > 170, the company was right off the Victory offramp on the 170) with rushour traffic going the opposite way or take public transportation. I’m lucky, I have the MacArthur Park Red Line station on the other side of the park.

   However….the one branch of the Red Line that ended in North Hollywood was too far away from the job to walk and the bus line only went from train station > intersection near job, not the other way around because it was only near that intersection for a few blocks (it was a north/south line working briefly on an east/west street). So I ended up taking my car. Sure, I could have done two buses to the train station going home, but it would have meant getting home at after 7:00 pm, instead of the 5:30 pm taking my car. I’m simply not going to spend any more time than I have to commuting to and from work so the train/bus thing lost out.

   Sure, there’s classism about riding the bus–and the Westside is totally not representative of the rest of the city–but it’s mainly the issues I outlined above that are the main factor, in my view. The city completely screwed the pooch in the early 60’s when they rejected an extensive rail system in favor of building more freeways because that’s what seemed like the best idea at the time. Now, with the horrible traffic at all times of day–I’ve been parked on the 101 at 2:00 am on a Thursday with no construction or accidents visible–and the increasing pressure on surface street traffic, it’s turned out to be a hideous choice.

   Kaleberg, you may be right about the subway, but I just have this nagging feeling that a subway system is simply here is simply not the same as in NYC. For one thing, this place is already built out to the tits with suburbs and exburbs–I always maintain that Los Angeles, despite the existence of Orange County, is really the area from (roughly) Woodland Hills on the West, the 210 > 118 on the north, Long Beach on the south and Irvine up the 57 on the east. Now, sure, I can see a point in a 100 years where everything from Woodland Hills to Santa Barbara and Irvine to San Diego and San Dimas to San Bernardino is totally paved over and developed, but frankly, I’m glad I’ll won’t be around to see that.

   But even if that doesn’t come to pass, there’s still the simple fact that the subway will never have the kind of coverage to make a dent in the car culture here. In the San Fernando Valley alone, you’d need subways (at the very minimum) along Roscoe, Sherman Way, Victory, Magnolia and Ventura and that’s just the east/west lines. In the rest of the city, which isn’t so grid oriented, it’s even more complicated.

8. Chantal on Nov 15th, 2005 at 10:03 am

   One of the requirements of living in the Bay Area appears to be a strong hatred of LA. I hate the “you are what you drive” aspect of LA culture, but there are a thousand reasons why I love LA. Taking a subway from Pasadena to the beach would make one thousand one.

9. janet on Nov 15th, 2005 at 10:44 am

   Henry — Yes, it’s not just class that makes people not want to take the bus, but see my point above that poor service is at least partly the result of class divisions.

   Chantal — I don’t hate LA. I’ve only been there twice in my life, despite living in the Bay Area for my entire life, minus 5 years in Boston, so I don’t have much basis on which to form an opinion. When I was a kid (in the 60’s and 70’s) the hatred of Southern California was largely political, but these days it’s clear that the liberal/conservative divide in California is more of a coasts vs. interior kind of thing than north vs. south, and my sense is that the LA vs. SF rivalry has faded considerably, at least at this end. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone talking about hating LA.

   As far as buses vs. cars go, cars are clearly, in most cases, quicker and are nearly always more efficient if you have limited time — for example, if you’ve got a bunch of errands to do around town and absolutely need to be home by 5:00. But public transport has its advantages in the way that you can use the time. My old commute was about 75 minutes each way by public transport (mostly BART). I used that time for reading or knitting. The commute also encouraged at least one 20 minute walk every day. For various reasons (usually because I needed to go somewhere before or directly after work) I drove to work on average about twice a month, which would take me about 35 to 60 minutes each way (and occasionally longer), depending on traffic. On those days I really missed my reading time! Yes, I would substitute listening to the radio, but I find that when I’m driving, especially in heavy traffic, I don’t concentrate very well on what I’m listening to, and I’d often find that I’d zoned out during most of a news story, which meant that if I was really interested in it I’d have to listen to it again when I got home (this is the local NPR station’s infinite news loop I’m talking about). When I took public transport I would generally get home in a much better mood.

10. Clifford on Nov 15th, 2005 at 11:48 am

    Hi,

    Some thoughts: First, these things feed into each other. So the reason that the service is poor is at least partly because people made the choice for convenience. The class system reinforces the poor service (which is not uniformly poor by the way) It is my main point that the system will get better if people showed up to use it and put pressure on it. Also, yes, of course the car is more convenient. But that is not reason enough to use it all the time. I could drive in every day and it would take me 20-25 minutes, even in rush hour. (I can shave another 2 or 3 off if I really push it.) I’d be able to run all kinds of last minute, unplanned, spontaneous errands on the way home. But I choose not to live that way. I think that when one can make the choice (And that is not true for a lot of the city) -i.e., not to the extent that it is a ridiculous waste of time- one should choose to use public transport. It will never be as convenient as a car. That is what people don’t understand….they’re waiting until it is as convenient as a car. People are basically lazy, it has to be said, and everybody is of the opinion that they and their business is really important and so that extra 20 minutes cannot be spared. Let others spare that time. I can see that it is easy to think this way. It is not because everyone else is a bad person….it is just how we are all programmed to think. But one has to move beyond that. There are benefits to taking the path less travelled in this endeavour. The environmental ones are obvious, and so I won’t go on about it again. But there are personal ones and social ones as well. The personal onces I’ve spoken of before, and janet has mentioned one of them….

