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Manville Imagines Transit-Oriented Future of Cities

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In a National Geographic article exploring transit-oriented development in cities across the globe, Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville commented on the challenges facing Los Angeles. The article focused on architect Peter Calthorpe, who highlights the negative effects of car-oriented urban environments on climate, air quality and congestion, in addition to time and money wasted by drivers. Urban planners look to transit-oriented development to remake healthy urban spaces and reverse the damage caused by dependence on automobiles. Calthorpe imagines an urban utopia where cities would stop expanding, pave less and heat the air and the planet around them less. He recommends dense clusters of walkable communities around a web of rapid transit to support a growing population. Manville weighed in on the urban environment of Los Angeles, where residents continue to rely on cars despite efforts to improve public transit. The conundrum, Manville said, is that “driving’s too cheap [and] housing’s too expensive.” 

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Taylor on Public Opposition to Congestion Pricing

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In a Los Angeles Times article about the prospect of congestion pricing in West Los Angeles, Urban Planning Professor Brian Taylor commented on public opposition to the proposed fees. The article explained the findings of the Southern California Association of Governments’ recently published study, which modeled the effects of a $4 fee to enter a 4.3-square-mile area of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica during weekday rush hour. According to the model, such a fee would immediately reduce traffic delays and miles driven within the area by 20%, leading to increases in transit ridership, biking, walking and carpooling. Despite the predicted successes of congestion pricing, many residents of the area expressed their opposition to the proposal. Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, said that “people typically oppose the system before they’ve seen it work, [but] they tend to go majority opposition to majority support when they see it in practice.”

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Manville on Efforts to Relax Parking Requirements

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to KPCC’s AirTalk about parking requirements for new housing developments in California. Manville was surprised to see that San Diego succeeded in eliminating minimum parking requirements for new housing developments. While this would be tough to implement in Los Angeles, he said, he believes it would be a good idea because parking requirements have been harmful to the city. Parking requirements for new housing do not promote the city’s stated goals of encouraging transit use, sustainability and more housing development, Manville said. More parking demands additional land or capital to build expensive underground parking, which results in smaller developments, he said. Manville also discussed proposed legislative solutions that would reduce local jurisdiction of land zoning in order to build more densely near public transit.

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L.A. Landscape Organized Around Cars, Manville Explains

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In a Curbed Los Angeles article, associate professor of urban planning Michael Manville explained the obstacles to improving public transit in Los Angeles, as found in a new UCLA study. Recognizing “the extent to which we’ve organized the landscape around the car” is key to implementing a successful transit program, he argued. “Seeing that 70 percent of people support a sales tax for more transit might create a false impression that there’s a lot of consensus about building a transit-oriented city,” he said. Many voters supported the Measure M sales tax in hopes of reducing their own drive time but haven’t displayed interest in actually riding public transportation. The UCLA study concluded that transit systems thrive in places where it’s difficult or expensive to drive. In a city built for cars, Los Angeles may have to make it harder to drive in order to make public transit work.

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Blumenberg on the Persistence of Driving

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Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg commented on the decline in ridership on public transportation in a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article. “Even among population groups where transit ridership and transit use has been highest — low-income, immigrants, recent immigrants, in particular — we found a growth in driving,” Blumenberg said, referring to a Southern California study that reflects a nationwide trend. The article focused on the declining usage of public transportation in lower-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia due to the expense of automobiles, the hours lower-income jobs require, the demands of parenthood and concerns about safety. “We’ve created urban environments that privilege the automobile that make it difficult no matter what transit does,” said Blumenberg, who is also director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA. “If jobs are dispersing and things are spread out in metropolitan areas, transit is going to have an increasingly hard time meeting those travel needs.”

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Manville Notes Role of Party Identity in Support for L.A. Public Transit

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville’s research highlights a discrepancy between voter support for expansion of Los Angeles County public transit and the realities of ridership. Despite an overwhelming 72 percent approval during the 2016 elections for Measure M, a sales tax measure that will generate $120 billion to expand public transit over 40 years, Manville told KNX radio and other media outlets that many people voted for Measure M as an “expression of their political beliefs” and in support of the greater social good, not because it would directly benefit them. Manville’s study found that on average, supporters of Measure M had a high likelihood of driving; they owned cars and had higher incomes. When Manville surveyed the riders at trains and bus stops, he found that “70 percent of riders did not own a vehicle to make their trip,” and “40 percent would have chosen to drive if they could have.” Furthermore, Manville has noted that while L.A. voters like the idea of transit, they don’t actually seem to want a city that’s built for it.

Read coverage of the study by CityLab

Dukakis Rides 1949 Hudson in Support of North-South Rail Link

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Visiting Professor of Public Policy, 1988 Democratic nominee for president and three-term governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis traveled around Massachusetts in a 1949 Hudson in support of the North-South Rail Link, the Boston Globe reported. Dukakis said he hopes the journey will a send a message to lawmakers that the North-South Rail Link will alleviate traffic and improve the lives of those who use public transit. The project would build a tunnel between two stations to let trains travel through Boston. “We’ve got to get the folks in the State House to start getting serious about this,” Dukakis said, “and connecting these two stations is absolutely critical.” He is set to meet with legislative leadership to discuss the rail link and transportation in general. Dukakis also advocates a “first-class statewide regional rail system.” He emphasized, “These projects have got to start moving quickly and aggressively.”

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Matute Comments on Underground Transit Systems in L.A.

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UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies Deputy Director Juan Matute spoke with The Atlantic about Elon Musk’s The Boring Company constructing an underground transit system in the city of Hawthorne. The construction process was expedited by the city with a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption. Matute reported there was very little pushback to the exemption from the community and that some negotiations were not open to the public. “This is typical with CEQA—a community that’s more disadvantaged and not as politically engaged doesn’t have the capacity to file lawsuits,” he said. Matute also commented on the construction of a proposed underground tunnel to Dodger Stadium. “I would be very surprised if it happened,” he said, giving it a 50/50 shot of completion due to “unfavorable economics.”

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Manville Comments on L.A. Traffic, Public Transportation and Potential Solutions

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UCLA Luskin transportation expert Michael Manville is featured in a podcast and short film about traffic and public transit in Los Angeles. Besides negative impacts on drivers’ health, wallets and mental well-being, traffic is a large issue for people living near large roads, who may suffer harmful consequences from pollutants. In the NPR podcast, “The One Way to Reduce Traffic,” Manville, an associate professor, argues that the solution to traffic jams is to “price roads with a congestion charge, a dynamic type of toll that would rise and fall based on the demand for the road at different times of day.” Manville explains that the “majority of the delay in traffic is caused by the last few cars getting on the road.” A toll that would get 4-5 percent of drivers off the road could increase average speed by 15-20 percent. In his Streetfilms appearance, Manville highlights the limitations of Los Angeles’ approach to public transportation. With bus ridership falling and a prioritization of cars over buses, Manville identifies the root of the issue as a “fight over space.” He stresses urgency, saying “congestion in our major urban areas is getting worse.”

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Brian Taylor Discusses Plan for Body Scanners at L.A. Transit Stations

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Brian Taylor, professor of urban planning and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, is quoted in a New York Times story on the planned use of body scanners to boost security at transit stations entrances in Los Angeles. Taylor commented that a successful security system would help riders feel safer about personal crime while not interfering with their commutes. “Someone has to intervene, stop that person and check out what’s going on,” said Taylor about the technology, which is currently being tested in New York. “That causes delay and it also causes a sense of invasiveness among the passengers.”

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