Metro ridership way up in Los Angeles. Smart local governments will be seizing the day to improve frequency and quality of their transportation services -- it's obvious that high gas prices are causing people to start seeking out alternatives, and government has a duty to make them as good as possible. There's a lot of stuff that can only be changed in the long-run, but there's also plenty that can be changed in the short-run.
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Taking the Train
22 May 2008 04:21 pm
Comments (32)
The problem with this theory is that the fare doesn't cover the cost of the service, so additional boardings will not necessarily lead the relevant agencies to expand service, as the subsidy required may not be available. More boardings mean more costs, not higher returns. As noted in D.J. Waldie's recent op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times, service on the bus lines that people actually use are being curtailed to provide funds for rail projects that will not come on line for years, if at all.
The problem with this theory is that the fare doesn't cover the cost of the service, so additional boardings will not necessarily lead the relevant agencies to expand service, as the subsidy required may not be available. More boardings mean more costs, not higher returns. As noted in D.J. Waldie's recent op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times, service on the bus lines that people actually use are being curtailed to provide funds for rail projects that will not come on line for years, if at all.
This will be the second year that the money from 1B will be diverted to other budget items. We're simply not spending on transportation, and certainly not non-car transportation, as we should.
As I've said here before, I would take public transportation much more often in LA if it didn't stop running at 9PM and ran more than once every couple hours. It's this silly vicious cycle: We can't extend hours because no one rides it (and no one rides it, in part, because there are horrible hours).
Maybe if we just learn the delicate art of Japanese train loading, we'd have enough bodies on each train to pay for itself?
government has a duty to make them as good as possible.
SOCIALIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Robert,
Is that actually true? My thought would be the bulk of the costs are static regardless of how many passengers there are. The fuel to run the train or bus, the cost of the train and bus themeselves, tracks for the train and so on aren't going to change. Maybe you get slightly lower mileage with a full train car vs an empty one based on weight, but I would guess in the overall scheme the passenger weight vs the weight of the train itself is fairly insignificant.
Common sense would seem that full trains are better than half empty trains.
For one thing, they could extend the rail lines to LAX instead of stopping them a couple miles short as a sop to the SkyCaps. I'd wager that improvement would pay for itself and a ton of other improvements within about 2 years.
I see this type of story all over these days, but I just don't see this huge increase in the actual data. The article says an 18% increase in the last three months, but that looks more like a seasonal effect than the result of high gas prices.
http://metro.net/news_info/ridership_graphs.pdf
The graphs only have two years of data, but tend to show that ridership is lower in the rainier, darker winter (or at least what passes for winter). So from January to April, there is an increase, but it has nothing to do with gas prices.
Why would there be sufficient additional equipment and staff to add significantly to frequencies and even to service quality in the short run? If there is such slack capacity sitting around in the system, it was over invested in from the git go!
Well, to help finance the startup costs of new services you could hike fares, maybe charging premiums on the most popular commuter routes. Of course no one really likes that, but people are moving to public transit because they are facing increased costs to car commuting, and in theory the public transit system should be looking to split the difference with these new customers.
And then there are always new taxes. Again, not a particularly popular idea, but you can do things like put a tax on alcoholic drinks and then allocate all that money to public transit, explaining it is also a program to help lower drunk driving.
The graph linked to by treetop shows bus boardings.
I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but I believe that fares pay less than 50% of the cost of public transportation in Los Angeles. As for how much additional capacity there is, I direct you to Waldie:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-waldie18-2008may18,0,6192594.story
As to public transportation running every two hours or stopping at 9:00 p.m., that's true in outlying areas but not in the main corridors such as downtown, Hollywood/Sunset Boulevard or Wilshire, where buses run 24 hours a day, and during peak hours run so frequently that you don't look at a schedule. If you're going to use public transportation in L.A. that's where you have to live, and it's still a pain in the neck.
There are few things to complain about wrt the LA subway system. It's clean, fast, comfortable. I use it whenever I can.
The only real problem is that the area of the city that it serves is limited, and there's really no way to change this much. You can add a few more lines, but you are still faced with the fact that LA is huge, and the interesting stuff isn't all concentrated in one place.
Matt, this is a disappointing comment in that it demonstrates you might be a bit more disconnected from reality than I'd originally thought.
