A Roundup of recent articles by Joel Epstein on mass transit. Part 3

Joel Epstein: Preaching to the Choir: Metro and 30/10 Revisited

Article 7

Preaching to the Choir: Metro and 30/10 Revisited

With a tip of my Metro cap to Bob Dylan for his special telling of the sacrifice of Isaac, over the weekend I took a virtual drive out on Highway 61. If you know the song or at least the story behind it, the tune begins like this:

Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son'


Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on'
God say, 'No.' Abe say, 'What?'
God say, 'You can do what you want Abe, but
the next time you see me comin' you better run'
Well Abe says, 'Where do you want this killin' done?'
God says, 'Out on Highway 61.'

Thanks Bob. As you know fair use says I can use just about that much of your intellectual property before I need to pay for it. Like Abe, it's time we all made a small sacrifice and wrote Congress and the President, and spoke with our friends, co-workers and neighbors in support of 30/10, an inspired mass transit plan for Los Angeles that stands a good chance of happening. A good chance, but realistically, the plan needs all the help it can get, which is where you and some important community leaders come in.

30/10, for those who don't know, is LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's important push to get built in a decade 30 years' worth of painfully overdue mass transit projects. 30/10 is inspired, but it needs Congressional leaders and the US Department of Transportation to back the massive public works project by offering Los Angeles County a bridge loan.

Bridge loans aren't rocket science. These generally short-terms loans, used everyday in construction to get developers from wherever they are in a project to completion, would let Los Angeles start today what no one can afford waiting three decades for.

The loan, which would be guaranteed by the tax revenues voters approved when they voted by a 68 percent majority for Measure R, would permit Los Angeles County to accelerate work on a dozen mass transit projects including the Purple Line Wilshire Blvd subway to the sea, a subway (preferred) or bus rapid transit (BRT) line connecting the traffic-clogged San Fernando Valley with the traffic-clogged West Side, an extension of the Gold Line in the San Gabriel Valley, and new stops on the Green Line at LAX and in Torrance.

Am I preaching to the choir in asking everyone to write Congress and advocate for this plan? Unfortunately, I don't think I am. I'd like to be, but since they're not likely to let me get too close to the pulpit I'm calling on the clergy -- LA's priests, imams, ministers, rabbis and shamans -- to lead their flock into the promised land of subways, light rail, and rapid buses for all. Next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday how about preaching a fiery sermon about 30/10 and the urgent need for all of us, regardless of religion, creed or politics, to back LA's aggressive mass transit building campaign? Hell, I mean "Heck," for starters, the massive Los Angeles Archdiocese with 288 parishes in the region might seize this opportunity to put the mass [transit] back in the Mass.

And for those of you concerned that "advocacy" of this sort doesn't belong in church, not to worry. Trust me, it's kosher and goes with the gospel like preaching about earthquake relief in Haiti and Chile and imploring congregants to volunteer at the Los Angeles Mission, or Sova, plant trees with Treepeople, or clean up Compton Creek and the beach with Heal the Bay.

Without clergy on board this plan isn't likely to overwhelm mass transit-related Causes on Facebook as users log on to donate and volunteer. I wish it did, but don't pretend it has that sort of clout. Alas, I checked and Move LA, the smart coalition of civic, business, environmental and labor groups behind Measure R and still working tirelessly to advance public transit in Los Angeles, doesn't even have a Facebook page, let alone a Causes page, yet.

While not even my children listen to me, Angelenos listen to their clergy. And together, LA's clergy have just the clout 30/10 needs to give Washington a piece of our mind. As such I call on the City's religious leaders to get on the train and lead their congregations and city forward in the direction it needs to go.

Though prayer alone won't bring the light rail to Compton or the subway to Santa Monica, I dream of the city's chapels, mosques, Buddhist temples, ashrams and synagogues filled with the sweet sound of train bells peeling as the clergy calls the congregation to action for mass transit in Los Angeles.

