Transportation 20: 329-354, 1993 9 1993 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Learning from Los Angeles: transport, urban form, and air quality 7th Reuben Smeed Memorial Lecture MARTIN WACHS Urban Planning Program, Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1467, USA Accepted 28 June 1993 Key words: policy, urban form, Los Angeles, transport economics Abstract. Los Angeles is well known around the world as an automobile-oriented low density community, yet recent transportation policies have emphasized greater capital investment in rail transportation than in highways, and recent policies have attempted to discourage automo- bile usage through transportation demand management. While these policies have accomplished small shifts toward public transport and somewhat lower dependence upon singly occupied automobilies for work commuting, the financial costs of these policy changes has been very large in relation to their benefits. Proper pricing of transportation alternatives, more creative use of new and emerging transportation technologies, and the provision of many more opportunities for simpler private sector transport services, would all appear to be more promising as cost- effective approaches to coping with congestion in Los Angeles than the current regional transportation policies. Introduction: Transport in Los Angeles Just as the Eiffel tower comes to mind as the symbol of Paris, and the Statue of Liberty symbolizes New York, the internationally recognized symbol of Los Angeles is the freeway. Los Angeles is known the world over as the proto- type city of the late twentieth century by both its critics and detractors, and its very essence is to be found in its transport system as well as its far flung mix of low and moderate density communities connected by thousands of miles of high capacity freeways. Those of us who live there realize that the dispersed form of the region was to a great extent the product of the Pacific Electric Red Cars, and of decisions about capital investments in water distribution systems, while the freeways were historically more a response to the form of Los Angeles that they were its cause. Nevertheless, it is obvious that transport systems have been a central object of policy makers throughout the evolution of Los Angeles. They remain today among the most important objects330 of policy making and political controversy, and are likely to be equally critical in determining the future of the metropolitan area. Los Angeles is in the midst of its third major transport crisis of the twen- tieth century. By that I mean that it is experiencing the third period during which transport issues have risen to the top of the region's agenda, with extremely high levels of public awareness and concern, and a continuing sense of urgency among regional officials. And, while the causes of the current traffic crisis are similar to those in the past, the recent responses of public policy makers have differed from those of the past in that congestion is now being addressed by means other than major expansions in highway capacity. It remains to be seen whether the current approach will prove more or less successful than those pursued in response to the earlier transportation crises. The two previous transportation crises were precipitated by rates of growth in population and economic activity which far exceeded the rate of growth in public investment in highway capacity, and the policies adopted to address each of these crises involved major commitments to highway capacity expan- sion. Earlier transportation Crises in Los Angeles The first of these crises came in the nineteen twenties, when rapid growth of automobile ownership and an inadequate local street system led to very serious traffic congestion, and pressure from businesses and politicians to do something about it. In 1924, a Major Street and Highway Plan was adopted by the City Council, and the voters approved a proposition to tax themselves for the purpose of implementing the plan. Discontinuities in the street network were eliminated, broad boulevards were mapped, and real estate developers were required to cede to the city the land necessary to extend streets and boulevards into newly developing areas. At the same time, voters and elected officials rejected several initiatives for the expansion and improvement of the regional rail network, in part because they were fed up with the service provided by the privately owned Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railway systems, and in part because they did not wish to pay higher taxes and higher fares to support a crumbling transit system just as they were acquiring automobiles for the very first time. The second major traffic crisis in Los Angeles occurred after World War II, when suburban population growth and homebuilding resulted in increased traffic volumes which swamped the surface street system and again raised traffic congestion to the top of the public agenda. The highway network which had been planned in the twenties had been only partially implemented because of the depression and the war, and growth in transportation demand331 far outstripped the existing system's capacity. The vigorous freeway con- struction program of the California Division of Highways responded to the second traffic crisis, and hundreds of miles of grade separated freeways were added to the highway network of Southern California between the end of the war and the early seventies, with the peak of freeway construction occurring in the early sixties. Major rail transit initiatives were defeated as a decen- tralizing population saw little value in the construction of subways to benefit primarily the central city business community (Wachs 1984; Wachs 1992; Adler 1987). The current transportation crisis Since the early seventies, the rate of traffic growth has again exceeded the rate of population growth. While the spurt of growth in traffic in the twenties was attributable to the initial acquisition of automobiles by a rapidly growing population, and the spurt of growth in the fifties was fueled by pent up demand for
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