    (1) You get some time in the day to pause.
    (2) You get to read a newspaper, book, prepare for a meeting, etc.
    (3) You arrive alert and not stressed from dealing with idiot drivers,
    (4) You spend a lot less money on gas and parking
    (5) You don’t know a city by driving it. Especially LA, sicne most people just go on the highway, and don’t know much about how to get around at street level. I cycle or walk…this is a great speed at which to see the city. Actually, there are some days when I just want to see what’s going on in the various gardens along the way to work, and so I just leave the bike and walk…when I have the time and am in the mood. Or you want to see what the new store or cafe is like…walk by and see the work being done on it, or who’s in there. Staying in touch with your neighbourhood.
    (6) You get to talk to real people. This combats fear. Frankly, I find it distressing how many academics and students and other people from my “work” life that I meet know nothing about the vast majority of the people in the city. They are just scary people of colour. They work on the landscaping, or in your garden, and you eat their tasty food and that’s it. You never have to see or talk to them if you get into your car at your house, drive to work, and get out and into your office. I think it would really help our cities and lives a great deal if people got used to sitting next to a random person from the city for ten minutes on the bus or the train. Just watch a father with his kids - that same guy who when you saw him on his own the other night, you thought he was going to mug you- a guy doing his homework on that way back from the local community college, that guy who does your garden, that woman who cooks for the neighbour. Those really funny confused, -but adventurous- scared british tourists who will go home and never use the bus again (but maybe just might if you said hello)…. etc.

    This is why (among other reasons) I take the extra 20 - 25 minutes to get to work each day. I need to stay connected.

    Further:

    (7) You get some exercise. That 45-50 minutes spent in the gym powerwalking or running on a treadmill? You’d get a lot of that exercise by walking and cycling to the subway/bus stop. It is ironic to me that people have removed regular exercise from their lives by driving everywhere rather than using their bodies to help them move, and then they go to the gym to try to make it up!

    Ok. I’ll stop, since it is time to do some work.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

11. Clifford on Nov 15th, 2005 at 11:49 am

    Hi Chantal… only a thousand? Gosh!…

    -cvj

12. Michael on Nov 15th, 2005 at 10:48 pm

    Believe it or not, once upon a time Los Angeles had a vast public transport system (the longest and most extensive of its day)

    http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/la/historic/redcars/

13. Clifford on Nov 16th, 2005 at 3:24 am

    Michael, indeed. It makes the whole thing so much sadder….but also exciting to see that it is going to creep back…. and in some places (like much of the Expo line) right along the old lines!

    -cvj

14. Count Iblis on Nov 16th, 2005 at 9:36 am

    Hi clifford,

    I agree with points 1..6. You wrote:

    ”7) You get some exercise. That 45-50 minutes spent in the gym powerwalking or running on a treadmill? You’d get a lot of that exercise by walking and cycling to the subway/bus stop. It is ironic to me that people have removed regular exercise from their lives by driving everywhere rather than using their bodies to help them move, and then they go to the gym to try to make it up!”

    Although walking/cycling is good for you, it’s not really a substitute for ”proper” exercising. If you’re not too old, you really need to get your heart rate up to the 150 range or higher to stay fit. That’s not easy when walking or cycling in a city :).

    When I walk to university , I walk fast but I don’t really get tired (I’m used to running for half an hour). Even so, when I arrive at my room I often need to change my clothes. It’s hot inside the building; the moment I enter I start to sweat.

15. Clifford on Nov 16th, 2005 at 9:41 am

    Count Iblis: I said “you get some exercise”. I did not say “you get all the exercise you need”. (Although I find cycling uphill for 1/2 hour+ is pretty good exercise when I decide to ignore the bus and go all the way home on the bike….) Further, you assume that I’m just talking to superfit 20 something year olds. No.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

16. Count Iblis on Nov 16th, 2005 at 10:06 am

    Clifford,

    Yes I forgot that most countries are not so flat like Holland :). Still, strenuous excercise is important even for older people. My father of 70 exercises every other day on his hometrainer. He get’s his heart rate up to around 130. He had suffered a heart attack about ten years ago and had a bypass operation. He changed his habits afterwards.

    I know many young people who are not as fit as my father. They say: ”well I walk every day”. Perhaps that’s enough to prevent someone from becoming a miserable wreck, but it’s not good enough to properly maintain the cardiovascular system.

