Matute on Debut of Metro’s On-Demand Rideshare Service

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to Spectrum News about L.A. Metro’s new on-demand rideshare service. Metro Micro allows passengers to summon a ride within a designated service area for $1 per trip. The program will launch in the Watts/Willowbrook and LAX/Inglewood areas. If successful, it will expand into four additional neighborhoods next summer. “Metro will learn much more about where people actually want to go from and to, and when they want to do it,” Matute said. “With a fixed-route bus, you know where you pick them up and go, but you don’t know how far they walked or if they used some other device.” While other transit agencies have tried similar on-demand services and failed, Matute explained that Metro has enough money to experiment without putting the agency itself at risk.

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Matute, Taylor on Prospective Promotion for Garcetti

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Director Brian Taylor and Deputy Director Juan Matute of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the possibility that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will be appointed to a Cabinet post in the Biden administration. After serving as national co-chair of President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign, Garcetti is a potential candidate for transportation secretary. While Garcetti has only held local office, Taylor noted that he would not be the first mayor to run the federal department of transportation. Taylor added that big-city mayors like Garcetti have to know how to pull federal, state and local resources together, along with political will, to get transportation projects moving. Matute acknowledged the success of Measure M as Garcetti’s signature legacy but said he wished he “had more success in the implementation of his vision for a better Los Angeles,” given the mayor’s grasp of the intricacies of transportation planning.

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Matute on Future of Hyperloop Technology

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the New York Times about the challenges facing hyperloop technology, which would theoretically enable transportation of people and goods at speeds up to 600 miles an hour. Virgin Hyperloop recently became the first company to conduct a human test of the technology at a test track in Las Vegas. The company hopes to eventually use the technology to move passengers and cargo in vacuum tubes between cities and ports, cutting travel time significantly. However, transportation experts noted that the hyperloop system would require expensive maintenance. Matute pointed out that, like high-speed rail systems, hyperloop companies will have to acquire expensive rights of way. The tubes that carry hyperloop pods will have to be very straight with wide turns in order to enable high-speed travel. “Airlines do not have this problem,” Matute said. 

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Matute on Expansion of Mobility Options

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke with Spectrum News 1 about a new electric-bike-sharing program in Santa Monica. Lyft will provide the e-bikes, replacing the human-powered bikes previously offered by the city. The new program is part of an expansion of services provided by app-based mobility companies. “Lyft and Uber see themselves as competing with people buying cars or people buying more cars per household, so they want to meet everybody’s full mobility needs,” Matute said. He also commented in a separate story on electric scooters offered for sale rather than short-term rental. As travel of all kinds has decreased during the COVID-19 lockdown, offering scooters for sale shows investors that these companies “can be nimble, that they have an opportunity to bring in revenue, to ride out this pandemic,” Matute said.

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Matute on Metro’s Fareless Transit Initiative

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute for Transportation Studies, expressed his support for fare-free transit in a new Streetsblog LA article. Metro CEO Phil Washington announced a new task force that will plan and implement a fareless transit system pilot program in Los Angeles County. The COVID-19 pandemic has cut fare revenue to an all-time low due to decreased ridership, back-door boarding and half-price fares. Metro described the pilot initiative as a “moral obligation to explore how a fareless system can aid those that have been hit hardest by the pandemic.” However, some have expressed concern over Metro’s proposed 20% bus service cuts, which would diminish the benefits of free transit service. The article cited data shared by Matute on social media that illustrated that Metro is among the state’s best-suited agencies to attempt fare-free transit.

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Matute Comments on Vehicle Built for One

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Juan Matute, urban planning lecturer and deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the New York Times about the Solo, a new electric vehicle built for one. The tiny, three-wheeled car is technically a motorcycle, though it’s fully enclosed and drives like a car with a steering wheel and foot pedals. The single-passenger vehicle provides a clean-energy solution for the 90% of Americans who commute alone by car, truck, van or motorcycle. However, Matute said that American drivers tend to buy “the most capable or largest vehicle that they need,” even if they need that capacity for only 5% of their trips. While other small three-wheeled vehicles have failed, the Solo is entering the market at a time of social distancing, and travelers are hesitant to touch what others have touched. Matute agreed that the Solo makes sense conceptually but argued that “what’s socially desirable and environmentally beneficial isn’t necessarily personally optimal.”

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ITS Experts Assess Massive Hit to Transit Agencies

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Experts from the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at UCLA Luskin are weighing in on the financial burden that the COVID-19 health crisis is placing on public transit agencies. “The virtues of public transit are precisely at odds with coping with the pandemic. … We now have essentially a mandate to not move, to not have a lot of people together anywhere,” ITS Director Brian Taylor told the Hill. The article also quoted Emeritus Professor Martin Wachs, who leads research into transportation finance at ITS. Both ridership and sales tax revenues are down, Wachs said, but transit is “a public service that we must keep operating during the crisis because people who have no option other than transit need to shop for food and get to doctors’ offices and hospitals.” On Curbed LA, ITS Deputy Director Juan Matute said Los Angeles’ Metro system may be forced to cut service dramatically or delay work on key projects. He also noted that, once the health crisis has lifted, “if there’s a severe recession, people who are out of work but still need to get around will become reliant on Metro.”

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Matute on the Eerily Empty Freeways of L.A.

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the COVID-19 outbreak’s effect on L.A. freeway traffic. As reported cases of COVID-19 surge in Los Angeles County, residents are following recommendations to stay at home and avoid public spaces, resulting in strangely empty freeways. Urban planning experts explain that reducing the number of vehicles on the road by a small amount can greatly reduce freeway traffic. “Pretty much every freeway lane in L.A. experiences some degree of this phenomenon: Everything is going fine, then suddenly it all slows down,” said Matute, an urban planning lecturer at the Luskin School. Freeway lanes have the capacity to support between 2,000 and 2,400 vehicles per lane per hour, but traffic grinds to a halt when lanes hit their capacity. On some freeways, reducing the number of cars by 5% could cut rush hour travel time in half, experts say.

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Matute on Downsizing of E-Scooter Companies

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Marketplace about the downsizing of e-scooter company Lime. Lime is reportedly pulling out of 12 cities worldwide and laying off 14% of its workforce. Since their first appearance, Lime scooters have been prevalent in many major cities. However, high maintenance costs have prompted Lime and other e-scooter companies to find ways to improve profitability. Matute noted that the U.S. cities Lime is pulling out of share a common physical obstacle to a sweeping adoption of e-scooters. He noted they are all Sunbelt cities where cars are widely used for transportation. “That makes integrating bikes, scooters and other lower-speed mobility options very challenging,” he said.

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Matute Stresses Tactical Urbanism in Bus Transit Projects

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Juan Matute, urban planning lecturer and deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to Streetsblog about the key obstacles to improving public transportation and bus infrastructure in cities. It can take years to build new bus routes, with funding and political opposition serving as obstacles along the way. According to Matute, “The key issue for the delay is funding with other people’s money such as state or federal discretionary apportionment and grant funds.” He also explained that “chasing funding also leads planners to create more ambitious, more costly projects with a more extensive planning process.” Planners are often tempted to create more elaborate and expensive projects beyond what is necessary for improving bus transit. Instead, transportation experts recommend introducing temporary pilot bus lanes, starting with “No Parking” signs and painting red bus lanes in order to quickly improve transit services at a low cost.

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