1.

Forget about carpool only lanes, it's time for carpool only freeways!

6AM-10AM and 3PM-7PM, carpools only on almost all freeways in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Unaffected would be commercial vehicles (and I don't mean the SUV that gets driven to an office job by one person and parked all day, I mean real commercial vehicles), big rigs, trucks, tow trucks, buses and taxis.

No more building of carpool lanes, which costs millions of dollars. Just throw up a few signs and be done with it. Tickets given to drivers for breaking this law could go to build more rail.

You don't like it, use a carpool, take surface streets, or shift your work hours to 11AM to 8PM.

2.

I see where you're going Scott, and applaud the effort. Unfortunately, you and I both know there are too many egos in this town for that to fly.

The problem is, there have to be alternatives to driving that people are actually willing to use.

Bus? No.

Longer bus? Nope, sorry.

10mph Rapid? Don't insult me.

Los Angeles needs a long term master plan for a world class rail network.

1. Draw a map (GetLAmoving.com)
2. Prioritize routes
3. Get funding
4. Build in stages

3.

The show is an interesting listen, and I always like Olney's light skepticism. But holy Toledo what transit lobby is paying Alissa Walker? Her views of riding the MTA are so Pollyanna I was waiting to hear her say she's applied to be a volunteer bus driver and give up the whole writing gig.

There are different bus riding experiences in all parts of town. Some may be entirely pleasant, such as a mid-day ride along San Vicente Blvd. But the lowest common denominators (hygiene, clustering, speed, etc) will drag the whole equation into 0 ridership faster than any "lifestyle changes" Alissa hopes we all embrace could ever work.

Zahniser's overall point, which nobody counters, is: LA is building based on transit that it doesn't have, nor will it have in the next 10 years. Get used to the crowds and crawl, they're not going anywhere.

I'm moving to Houston. J. Kotkin's building a dream city of more pavement than grass, I hear.

4.

David Zahniser's LA Weekly article was truly awful, blinkered and biased. His main point seemed to be to rant about the evils of buildings taller than two stories and to justify the age old excuse of the transit-shy: "But I'll have to sit next to a bunch of smelly poor people!" It also does not seem to have occurred to Zahniser that it is possible for human beings to get around without using internal combustion engines--he completely ignores bicycling as a means of transportation and presents walking as a sort of desperate last resort (I'd be curious to know what kind of physical shape he is in). All in all, a very Kotkin-like piece of advocacy for the status quo.

The kernel of truth in it was that developers do, in fact, use "smart growth" as a cover for all manner of unsustainable development.

5.

How about just building the infrastructure to appropriately handle the traffic?

God forbid someone should want to drive their car to work, run some errands on the way home, and be able to do so in the comfort of their own vehicle.

The sooner urban planners start building infrastructure for the way people actually live, instead of the way they wish people would live, the more liveable our cities will be.

6.

God forbid someone should want to drive their car to work, run some errands on the way home, and be able to do so in the comfort of their own vehicle.

The sooner urban planners start building infrastructure for the way people actually live, instead of the way they wish people would live, the more liveable our cities will be.

John,

Um - were you paying attention to the last 70 years? Practically everything in L.A. is currently designed to allow you to do what you are asking for.

I am calling you out as an agent of the AAA. 1936 called, they want their transporation rhetoric back.

Also: "urban planners", in America, typically deal with the regulation of construction and use of private land. "Traffic engineers" are the people who design the roadway network in America - and they build exactly what you say you want.

7.

How about just building the infrastructure to appropriately handle the traffic?

Ever heard of a "non-attainment zone?" The pot of federal gas tax money that built the freeways and the Interstate Highway System is off-limits to any urban area that doesn't meet certain air quality standards. Los Angeles, Houston, the Bay Area, and Atlanta are the most prominent examples of this. So where's the money gonna come from? Sales taxes? *giggle*

Say that money isn't an issue. Where are you going to build all those additional roads? Atlanta's freeway system was built with enough right-of-way to accommodate 18 lanes of traffic, but Los Angeles' was not--and if you start talking about double-decked facilities in an earthquake zone, well, you'd better hope that money isn't a problem. (Japan's extensive double- and triple-decked highways are tolled out the wazoo and are the product of an entirely too cozy relationship between the Liberal Democratic Party and large construction/engineering firms.) There are a few surface streets that could be widened on the Westside and in the Valley to accommodate more cars, but not many.