And it's not just the clergy in the pulpit that needs to be talking about and working for this. 30/10 and mass transit should be an activity for every youth group, religious and otherwise, in this town. What a teachable moment, and what do the New and Old Testaments, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita and other religious texts teach us about traveling together on common forms of conveyance. What would Jesus, Muhammad, Dr. King and Abraham Joshua Heschel have to say about the lack of fast, efficient mass transit options in too many of our communities? The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should offer badges for best mass transit designs and LAUSD after-school clubs should organize bake sales to raise bus fare to Metro Board meetings and to support Move LA.

For some, Dylan may be a prophet, but he never could sing like Gladys Knight & The Pips.

So that LA doesn't prove too much for this man and all of us who know that we deserve better than bumper-to-bumper on the freeway, let's sing as one in harmony to Congress, the President and the Transportation Secretary about how much 30/10 means to us as both a transit fix and the public works employment project the region needs.

Like Rosa Parks, all Angelenos deserve to sit at the front of fast and efficient buses, subways, and light rail trains as they ride home from work. Sí se puede, President Obama, Congress and Transportation Secretary LaHood, but we also need that bridge loan as soon as possible.

Today, if you walk to the west end of the Metro Purple Line station platform at Wilshire and Western and look west into the tunnel, all you can see is darkness. On the train itself the Red Line/Purple Line map looks sort of like a wishbone, with Purple and the residents of the West Side drawing the short side of the bone. It's time we all got our wish. A bridge loan will bring mass transit to the masses and that's just what Angelenos deserve. The campaign to make 30/10 happen has made a believer out of me.

Amen for that.

Article 8

Joel Epstein: Public Space = Public Health

Public Space = Public Health

All this rain and time spent indoors is giving me cabin fever. Which is why I'm dreaming of traveling to Colombia. So if you work in the PR department at American Airlines or Avianca and have some free tickets to spare, don't be a stranger. Ever since I read Wade Davis' eye-popping book, One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, I've been fascinated with the country, its messy colonial history and its importance to ethnobotany both for its ties to the rubber trade and to medicinal plants. So perhaps there's some method to my recent blog mention of Bogotá's TransMilenio bus rapid transit system and these kind words in support of CicLAvia.

CicLAvia is a Los Angeles-based effort that's bringing an inspired urban public space concept that originated in Bogotá to LA. In a, for now, modest way CicLAvia is replicating in LA Ciclovía, a Bogotá event that happens every Sunday from 7:30 am to 2:30 pm with the conversion of many city streets to pedestrian-only and bicycle-accessible thoroughfares. No, I didn't spell that incorrectly. The LA organization's name is a play on the Bogotána name of the program.

Planned as an interconnected network of fixed routes throughout Bogotá, Ciclovía is designed to connect walkers and bikers to many parts of the city. In Bogotá, up to 1.5 million or 30 percent of the population routinely participates in Ciclovía.

Some parallels between the Colombian capital and LA are disturbing. Two smoggy, traffic-clogged cities plagued by a growing problem of childhood obesity and diabetes. When I asked CicLAvia for details on the LA approach they explained that the program is designed to "give people a break from the stress of car traffic. The health benefits are immense, bringing families out to enjoy their streets in a new way and giving them the chance to walk and bike together."

As someone who grew up riding his Schwinn in warm weather along the closed Bronx River Parkway on Sunday mornings, CicLAvia is an idea close to my heart. While the urban policy junkie I've always been thinks, "Damn I wish I'd thought of that," the Angeleno in me is just happy to know that it has come to Los Angeles and a number of other US cities, temporarily turning long swaths of the streets into People's Park.

With a pitch as informed as a doctor of public health's, CicLAvia's Stephen Villavaso explains that, "In Los Angeles we need events like this more than ever, as anyone who tries to move through this city knows. Not only is it difficult to walk, bike, and drive here, but more and more children suffer from obesity and other health effects caused by growing up in a park poor city. CicLAvia creates a park by removing motorized traffic from city streets, and encourages people to come out and carve a new landscape for themselves."

Given the success of the program in Bogotá the concept has spread to Mexico City and Guadalajara, Mexico; Santiago, Chile; Quito, Ecuador and in the US to El Paso, Portland, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Miami.

In a city with many neighborhoods starved for public space and parks, CicLAvia promotes a creative way to make over LA, at least for a few hours a week.

