TICKET TO RIDE

TEA-21 also instructs that "bicycle transportation facilities and pedestrian walkways shall be considered, where appropriate, in conjunction with all new construction and reconstruction of transportation facilities, except where bicycle and pedestrian use are not permitted." Advocates have been lobbying for this provision for years. The ISTEA planning process was streamlined, a move STPP supported in the hopes that the planning factors would be taken more seriously. And while ISTEA's controversial financial constraint measures were retained, states and MPOs can now attach an illustrative project list in case additional funding is made available.

TEA-21 also provides the U.S. DOT with $120 million for pilot projects addressing the transportation-land use problem. This money can go to state, local and regional agencies that partner with nonprofits or private sector interests to try to better coordinate land use and transportation planning. These funds could be used to develop, assess and implement alternative investment and growth scenarios.

And TEA-21 includes an Access to Jobs program that allocates $750 million over five years ($500 of that guaranteed) to help low-income and former welfare recipients get to jobs. Four types of projects are eligible:
---promoting the use of transit by workers with nontraditional work schedules;
---promoting the use of transit vouchers for welfare recipients and eligible low-income individuals;
---promoting employer-provided transportation, such as the transit pass benefit program; and financing capital expenses and operating costs of equipment and facilities related to providing access to jobs.
---Projects that transport urban residents to suburban jobs are also eligible.

There are two enormously frustrating things about the debate over transportation investments in Los Angeles. One is that it's portrayed as a bus versus rail debate, rather than a debate about providing a range of safer, more convenient alternatives to driving on congested highways in a degraded and polluted environment.

The second is that there is no discussion whatsoever about the land use and economic development implications of each investment. Rail and highways are permanent infrastructure developments that cannot be unfunded once they are built. Bus service is not permanent and can be cut at any time -- as we have seen. That's why both rail and highways can serve to stimulate and anchor economic development in communities, and why simply increasing bus service cannot leverage these same economic benefits.

Public transit can build value into our older communities, whereas highways channel investment and jobs and the middle class out of urban core communities and into new suburban communities. Rail can build permanent value, and rail stations can serve as a real focus for economic development and revitalization efforts.

We've got to factor those considerations into our discussion because highways are encouraging sprawling land use patterns that are sucking public and private investment out of our urban core communities. Over the last 10 years, for example, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has chosen to spend two-thirds of its flexible funding -- more than $1.5 billion -- on improving the highway system instead of on transit. This money -- used for freeway improvements, HOV lanes and gap closures to facilitate regional travel -- does not benefit the urban core. And it is in addition to flexible federal funding awarded to highway projects instead of transit by the state. That said, we must seek to build a comprehensive transportation system that recognizes the role of each mode -- bus, light rail, commuter rail, highways, van pools, smart shuttles -- and that is focused on creating walkable, bikeable, economically vibrant communities where people don't need to drive everywhere.

Transit investments should not be awarded like political plums but should be focused in transit-dependent communities. Well-traveled bus lines should be given dedicated bus lanes and priority signalization. Where transit corridors are densely populated and buses get stuck in traffic there should be busways or trolleys or light rail -- which can be constructed so as to go underground. Contrast this with the way we have been making investments: When early analyses indicated that the Exposition light rail line was the best line to build, what happened? We instead built the Blue Line to Long Beach, through industrial neighborhoods far from where people live and work and shop. Why? Largely because it ran through the districts of two powerful politicians -- L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and Congressman Glenn Anderson from Long Beach, who chaired the House Transportation Subcommittee. So of course the Blue Line has not revitalized communities; there are no neighborhoods along the line to develop except at the line's terminus in Long Beach where it has anchored wildly successful revitalization efforts. Neither are there any neighborhoods to develop along the Green Line.

The MTA must encourage transit-oriented development along the Red Line and along the Blue Line to Pasadena if it gets built. Major investments should be awarded to those communities that agree to do the right kind of planning and to make the land use, zoning and density changes that will provide a good return on these major public infrastructure investments. Long Beach has done that. Pasadena has done that.