In order to build its way out of most congestion, a city has to have very high road capacity and very low development density. You can try to tamp down the latter with land use regulation, but developers will always find ways around it. So, if you want density low enough to eliminate congestion, the only way to get it is if land is unbelievably cheap. This works in places like Kansas City or Detroit, but it doesn't so much in southern California. Greater Los Angeles has always had much higher built environment density relative to other urban areas at the same level of economic development because of its geographic amenities (weather, ocean shipping, sitting astride several important transportation corridors) and the high productivity of its farmland.

The era of tearing down houses and businesses to build new roads is pretty much over. If you want to eliminate congestion while still driving as much as you want, you'd better pony up for it--i.e., congestion pricing.

The sooner urban planners start building infrastructure for the way people actually live, instead of the way they wish people would live, the more liveable our cities will be.

The physical and regulatory infrastructure that define our current automobile-dependent state of affairs were built in the '30s, '40s, and '50s based on--you guessed it--the way planners wished people would live. I'm not going to go into all the details right here, but it suffices to say that the cults of suburban homeownership and "free" automobility were very much the results of a modernist planning paradigm that had very little to do with democratic or free-market principles. (Paranoia over Communism played a huge role.) What became "best practices" in traffic engineering at that time also emerged from a technocratic, top-down process.

8.

John, people are doing exactly that, and the fact of the matter is that it's not possible to accommodate everyone in their own car running their own errands blah blah blah. There simply is not room enough in the city to accommodate all the cars--to say nothing of the environmental and health factors.
God forbid indeed--our air quality sucks, we're disenfranchized from one another because we see people as "that schmuck in the Camry" and our city is ugly in so many places because roads have been widened and widened, parking lots abound and buildings and signs are all geared toward cars and not people.
The game is over, we want our city back.

9.

Oh, my mistake. I totally forgot that trains were free and didn't take up any space, and that buses sped up the flow of traffic, instead of increasing the congestion by blocking an entire lane for 2-3 minutes every few blocks.

My bad.

10.

John, seriously, are you just being cranky for cranky's sake? One needs only to look on Google Earth to check out the spatial requirements for something like a light rail corridor vs a freeway--the difference is pretty obvious (the 101/405 interchange is bloody huge, but the blue line/red line interchange is underground and way smaller, no?).
Additionally, the perpetual dedication of private lands for road widenings (and the consequential degradation of the built environment)has to stop at some point--Santa Monica Blvd can only get so wide where the existing buildings already exist.
Oh, and taking the metro to work is substantially less expensive than driving and parking.
Buses kinda suck, I'll give you that.

11.

John -- It is hard for me to understand your logic, but let me try. You believe that 4 million people should all run their lives in their own cars, which, we'll assume equals 4 million cars. Say LA adds an additional 500,000 people every year. So, every 2 years, you add one million people and cars to the equation. In 2007 it is 4 million cars. In 2009 it is 6 million cars. In 2011 it is 8 million cars. Now, I understand that not every resident has a car, but let's stick with this assumption anyway.

If it takes 5 years to add one lane, of 15 miles, to one freeway, then LA will complete the addition of one lane to each major freeway, by, say, 2030? Makes good sense. It seems freeways can definitely be built quickly enough to out pace growth. (How long did it take to complete the carpool lane on the 10?)

Let's get real: Freeways will be a cake walk when compared to surface streets. You must be out of your mind. The more congestion the better people adjust. Eventually you live near public transport, you move out of the city, or you sit in traffic longer than you currently do. If you are worried about 2-3 minutes in bus traffic, just wait.

12.

We only have 12 more years and not one single huge pyramid-shaped building with landing pads is on that rendering. I am kind of dissapointed, and am going to cancel my classes in Cityspeak.

