Remote Work and Highway Capacity Hobbles Transit Ridership
Author: R Ruiz (car free since '05)
Date: 04-24-2024 - 18:34

MTA does have a lot of work to do, and has itself to blame for many of its problems, including the fact that they continue to expand highway capacity with "auxiliary lanes" and "safety" improvements; projects that are really just adding lanes in disguise. Remote work continues to have removed many folks from the roads, but the roads are full, because former transit riders have now chosen to use the excess capacity for themselves.

People will continue to prefer to drive as long as it is heavily subsidized through free roads and cheap or free parking. If political leaders and transportation planners want the public (usually not themselves) to shift to more sustainable modes of travel, they are going to have to take the unpopular position making it cost more (in time and money) to drive - in addition to offering better service (which is hard to do when not enough are riding - can't say how many times I've been the only passenger of a bus in the past months). The "crime problem" (to the extent that it actually exists and isn't just media hysterics) is partly the result of fewer folks on transit. In the meantime, every bit of additional road capacity reduces transit use by travelers that have a choice, ensuring transit is only for the folks that don't have a choice.


The "evil" car user must be penalized....? Okay comrade, right after the revolution...?

Crappy transit services, where it might make an impact, but is as an afterhought with poor frequencies, poor security, massive route and service couts, is a major reason for transit's loss of ridership in LA or late, especially over the last 10 years.

And while this is a well documente fact and well documeted impact of poor service levels, and is the main reason for our loss of ridership, I can still count on the "new urbanists" to make this kind of "evil" car argument, and those "evil" highways, and those "evil" operational improvements to our freeways....

VEE must teach them a lesson and make our streets and feeways impassible with new urbanist road diets, hey comrade???

Or what I like to call more of the typical sophomoric "new urbanist" polemics, that is just a lazy excuse for not addressing and/or confronting agencies like MTA, for massive service cutbacks, lacklustter performance, crappy operational policies, and funding sexy "new projects" over operating the system they have to effectively or efficiently meet rider needs.

There's probably a reason I'm hated by both of the fringes, from the pathetic train hating troll, to the well meaning new urbanist dreamers... As I am a I'm a long time student of the great Amercian philosopher George Carlin... This punish the auto user in the name of policigtal correctness is BS, and doesn't cut a users wait time for a bus or train by a single second.