We need dedicated rights of way for public transit, because as long as buses have to weave in and out of traffic, extending travel times, public transit will remain inferior to the automobile, and transit users will be at a disadvantage. And as long as we rely on buses transit-dependent communities will be at the mercy of those who can increase fares and cut back service -- which is what transit agencies across the country are doing. Oakland is eliminating night service. Montgomery, Alabama has eliminated public transit service altogether. Transit dependent communities deserve better treatment.  L.A. more than any other city needs a well-constructed set of alternatives to the automobile, ranging from shuttle service and van pools through bus and express bus service with priority signalization and dedicated lanes to trolley service and light rail. Where transit investments are made they should be accompanied by investments to improve walkability and to encourage transit- based housing and transit-serving retail, including markets and restaurants, banks, dry cleaners and other neighborhood services. Transit centers should serve as employment centers as well.

UCLA professor Donald Shoup extols the benefits of "unlimited access" transit passes for university students in a recent research paper, and has approached L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky about the MTA providing a similar benefit. Shoup's research examines 19 of these programs -- which automatically give all students the right to ride public transit if they show their university ID cards when boarding -- at campuses around the country. The result of these programs, he writes, is that transit agencies report increased ridership, increased revenues, improved transit service for all riders, and favorable media coverage. "American universities have invented a new way to finance public transit," concludes Shoup.

University administrators are no less enthusiastic, claiming the programs reduce the need for parking structures on campus, give students high mobility at low cost, help recruit students, and are a cost-effective form of financial aid for lower income students. Administrators at the University of Colorado at Boulder claim the bus program has reduced parking demand and political pressure to expand parking supply, resulting in a savings of $6-$15 million in capital expenditures.

Shoup points out that the six UCLA parking structures built between 1977 and 1991 cost an average $25,600 per space. The debt service and operating cost of the newest parking structure is $2,040 per space per year! In comparison, the average cost of providing transit passes at the 19 universities is $32 per year. Under-priced parking provides a subsidy to students who commute by car; those who walk, bike or ride transit receive no subsidy.

The Faculty Welfare Committee and the Executive Board of the Academic Senate have endorsed a proposal for a transit program at UCLA, and the administration is exploring this proposal.

Bob Hope

Repealing the vehicle licensing fee will further increase our already significant public subsidies to the automobile. The World Resources Institute estimates that gas taxes and other user fees cover only about 60 percent of the money spent building, improving, and repairing roads. The rest comes out of income, property and sales tax dollars, which are largely disbursed out of state and local governments' general funds. 

Governor Wilson proposes slashing the car tax money, which by law goes to local and county governments, by 75 percent in five years -- a reduction of $3.6 billion in revenues. He proposes replacing the money by tapping the state's general fund, which has led to protests from school officials and others whose budgets rely on the general fund. Using a 1992 World Resources Institute report entitled "The Going Rate: What It Costs to Drive," Jim Stewart of the Southern California Council on Environment and Development (SCCED) estimates that the total annual public cost of vehicles in the six-county Southern California region is $38 billion dollars, $21 billion of which is borne by drivers and $17 billion of which is borne by the public at large. These costs include road construction and maintenance, highway services, free parking, accidents, impacts of ozone pollution and particulates, noise and global warming.

In comparison the projected public subsidies of the capital and operating costs of all bus and rail systems across the SCAG region for the next 25 years total only about $1.2 billion per year -- about 7 percent of the estimated subsidies to autos and trucks.

Contact Jim Stewart at jstew2000@aol.com for more info, or call 310-281-8534.

It can be persuasively argued that the MTA's Congestion Management Plan (CMP) does exactly the opposite -- that it increases congestion and traffic, worsens air quality, and routes investment away from built-out urban communities while promoting auto-oriented development on the far suburban fringes.

Each of the 88 cities in L.A. County send revised CMPs to the MTA by September 1; the cities are then assigned debits for new development and credits for transportation improvements that will accommodate the increased demand on the transportation system. Part of the problem is that more credits are earned for capacity-increasing projects like road widenings than for demand management strategies like transit or transit-oriented development. This advantages development in sprawling new suburban communities (like Palmdale) that can add freeway onramps and build wider roads, and disadvantages older built-out urban communities (like Lakewood or La Mirada) that have to buy credits from other cities in order to accommodate development.

Worse yet the increased capacity releases pent-up demand, increasing the number of vehicles on the streets, and it encourages the kinds of transportation improvements -- wider streets with no street parking or street trees which mean more, faster-moving cars, additional freeway ramps, more parking lots -- that ruin quality of life in communities and disadvantage local business districts.

Neither does the CMP take into account inter-county problems resulting from the jobs/housing imbalance (job growth will be greatest on the Westside, new housing will be to the east). Meanwhile the CMP consumes millions of dollars annually in MTA and city staff time as cities go through what is really a technocratic exercise.