Transit Shapes Cities but We Shape Transit There are few city-shaping forces more powerful than transit. Think about it: when you imagine New York City, you probably think about how easy it is to hop on the subway and miraculously appear on the other side of the city (at least it seems like a miracle in comparison to what we have in the west). When you think of Los Angeles on the other hand, you might conjure an image of being stuck in your car in an endless tangle of freeways. But the means of transit that we employ goes beyond simply shaping our physical cityscapes. It also makes up much of the fabric of our day-to-day lives. It helps to determine what's in our shopping baskets (I'm probably not going to bike home with a case of cans from Costco any more than I'm going to drive an SUV to the cornerstore to grab a tomato). That in turn shapes the makeup of our local businesses. It influences our health, by guiding how and when we're active. And it guides the ways in which we build and interact with our communities. In short, transit connects us in more ways than one. Because of the ways that transit shapes us as a city and as a people, it's important for us to be mindful of how we shape transit in turn. Here are a couple recent(ish) examples: after the '89 earthquake in San Francisco, the city opted not to rebuild some of the damaged freeways. This led to a revitalization of areas like Hayes Valley and the Embarcadero and also contributed to the pedestrian, cycling, and public transit culture in San Francisco. Here's another example: restricting public transit has the effect of restricting access to jobs and education. More accessible transit is an engine of equity, and suppressing transit has historically been a means of racial and economic segregation. With that said, let's look at how Angelenos move. The below data were collected from datausa for the year 2017. They show the share of work commuters using five types of transportation: driving alone (as in, no one else is in your car), public transit, biking, walking, and 'other' (which includes taxis and work-from-home). There are a few take-aways from these data. One is that the proportion of commuters using public transit varies widely from city to city. But I've chosen these cities in particular to highlight a different point: Angelenos overwhelmingly get around in cars (by themselves). No one in Los Angeles would be surprised by this. But many would be surprised to know that by this metric, LA looks a lot like the urban south. When I've discussed this data with friends and colleagues here, perhaps the most common rebuttal that I've encountered is: Los Angeles is enormous, and the only way to get around is by car. Is that true? The first part certainly is. LA is a megacity. But when people get into their cars, are they always driving across the city? I'm not asking about your friend or cousin who commutes from the Valley to Long Beach, or from Pasadena to Santa Monica. I'm asking about the average. And when it comes to the data, the answer is no: Half of trips in LA are shorter than 3 miles I collected and crunched the above data from a recent report from INRIX, which first came to my attention after it was posted on BikinginLA. These data indicate that 21% of trips taken in LA are less than a mile. And ~50% are less than three miles. I found this to be pretty striking, when compared to the distribution of how people get around. Because what these data say, according to INRIX, is that Los Angeles is one of the best candidates nationwide for 'microtransit', services like bike-share and scooters. INRIX seems to have a point: "scooters and bike-share are transforming LA" is a quote I've heard more than once recently. And to hear cyclists (and some walkers) tell it, the barrier to biking or walking is not the 3-mile mark; it's the lack of contiguous bike and pedestrian infrastructure. But am I only talking about fun neighborhood trips? Aren't Angelenos still stuck in their cars because LA commute times are especially long? It turns out that LA is pretty typical in terms of commute time, with an average of 29.8 minutes compared to the national average of 25.1. There is a rather long 'tail' in LA's commute times, but the proportion of people with long commutes is not very different between LA and the national average. And better transit policy will help that. Below I've plotted a histogram of the average commute times of all 399 California cities listed by datausa. LA is marked in red so you can see how we stack up. If you're curious about the identities of the outliers, on the short end are cities like Santa Barbara, Napa, and Chico. On the long end are cities like Pittsburgh, Antioch, and Richmond. Those names probably sound familiar to Bay Area BART users: they're the end-points of BART lines. This is a terrific piece of information to fall out of this analysis. Why? Because it suggests that public transit is keeping financial/employment centers accessible even as those centers become unaffordable to live in. Pittsburgh, for example, is ~40 miles from San Francisco. Leave your car keys by the door Circling back to how I opened the post, our means of transit is a powerful force in the shape of our cities--how they look, their relative equity, their integration. In the public discourse, LA is generally regarded as a behemoth in which the personal vehicle is the only possible means to get around. But according to these data, Angelenos are mostly taking neighborhood trips, like everybody else. We know that to be true from experience, of course. As satirized in movies like LA Story, many Angelenos insist on driving even when it would be faster to walk.
What this says to me is that LA is culturally a car city, but it is not one by necessity. And that's good news, because it means that we can adapt. How? By leaving your car keys at the door. Using transportation other than single-occupant cars is a meaningful action. Your increased ridership on the Metro will factor into whether and where Metro expands. Your miles on the bike and on foot will factor into whether new bike lanes or improved pedestrian infrastructure are adopted. And most importantly, if you're supporting alternative transportation, you're supporting the transformation of your city into a greener, cleaner, safer, and more equitable place. Those seem like destinations we can all agree on. Comments are closed.
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