Most of the above comments have pointed out the utter fallacy of what you're saying:
-- There is no excess capacity lying around the LA Metro system to suddenly put into place, unless you want to suspend regular maintenance;
-- Some bus lines are incredibly crowded and always have been, long before gas prices started to pinch, because the riders don't have access to cars and/or can't afford high parking rates.
-- The suburban bus and rail lines, the ones most likely to see a surge in ridership due to gas prices, don't run very often. The MTA could add bus lines to some of these routes, but would probably be hurting poor people to help the middle class in doing so.
-- Drivers' union contracts are another problems. They are written now to protect potential overtime possibilities by discouraging the use of part-time drivers to pick up the slack. AM and PM peak hours wouldn't normally both fall within a driver's 7.25-hour shift. The unions consider it an unfair assault on the working people of California if transit agencies were permitted to solve that problem by putting on a part-time PM crew at straight time.
-- More systemic changes, such as the extension of rail lines to airports, building a rail line through the Westside, etc. are nice to contemplate, but are all full of political landmines and must be subjected to an environmental and funding approval process that can extend for decades. Washington helped LA build its first major rail lines (Red, Blue, Green) with significant subsidies. The available subsidies now are far less.
A more flexible response would be the development of vanpools and other shared-ride services by large companies and business associations. The only thing government could do to facilitate this would be to get out of the way. But public-employee union interests would probably trump such efforts.
The issue you raise is one of many that will make the Obama "we are the change" honeymoon sadly brief. Public employee unions are unwilling to be flexible to meet social needs. Their first, second and last priorities are their own pay, benefits and retirement. To be sure, they love the sound of what you're saying: Gas prices have gone through the roof! Spend more money on transit! But, their position will be 95 percent of any additional funds must go to them to continue the same level of service, rather than to expand the service significantly. And Democratic politicians will vote the way they're told.
I figured you knew all this.
It seems that transits systems have a cost that is more or less fixed. The trains and buses run whether or not someone rides. So if the buses and trains are running half empty, most likely the fairs won't recoup the cost of running the system. But if the buses and trains are all full, then revenues increase much more than expenditures. For example:
If it costs L.A. a hundred dollars a mile to run the subway, and fares cost a dollar, then they would need 100 passengers to cover the costs of going 1 mile. It doesn't really cost more per mile if the train is empty or full. So if there are 50 riders on the train a year ago, it loses 50 dollars a mile. If today it has about 100 riders a mile, it breaks even. If next year it has 200 riders a mile, it makes money. These figures are just an example, but you can see how increasing riders is actually good for a mass transit system, not bad.
While fares are certainly the first thing one thinks of, wouldn't there also be increased revenue from things like advertising? Rental of space to vendors at stations? I'm seriously asking. I have no idea how much revenue comes from that stuff, but if you could show, in a place like L.A. (with lots of room to grow capacity) that ridership is way up, I'd think you'd also generate more revenue from tangential areas as well.
How ridiculous is this map? They actually deliberately avoided all the airports that serve LA.
Not that your point isn't valid, southpaw, but that map is also pretty old. No Gold line.
roac says:
The graph linked to by treetop shows bus boardings.
As well as the Red Line (subway) and the three above ground light rail lines (Blue, Gold, and Green Lines).
Operating at a loss.
It may be that public transit, when first expanded, will operate at a loss. In fact, I'll promise you it will in many, many places. Tax dollars will have to subsidize much of it. Yet what others are implying here is correct. There are revenue leaders that operate at a loss. Congress itself doesn't make a damn dime and costs a mint to maintain, for example. Yet having a stable representative republic is good for business. The defense budget is almost too painfully obvious of an example to point out as the king loss leader of all time. People and goods need to get around for the economy to work.
We can get good at transit and make it efficient if there is sufficient political will. When oil was cheap that will didn't exist. It is obviously growing, and likely to happen eventually whether or not its going to make any money or pay for itself. You cannot telecommute to most jobs. You cannot download groceries.
Not that your point isn't valid, southpaw, but that map is also pretty old. No Gold line.
Agreed. This is a current map (pdf). I couldn't find a current one (in a very cursory search) that showed the relative locations of all the airports.
