Monday, 4/21/97 Critical Mass Traffic problems in the L.A. area
can be alleviated by supporting public transportation projects.
My bicycle tire chains hang sadly in my closet, lightly rusted
with a powdery patina of salt left over from their last use in the
late-winter slush of Minneapolis over a year ago. They are an
ironic reminder for me of what it’s like – despite extreme weather
for six months of the year – to live in a city that values
alternative transportation. My 10-mile commute to the University of
Minnesota, wrapped up in two parkas, a face mask, ski goggles, long
underwear and heavy boots, took me over miles of bike lanes,
bike-only bridges, even the nation’s first bicycle freeway. On
those flat-tire days, an efficient bus system took me (and my
bicycle) wherever I needed to go, and quickly. It is not just the
weather that makes Los Angeles a world apart. The reality is that
the transportation problem in most parts of this country, and Los
Angeles in particular, has a long history. Prior to World War II,
every major city in the United States moved to the silent hum of
public transportation, usually in the form of electric streetcars,
trains and trolleys. Los Angeles, in fact, had the largest electric
train system in the world at that time. It linked the entire
metropolitan area and carried some 80 million passengers long long
before the GV1. The auto industry, however, had other plans for the
country. Suffering from the economic slump of the Depression and
far from being secure that the "car culture" would catch on, large
auto companies began targeting mass transit systems as enemy No. 1
in the hopes of selling more cars. General Motors was the first,
forming a front company in 1932, called United Cities Motor
Transit, with the intention of buying out cities’ transit systems
and running them aground. Through GM’s efforts, New York City’s
massive trolley system was dismantled in only 18 months. After
being caught in Portland, Ore., GM joined together with other
automotive industry players, including Greyhound Bus Lines,
Firestone Tire and Rubber, Mack Manufacturing, Standard Oil of
California and Phillips Petroleum. Together, they formed a new
company called National City Lines (NCL), and poured some $10
million into its development by 1937. It was worth the investment
for them; NCL eventually destroyed the transit systems of more than
45 cities in the United States. Most importantly, it firmly
established the automobile as the primary transportation vehicle in
the rapid economic expansion of the postwar years. By 1955, only 12
percent of streetcars remained across the nation that had been
running in the mid-1930s. For the skeptics waiting for me to pull a
Kennedy assassin out of my hat for my next trick, this particular
conspiracy is well documented, if not well known. These companies
were eventually convicted in federal court of violating the Sherman
Antitrust Act by engaging in an illegal conspiracy. Unfortunately,
justice was not served by the slap on the wrist each received in
penalties. Each company was assessed a $5,000 fine, and each
individual official implicated was fined a single dollar. The
now-quite powerful automotive industry, together with Cold War
fever, combined to pass the National Defense and Interstate Highway
Act in 1956, setting the stage for a half-century of car dominance.
State and local transportation governing boards took their cue from
this legislation, and highway construction exploded all over the
country – especially here in Southern California. It was not until
this decade that federal policy finally began looking at other
modes of transportation to address increasing problems of
congestion and air pollution. The Intermodal Surface Transportation
Efficiency Act (ISTEA), signed into law by President Bush in
December 1991, allocated funding for diverse alternative
transportation strategies, including ride-share programs, bike
lanes, mass transit and pedestrian facilities. It also encouraged
public participation by giving decision-making power to local and
regional authorities. The bill authorized funding for six years and
is up for re-authorization right now. Not surprisingly, it is being
fought by conservative groups interested in maintaining automotive
dominance, not to mention the campaign cash flow coming from Motor
City. Some are even advocating a total elimination of the federal
gas tax (and thus most of the ISTEA money), despite the fact that
we have by far the lowest gas prices in the industrialized world.
In addition to being environmentally short-sighted, the continued
reliance on highway construction as a method of solving our
transportation problems ignores contemporary transit reality. As
long ago as 1988, a study in Los Angeles concluded that no amount
of new highway construction would reduce automotive congestion
here. Roads just breed more cars. Rather than more miles of
asphalt, what is needed is fewer cars. And let’s face it –
traffic-related problems in L.A. are the worst in the country. Even
the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the most
powerful transit board in California and architect of our current
system, says it sucks here. They took out an ad last week in the
Los Angeles Times to encourage readers to call their
representatives in Congress and urge them to vote for
re-authorization of the ISTEA. A worthy cause, but perhaps we
should examine what happens to that money once it gets here. Local
concern with expanding alternative transportation really took off
in 1980 with the passage of municipal Proposition A, which added a
half-penny to the city sales tax to fund transportation projects.
The Los Angeles Transportation Commission was formed to oversee
administration of those funds and to explore long-range options
such as light rail and new bus lines. That organization was
subsumed in 1992 under the new Metropolitan Transportation
Authority, the organization that oversees all transit projects in
greater L.A., controlling access to all local, state, and, under
ISTEA, federal transit money. The MTA has made headlines in recent
months for being a model of divisiveness and inefficiency. The
expansion project for the Metrorail system has run over budget into
extraordinary figures, and the MTA’s constant squabbling over it
finally led departing national Transportation Secretary Federico
Pena, as well as President Clinton, to reprimand it to clean up its
act or lose its funding. Behind the hysterics, many in the city are
wondering if the railway project is the correct way to go in the
first place. Ryan Snyder of the California Bicycle Coalition (CBC)
reports that Los Angeles bus ridership is down 400,000 people a day
due to cuts in bus lines to fund projects like the Metrorail
expansion. Even by the MTA’s projected figures, overall public use
of transit will decrease under the rail plan as short rail lines
centered around downtown will use a disproportionate amount of city
funding, cutting into what is available for other programs. The CBC
is currently sponsoring a bill in the California legislature to
increase the Cal Trans Bike Lane Account from $360,000 to $5
million a year. The fund has not been given a raise since 1972,
even for inflation, despite yearly applications exceeding $2-5
million. Despite a lack of funding, bicycle commuting and travel in
Los Angeles has climbed to 1 percent of total trips, a figure
indicating that, with proper support, bicycle use in L.A. could
significantly alter the transportation scene. These projects could
have a particular impact on our campus, with proposed bike lanes
and elevated bikeways in the works for the Westwood area extending
south toward Culver City. How the MTA should spend money will be a
moot point, however, if it doesn’t have any money to spend.
Complain! Call people in Congress and at the MTA to tell them what
we, as fixed-income students and L.A. residents, need to get
around. Sen. Barbara Boxer (310-414-5700) is on the transportation
committee reviewing the ISTEA. Sen. Diane Feinstein (310-914-7300)
and Westwood-area Rep. Henry Waxman (213-651-1040) could use your
call as well. The American car culture, particularly the virulent
Angeleno strain, is a system of waste, inefficiency, destruction
and carnage. Resist! Park your car, ride your bike to school, take
the bus and make your voice heard by calling Congress. Ritter is a
graduate student in ethnomusicology. He can be reached at
jlritter@ucla.edu.