17. janet on Nov 16th, 2005 at 11:53 am

    Actually, the amount and intensity of exercise needed to become fit is not that cut-and-dried. In particular, the estimates of maximum heart rate and target heart rate are based on one study done in the 70’s. There’s a lot more variation

    Take me as an example: one of the key indicators of heart disease risk is blood pressure. Mine consistently runs in the neighborhood of 100/60 (which is considered very good). It did even during a time in my life when I was extremely sedentary and quite a bit overweight. Pregnancy, anxiety, weight, age, nothing seems to affect it. Several years ago, when I was getting my vitals checked before I had abdominal surgery, it was 95/60. The nurse said to me “I guess nothing fazes you!” but in fact I was quite anxious and had been under severe stress for the previous five months. I chalk it up to heredity: my dad is the same way.

    Exercise is definitely beneficial, but I think the best way to motivate people to exercise is to point out to people that if you’re in better shape you can do more, feel better, get tired less easily, etc. These are tangible and almost immediate effects of regular exercise. The theoretical possibility of preventing a heart attack at some unspecified date in the future just isn’t very motivating for most people.

    Why am I always getting off topic?

18. janet on Nov 16th, 2005 at 11:55 am

    Arrgh, sorry — left off the end of the first paragraph. Meant to say

    There’s a lot more variation from person to person than is generally recognized.

19. Count Iblis on Nov 16th, 2005 at 2:13 pm

    Hi Janet,

    I agree that possibly preventing a heart attack won’t motivate people to do regular exercise. Most smokers would give up smoking if that were the case.

    Also it’s not clear if you are indeed going to prevent blocked arteries by exercising. What is clear is that the probability that you are going to survive an heart attack is much higher if you are fit. Also you’ll probably notice the symptoms of blocked arteries long before you get the heart attack.

20. Pingback from Commuting, I | Cosmic Variance on Nov 30th, 2005 at 1:25 am

    [...] So I’ve spoken here about my frustrations about the myths about Los Angeles, and the fact that so much is missed by many because they’re in their cars. In particular I’ve spoken about public transport (such as the fact that it exists but almost nobody uses it), and I’ve spoken about walking, and cycling. But it must seem all so abstract. So in a fit of frustration at not being able to bring you all along with me and just show you, I decided the day after I did this post that I’d take you with me on one of those mornings when I decide on the way to the bus stop that I’m not going to stop for the bus….. I’m going to go all the way to work on the bike. Yes….the cute little Brompton that everyone living in a city should have to displace their car activity. (I dream, I know.) (See for example here, and here.) [...]

21. Pingback from Back To The Future | Cosmic Variance on Jan 6th, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    [...] So this I see as another possible future for cities such as Los Angeles. Imagine how transformed it will be when the various long-awaited subway and light rail projects are completed. I’ve spoken about this before….I can’t wait. I just hope someone in charge of making this sort of thing happen fast and happen right in Los Angeles gets to talk to someone who can contrast the old Taipei with the new Taipei. Eight short years was all it took. [...]

22. Pingback from It Just Keeps Getting Better | Cosmic Variance on Jan 10th, 2006 at 10:41 am

    [...] This continues to defy the lie that everybody tells about there being no public transport in Los Angeles. See my earlier remarks about that here. [...]

23. Pingback from Non-Minimal Weekend | Cosmic Variance on Apr 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 pm

    [...] I was at a particularly good dinner party on Saturday night over on the West Side. It had a little under a dozen people, from professionals in academia and surrounds (such as relativist Kip Thorne of Caltech, or Legal scholar and writer/broadcaster Jonathan Kirsch) to professionals in entertainment (such as writer/performer Julia Sweeney), and journalism (such as South African Journalist and Activist Zubeida Jaffer) and several other fields…. and a good time was had by all. I only had to explain string theory and the whole of particle physics three times (to three separate groups; and I was glad for the opportunity to do so) so I managed to get some food and wine down. I’m not sure if my biggest moment was convincing the razor-sharp Julia Sweeney that maybe she does not hate string theoy quite so much any more, or whether it was just finding ourselves enthusiastically in agreement over public transport issues in LA (i.e. it exists, if only people would use it more! Well, you’ve heard me on this topic a lot…..). We also spoke a lot about getting more science into the entertainment/media realm as well (you’ve heard me on that topic a lot too) a subject we agreed was worth pursuing… [...]

24. Pingback from Hubble On The Bus | Cosmic Variance on May 4th, 2006 at 1:33 pm

    [...] In other transport news: Recall my post on the Expo Line, which starts construction this year? If not, see this post for information, and also information on the existing public transport infrastructure (which exists, is excellent in places, but overall is not used as much as it ought to be because people conveniently cling to the myth that you can only get around by car in this city). Well, some of the neighbourhoods through which the line will run are getting excited. They are getting together and planning how things ought to look near the stations. Discussions about schools, restaurants, supermarkets, pedestrian walkways (and hopefully bikeways?) are taking place in the community. One such community meeting, arranged by the community near the La Brea station, is tonight at the Dorsey High School auditorium. Details can be found at this link if you’d like to come. There’s other related news at that site too. See also the website of the Transit Coalition for lots of information. [...]

25. Pingback from Green For Purple - Asymptotia on Oct 1st, 2006 at 5:30 pm

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