13.

maybe john would like to widen the 405 by hundreds of lanes in each direction, so it is solid freeway from the ocean to the colorado river. think of how fast we could zip north and south to get to our god-important errands!

14.

congestion tax on "free"ways to go to mass transit.

15.

I agree with Daniel.

Zahniser is mumbled fool. His article was manipulative & misleading. He clearly misses the logic of the following two points:

1. Availability = Affordability. Until more housing is built, I won't be able to afford to buy anything.

2. More housing opportunities located near our jobs means that we get to drive less/ walk more. The idea would be that if those 300,000+ folks currently working on the westside (but have to live elsewhere) could find a place to live near where they work, then they wouldn't have to drive an hour plus each day/ each way.

Well-designed Density is an effectively applied answer - people will not be able to live near where they work until more housing is built.

Ditto for Culver City. 160,000 jobs; 40,000 housing opportunities. That means 120,000 people driving to Culver City from the rest of Los Angeles County just to get to work.

Lastly, it's not like we are living in a "build it and they will come" fantasy world. We live in Los Angeles, CA. One of the most highly desirable places to live in the world. People will continue to migrate here regardless of what we decide to build or not to build. An expected 10 million more in the next 30 years. And most of those #'s are accounted by our own internal growth. The children that those of us already living here will soon have.

The primary benefit of Density: More Opportunities for Open Space.

We should accept that fact. Embrace it. Love it. Enjoy it. If you don't love Los Angeles, then you're welcome to move somewhere else.

16.

I'm all for smart growth or whatever today's buzzword for it is, but Mr. Garcetti has a horrible track record on preserving historic structures (the things that made Hollywood Hollywood and why people like to come to LA). We don't need anymore generic/beige buildings and Mr. Garcetti deserves an award for "dumbing down" development that embraces LA's grand old buildings.

17.

Unfortunately, you will never get rich people out of their cars.

18.

#15: The primary benefit of Density: More Opportunities for Open Space.

I'm curious how open space will come from density.

If the open space is not already in place, how does increased density create it? In LA, increasing density is primarily to accommodate the extraordinary population growth, and it's struggling to do that. Are you creating a scenario where the city becomes so dense that the population is actually relocating out of already residential areas and leaving them "fallow", (no longer needed to accommodate residents)? Then these now no-longer lived in areas, where the people left to concentrate themselves into denser building, become open space? I don't believe this can happen. You can't build fast enough or devalue the land enough. I don't agree with you that the primary benefit of density is opportunities for open space. And by "open space", I'm refering to LA County urban open space, as in your cite of Culver City.

19.

CLA: Great thread and we need similar conversations throughout the city. I posted a few follow-ups on my blog about this ongoing conversation.

Nealio: I'm quite proud of working with the Hollywood and other communities to help preserve historic structures--from the preservation of the Palladium which we just announced, the work of funding the rebuilding of the almost-lost and almost-collapsed Hillview Apartment Building on Hollywood Blvd. where Laurel and Hardy once lived, helping ensure that a historic survey of all of Hollywood's assets is done, helping work with the Getty on the citywide survey of historic assets started by my colleague Jack Weiss, obtaining the millions of dollars to preserve and reinforce the buildings at Barnsdall Park, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House, and work towards new HPOZ's in adjacent neighborhoods. If you ever have concerns about specific buildings in Hollywood, feel free to let my Hollywood deputy, Helen Leung, know. She can be reached at 323-957-4500 or helen.leung@lacity.org or stop by our field office in the Historic Louis B. Mayer building at Hollywood and Western. Better yet, feel free to come meet with me directly at one of my bi-weekly office hours meetings where anyone can come sit down for a ten minute face-to-face meeting if you prefer. Just call the office and we'd be happy to set it up.

As for Curbed LA, thanks for keeping the conversation going, and when are we having lunch?

20.

I want to come to lunch! I saw the piece on Maroush on channel 35 the other day.. :)

21.

Come on by then--hope you enjoyed the Jonathan Gold segment!