This one shows rail lines, bus lines that run every 12 minutes or less, and the airports!
http://metro.net/riding_metro/maps/12min_map_eng.pdf
There are actually five airports in the L.A. area with regular commercial service. None are directly served by Metro rail, although the Metrolink commuter rail serves Bob Hope Airport. Long Beach Airport is served by Long Beach Transit, Ontario Airport is served by Foothill Transit, and John Wayne Airport is served by the OCTA, all of which are bus-only. There's a free shuttle between LAX and the closest Green Line station, but it's something of pain and clearly an afterthought.
The best way to take public transit to LAX is through the Flyaway service, which run 24 hours a day and take you on charter-style buses (i.e., they have luggage storage and comfy seats) from Van Nuys, Union Station, or Westwood (near UCLA) directly to the terminals at LAX.
Metro is considering (it's in their Long-Term Transportation Plan) a new rail line along Crenshaw and by Inglewood that would connect to the Green and (opening in 2010) Expo Lines, and have a major stop near LAX designed for travelers to go directly from there to a peoplemover or airport shuttle to the terminals.
Part of the difficulty is coordinating between Metro and L.A. World Airports, because a good connection between rail and air would require a lot from both sides. A rail connection to LAX wouldn't go directly to the terminals, so in a sense it would sort of be like the LAX-Green Line shuttle that exists today, but the idea is that it would be a much easier, purpose-built transfer from one system to the other that wouldn't have to compete with ordinary airport traffic.
Also, it's worth noting that the whole rail system in L.A. is designed much more around moving residents from their homes to their workplaces than for visitors to get from the airport or their hotels to the various tourist attractions. I guess the volume is higher the way they did it, but it makes it easy for visitors to see the flaws; I mean, the system hits downtown, Long Beach, Pasadena, and Hollywood, but there's a lot that it misses (airports, the beaches, Santa Monica, LACMA, UCLA, etc.). Once the Subway to the Sea gets built (probably a decade away), that will get a lot of the other popular destinations into the system, but it's still mainly designed to connect employment centers with transit-dependent populations, not tourist sites (although Watts Towers is right off of the Blue Line).
The next lines to open, for example, are the Gold Line extension to East L.A. (2009), which is a canonical transit-dependent population connecting to Downtown, and Phase 1 of the Expo Line south and west of downtown to Culver City (2010). That one gets USC, Exposition Park, and semi-suburban Culver City into the system, but also hits a lot of transit-dependent areas in South L.A. and West Adams. Phase 2 of the Expo Line (a few years later) will be to Santa Monica.
Adam, excellent overview of LA's system. It's obvious from reading these threads that LA is better than when I worked in the area 10 years ago. Do you think, as I thought at the time, that the area might benefit from streetcar access to rapid transit? SF's electric bus system is a neat idea that might benefit parts of socal and other places.
Even if MattY hasn't (yet again) been taken in/tried to take in his readers with misleading stats, any gains will result in corrupt pols trying to get more people to move here, especially if they can confer power on said pols. (Needless to say, MattY would have absolutely no idea what that means).
BTW: it took me four hours to get from LosFeliz to LAX using two trains and three buses.
Great overview by Adam, but his punchline illustrates precisely what Matt doesn't understand, and what will confuse policy discussions of this issue for the next few years. The LA Metro system mostly serves the "transit-dependent." That's a good thing, but it doesn't take cars off the highways. It takes bus riders off overcrowded buses. LA's mass transit system is a gas-price-hike hedge for the adventurous few. It will be a long time before transit systems will be willing to fund expansion to reach a market that will only dabble in bus-and-rail riding.
Now admittedly, it will depend on time of day and your exact starting point, and also admittedly the Fly-Away from Union Station is fairly new, but http://metro.net has a way to get from Los Feliz to LAX in an hour and half during weekday rush hour.
Starting at LOS FELIZ BLVD/GRIFFITH PARK DR--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ride Metro Bus 780( WASHINGTON/FAIRFAX) heading west
From: LOS FELIZ BL/RIVERSIDE DR(NE corner) Lv: 04:12PM
To: HOLLYWOOD BLVD/WESTERN AV(NE corner) Ar: 04:26PM
Pay $1.25, Monthly Pass: $62.00, (EZ Pass accepted)
Ride Metro Rail Red Line( UNION STA RED LINE) heading east
From: HOLLYWOOD WESTERN STATION Lv: 04:31PM
To: UNION STATION RED LINE SUBWAY TERM Ar: 04:48PM
Pay $1.25, Monthly Pass: $62.00, (EZ Pass accepted)
Ride Flyaway Union Station (LAX TERMINAL) heading south
From: PATSAOURAS PLAZA/BUS BAY 9 Lv: 05:00PM
To: WORLD WAY NORTH/TOM BRADLEY TERMINAL Ar: 05:43PM
Pay $4.00--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ending at LAX
Total cash fare = $6.50 *For this trip consider a Metro Day Pass
Trip time is about 1 hour and 31 minutes.
