Overselling Transit

A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times eloquently illustrated the limits of mass transit in modern societies. This is not to imply that that transit does not have its place, nor that it does not provide a most useful service where it can. The problem has been the overselling of a mode that has very serious limitations. This has led to misallocations of financial resources that could be more efficiently used for the roadway expansions that would relieve traffic congestion and reduce both air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while encouraging greater jobs creation and economic growth.

The op-ed in question was by Karen Leonard, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and Sarah Hays, a Los Angeles architect. The article noted the neighborhood opposition to the "Expo" Line (Exposition Boulevard line) and efforts by the authors to gain support for the line. The neighborhood in question is Cheviot Hills, a tony neighborhood with a median house price of $850,000 in the city of Los Angeles and located between Beverly Hills and Culver City.

What is significant about the op-ed, however, is not so much the neighborhood as the concluding line and the author credits.

"So we continue to walk our neighborhoods talking with our neighbors, hoping that this time the quiet majority will finally prevail and we will all gain the choice of leaving our cars at home.

Karen Leonard is an anthropology professor at UC Irvine. Sarah Hays is a Los Angeles architect. They are co-chairs of Light Rail for Cheviot Hills (lightrailforcheviot.org)."

UC Irvine? It is doubtful that the Expo line will make it possible for anyone in the foreseeable future who lives in Cheviot Hills to "leave their car at home." The University of California, Irvine is located in the middle of Orange County, approximately 50 miles from Cheviot Hills.

It is useful to consider what leaving the car at home in Cheviot Hills would mean for a mythical professor at the University of California, Irvine once the Expo line is fully operational.

On Monday, the professor needs to be in class at 8:00 am, which requires arrival on campus by 7:45 a.m. On the assumption that the mythical professor lives in the middle of Cheviot Hills, the trip would involve leaving the house at 2:43 a.m. and walking 20 minutes to the transit stop. The favored Expo light rail line would not be available that early, so the first leg of the trip would be on a bus. But before too long, the ecstasy of light rail is experienced. After two bus rides, the passenger would board the Green light rail line, which would have started operating. The Green line trip would be rapid (probably the fastest such line in the nation), because it is in the median of the Interstate 105 freeway.

Then things slow down a bit. Four bus transfers later, the mythical professor arrives at the campus, at 7:16 a.m., in plenty of time to have coffee and get to the classroom before 8:00. While the professor traveling for 4.5 hours and leaving his or her car at home, a neighbor could have driven to Las Vegas for breakfast.

If it is assumed that the mythical professor is able to get out of a staff meeting at 3:00 pm, the return trip will seem like a Star Trek transporter compared to the morning commute. The total travel time, including on the Expo light rail line, would be approximately 3 hours, part of it on the Expo line.

These transit commutes would hardly be comfortable or productive, though they would include all conventional forms of transit available in Los Angeles (there are no trolley buses, inclined planes or ferries in Los Angeles). The morning trip would require 6 transit vehicles, 125 stops and an hour and 10 minutes of walking. The evening trip would require 5 transit vehicles, at least 30 stops and 40 minutes of walking. The total transit commute time would thus be 7.5 hours for a work day of 7 hours. Needless to say, it is unlikely that with this schedule, any professor would ever leave his or her car at home.

Tuesday would be little better. The trip to Irvine would have the advantage of starting on the Expo line, but would still take 3 hours and 15 minutes. The return trip, including bus rides, a Green Line ride, a Harbor Freeway Busway ride and an Expo light rail ride would be about 4 hours and 30 minutes, with little wait in Irvine for service.

Finally, there is a myth people cannot leave their cars at home and walk or take transit to work. In fact, there are probably no work locations in urban America where people cannot choose to live close enough to work to walk or take transit. But choosing to leave the car at home is not as important as other choices, even for advocates for transit improvements. Otherwise they would live close enough to leave their cars at home. Of course, most people value other things more than leaving the car at home, such as a nice neighborhood, a nice car, a low crime rate and a host of other considerations. Otherwise no professor would live in Cheviot Hills and work at UC Irvine. Indeed, they would probably live in the faculty housing made available by UC Irvine.

All of this illustrates what transit cannot do; competitively provide automobile competitive service for most of the trips that are taken in the modern American (and even European) urban area.

It is also worth recognizing that transit has been substantially improved in Los Angeles over the past 20 years (whether it has grown cost effectively is dealt with in another article). Spending aside, these improvements have made it possible to make any one-way trip in the Los Angeles urban area in less than four hours, at least during the middle of the day. This is to the credit of the Metrolink commuter rail system, the subway, rapid busways and the more rapid of the light rail lines. But this is hardly tempting to Angelenos whose median commute time by car is 24 minutes. As elsewhere in the nation (and as in Western Europe, Canada and Australia), transit can sometimes compete with the automobile to core (principally downtown) locations. The suburban to suburban trips, however, largely are simply beyond transit's capability.

Of course, some drivers commute much longer, as in the case of the mythical professor at UC Irvine, whose trip would be between one and one and one-half hours each way. In Los Angeles, 8 percent of people in cars have commutes that are more than one hour. And virtually all of them find this commute, however maddening, is far shorter and more comfortable than a similar trip taken by transit.

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Photograph: Interstate 5 (on the way to Irvine) in Orange County

Wendell Cox trained on the Exposition corridor between the University of Southern California (USC) and Culver City (near Cheviot Hills) as a member of the USC cross country team). He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (one of two agencies merged later to form the MTA) and participated in decisions to authorize the Green Line light rail line, the Harbor Freeway Busway, the Red Line Subway and Interstate 105, all used by the mythical professor commuting to UC Irvine.