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 ver the years, we've heard a lot about "Los Angelization."
The last round of managed growth sentiment in San Diego was epitomized
in the 80s by PLAN (Prevent Los Angelization Now). While PLAN
fizzled, the use of "Los Angelization" still resonates
with San Diegans as an epithet.
 In honor
of the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, this SDET takes
a special look at the "Los Angelization" paradigm with
respect to transportation and what we could do to create a better
future for San Diego. In this issue's special primer
on transportation issues, learn how Los Angelization unfolds
upon us as a multibillion-dollar monster we have every reason
to tame.
I always
wondered, exactly what IS the defining characteristic of the
growth paradigm of "Los Angelization"? Since I was
born in LA, and married a third-generation San Diegan, it seems
to me that I'm in the perfect position to pontificate on this
burning cultural question. After all, if we can't specifically
identify "Los Angelization" for what it is, then how
can we properly prevent it?
The most
poetic capturing of "Los Angelization" is certainly
singer Joni Mitchell's time-proven lament of our cultural predilection
to, "Pave Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot." This
was perhaps the first popular complaint about the negative linkages
between transportation and land use!
Smog is
also one of the bad LA things that people can name. What's up
with smog? Having clamped down on most industrial sources, smog
is now mainly the result of so-called "mobile point source
emissions" -- which is bureaucracy-speak for cars, trucks
and diesel buses. The sheer volume of vehicles stuck in traffic,
belching exhaust, drives pollution emissions like so many tiny
local ovens heating the world. For decades, the Clean Air Act
-- and especially California regulations -- have steadily ratcheted
down many car pollution emissions. Now, as the new electric/gas
combo cars (Honda Insight, Toyota Prius) catch on with consumers,
exhaust emissions could be reduced even more. Tooling around
town in an all-electric Saturn EV-1, I joke that we are all going
to have a fine time being stuck in traffic in our "clean
cars."
So, I've
come to believe that the main "feature" of Los Angelization
is the way they have built their region to be a perpetual traffic
machine: more roads, more cars, more traffic, more taxes -- more
roads, more cars, more traffic, more taxes.
There is
never enough transit in the right places at sufficient times
for people to be able to get out of their cars, even if they
wanted to. Los Angelization is more roads that get clogged and
more expensive trains that don't provide service often enough
to the right locations to matter. Buses are considered "low
class" for the "lower classes." The entire dysfunctional
growth paradigm requires tax increases to feed.
We are
trapped in a vicious cycle of taxing, spending and building that
never deals with the fact that we can't build our way out of
certain kinds of problems. The more roads you build -- without
a market-driven transit network -- the more people drive. Which
brings us to the sprawl question.
What is
Los Angeles if not the foremost example in the nation of a "sprawling
metropolis"? Like milk spilled on a table, roads and housing
poured out upon the land. And it was good. Until everybody tried
to drive everywhere, mostly at the same times, and with precious
little thought about mobility alternatives. Sprawl development
patterns -- without a transit network designed to fulfill market
demands for mobility complementary to the car -- equals horrendous
traffic congestion. This drives demands for more roads, thinking
that will solve the problem. That just starts us around the vicious
cycle again.
The San
Diego 2020 Regional Transportation Plan is that same paradigm:
a blueprint for Los Angelization. The RTP is dominated by: more
road capacity, transit with insufficient services that isn't
market-designed, and without the necessary commuter linkages
or incentives for land use required to make the plan work.
Prevent
Los Angelization Now may not have had the leadership to succeed,
but the basic concept is still sound and is needed now more than
ever.
But diehard
freeway devotees, planners, builders, and the vast majority of
politicians in San Diego still cleave -- often without even realizing
it -- to the Los Angelization paradigm.
Unfortunately,
Kenneth E. Sulzer, the executive director of SANDAG -- the agency
responsible for the RTP -- is resorting to blaming the victims.
In responses to criticisms of the RTP, he stated that, "until
we change our travel habits -- most of us preferring to drive
by ourselves -- we will always be at risk." Is our regional
leader for billions of dollars of transportation planning and
funding telling us that Los Angelization is really only the marketplace's
choice? Scholarly research refutes this. People want convenient,
quick and comfortable mobility -- not specifically a car. Besides,
it's not simply a market choice. Anyone who's ever had to --
or tried to -- depend on our cobbled-together transit system
to get around understands this.
Contrary
to SANDAG's persistent claims of how difficult it is to get people
out of their cars, most San Diegans have showed that they are
willing to use public transit. SANDAG's own polls show that fully
60% of San Diegans have ridden public transit at least once in
the prior year. But the failure stories of San Diegans who try
to use transit regularly are legion mostly because services do
not run often enough to the right places.
A major
policy shift is needed so that transportation agencies can provide
the services at the times and locations needed, so more people
could get out of their cars. This is the major task that Los
Angeles has never accomplished, or really even tried, and San
Diego is following in their footsteps.
Sulzer
also states that the RTP is "balanced." I ask, balance
of what? It's not balanced by funding, with 2/3 going to roads
and 1/3 to transit. It's not balanced by market share, with something
like 97% of all trips being planned to be by car and only 3%
by transit. Where's the balance? It's utterly unbalanced
Change
is always difficult. As Pogo observed, "We have met the
enemy and they are us." People want what they want and mostly
we want what we've always had -- to drive wherever we want without
traffic. This is a reasonable request at a certain scale. But
as long as San Diego deals with population growth and transportation
as proposed in this RTP, our quality of life will continue to
erode. It will drive us into Los Angelization, big time.
The public
interest in this plan -- along with the tax increases that it
proposes -- is unprecedented. Unfortunately, SANDAG directors
seem to have been put "on rails" for an adoption of
this plan. Some probably think it is the best thing. But faced
with massive agendas, many Board and Transportation Subcommittee
members leave meetings early when public testimony goes on "too
long" to match their busy schedules. SANDAG's current structure
does not allow enough consideration or debate of the many alternative
paths to address these issues. State Senator Steve Peace's proposal
(RITA -- Regional Infrastructure Transportation Agency) to change
the way regional transportation decisions are made has accurately
identified many problems with the current system.
The SANDAG
Board was told by staff that they had to adopt the RTP or they
risk losing federal funding. What I'm asking is, why should San
Diegans be enthusiastic about their tax dollars -- at any level
-- paying for the Los Angelization that it entails? A tax increase
may indeed be warranted to deal with transportation infrastructure
needs, but I say not one more cent for Los Angelization.
What can
the public do? A new group, the San Diego Coalition for Transportation
Choices has been formed by citizens, environmentalists, developers
and transportation professionals to provide the outside pressure
needed to stop our currently relentless drive to Los Angelization.
Please sign their basic petitions to elected officials: www.sdctc.org.
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