Trip distance is about 30.64 miles.
For someone who is used to driving, the subway seems counter-intuitive in that it is quicker at rush hour because there is more frequent service. At off-peak times, you have to wait longer between trains or buses so a trip with connections can be really slow.
Do you think, as I thought at the time, that the area might benefit from streetcar access to rapid transit?
It's not a bad idea to send spur lines out to essentially expand the coverage area for a light rail or subway line. I've seen some long-range plans where the Orange Line (the dedicated busway that crosses the San Fernando Valley E-W) gets has various N-S spurs feeding into it; I'm not sure whether those were supposed to be busways or streetcars, or if the whole Orange Line would get upgraded to light rail, or what.
I think maybe the disadvantages of streetcars is that they're slow and have to interact with traffic like buses do without the manueverability. I guess they're higher-capacity, though, and they can be good at place-making in certain neighborhoods. I could see them maybe working to connect Los Feliz to the Red Line, or maybe connect more parts of East L.A. to the Gold Line extension. Honestly I haven't given them much thought.
One place where they are seriously considering them is in the old theater district downtown, heading down Broadway from the Civic Center and then turning west around Olympic to get to South Park and L.A. Live./Staples. The concept is not that it would serve as a major link with rapid transit, but that it would be kind of like a super version of a DASH neighborhood circulator bus, enhancing the atmosphere on Broadway as they try to revitalize the old theaters. Check out today's Curbed L.A.; they have a post about a workshop held on the subject at the Orpheum just today.
Vail Beach - You have a good point. I've heard that the Orange Line, however, which isn't even rail (but is nearly as good as rail) has more boardings than the Gold Line to Pasadena (which is rail). I think there's evidence that some commuters would take rail as an alternative to a really bad commute. One route that a lot of people were pulling for that didn't get funded was the Gold Line extension east of Pasadena, more or less along the 210, all the way out to the San Bernardino County line, with the expectation that it would get commuters coming into Pasadena and Downtown. So there's some of that going on, but not a lot.
Then there's the young-childless-urban-professional crowd that's attracted to urban living per se (think Matthew Yglesias-types), not just because they can't afford a car. This is the group they're targeting with a lot of the transit-oriented high-density multi-family housing near (or even directly on top of) transit stops. This isn't a huge segment of the population today, but it's big enough for developers to be scrambling to build bigger and more extravagant condo towers next to a lot of transit stops. I work for the City of L.A. Planning Department and I see a lot of these plans.
Freddiemac-
At my local transit agency (not L.A.), the overwhelming majority of revenue comes from a local employment tax, not fares. Fares are such a small part of their revenue, that they could never break even on that alone even if every seat was run on every run.
In fact, due to increased fuel costs, they are now cutting routes & frequency to pay for diesel, even though boardings are up. Or to put it another way, marginal costs are higher than marginal revenue. Every bus ran costs more money than it brings in due to fuel, labor, etc. The only time they turned a profit was during a drivers strike when there was no service.
treetop: I took two buses downtown, then the train that heads down the 110, then the train that heads west, then another bus.
Your route seems to mostly involve buses, with just the one train trip from Hwd to downtown. So, it might be quicker but there's less train travel involved.
The Flyaway bus from Union Station is generally better than any of the light rail lines in L.A. It interacts with regular traffic at the beginning and end of its route, but it takes the carpool lanes on the 110 and 105, and it's got comfy, plush, high-backed seats like a charter bus. Your luggage is stored in the cargo area in the bus's belly. Plus, it takes you directly to the terminals.
The only time I could see it being a problem would be during the height of rush hour if the carpool lanes clog up, but I've still got to believe that's faster than transferring between two different trains with your luggage and then waiting for the Green Line-LAX shuttle. It leaves downtown every half hour (every hour during late night).
Comments closed June 05, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Using what money?
Posted by Delicious Pundit | May 22, 2008 4:41 PM