CicLAvia has already been recognized by GOOD Magazine which in partnership with Pepsi on its Pepsi Refresh Project is offering a $50,000 award for, just that, good civic ideas.

As a new board member of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy which is pushing for a soda tax in Sacramento, I just love these opportunities to mix my metaphors... The Center's annual awards luncheon honoring Michael Pollan, David Kessler and Congresswoman Doris Matsui is next week in San Francisco...

The GOOD/Pepsi Refresh Project, a voter-based, month-long competition on Facebook gives users 10 votes a day for the entire month. So remember the advice of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and vote early and often for CicLAvia.

With its Mediterranean climate and large transit-dependent population, Los Angeles is ideal for CicLAvia's adaptation of the successful Bogotá model. Sure CicLAvia lacks the union iron worker job-creating girth of the Tom Bradley Terminal reconstruction project at LAX but it deserves our love just as much if not more.

To its credit, the mammoth $1.55 billion infrastructure project (the most-expensive in Los Angeles municipal history) is not just a boon to the workers and contractors hired to do the construction. As anyone who has flown in or out of the Bradley at LAX knows, it has to qualify as one of the worst airport experiences not just in the so-called first world, but in the developing world as well. As the globe's sixth-largest airport, the only thing missing from LAX's renovation is, you guessed it, a light rail link to the city the airport's named after. But don't get me started, as I'm trying to give the mass transit theme a rest for a week at least.

Roughly 8.6 million passengers, an awful lot of Angelenos, tourists and immigrants, pass through Bradley at LAX in a typical year. The new terminal will be an important gateway to America's most diverse city. Still, while we're salivating over the new building's glass and steel soaring over the waiting room at passport control, let's not forget programs like CicLAvia and the benefits of turning local streets into parks and bikeways, at least from time to time.

Instead let's look ahead to the arrivals' first weekend in, or back in, LA and imagine the smiles on their faces as they stroll and bike along LA's own Ciclovía. It's sure healthier than Animal Style Double Doubles from the drive thru at In-N-Out Burger en route on the freeway to the Nokia Theatre at LA Live.

There are so many good civic ideas in this town and some of them even make it past the cutting room floor. CicLAvia is one that deserves to see itself projected onto even more of LA's endless pavement. Now if Metro would only finish building the train lines to get us there.

Article 9

Joel Epstein: Moving LA: There's a Train a Comin'

Moving LA: There's a Train a Comin'

Nothing good, or bad, lasts forever. Which is why we're seeing Toyota, whose reputation had long been for quality, torn down by a widespread recall. Over 4 million cars and trucks at last count. If this keeps up we'll soon be confusing Toyota with GM and Detroit with Tokyo.

It's times like this that as a fan of John Updike and his brilliant American family saga about Harry Angstrom I feel adrift. Without the great writer around I don't know whether Toyota the company will weather the storm or like Toyota the dealership that made Rabbit rich go down in flames under the tutelage of the new generation. I'm like a tourist in LA without a Metro bus map.

Will the Harvard Business School case study-worthy company bring back its customer base with fire sale prices on the superior, fuel efficient cars Toyota became known for, or is the company's condition fatal? As someone who will need to buy another car in ten or fifteen years I'm saddened by the prospect that Toyota's demise would leave the consumer that much poorer. With fewer reliable models to choose from and the greatest thorn in the side of a still poorly performing Motown gone from the scene, we'd all be goners.

Of course, like the fortunes of Toyota's leaders guilty of hubris, ideas change too and that can be a good thing. Take for example Los Angeles and its attitude toward mass transit. In November 2008 the City and County, known for decades as a great big freeway in an unassailable romance with the car, approved a half cent sales tax to pay for long overdue mass transit improvements. Move LA, a smart coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups, actually came together and worked to convince 68 percent of the electorate to open up the spigot on $40 billion in transit funding. Measure R, which will provide the transit funds over a thirty year period, shows that even Angelenos have come to realize that the always packed freeways have become a powerful octopus slowly tightening its unforgiving grip around the heart of this city.

Mass transit, as the voters proclaimed in passing Measure R, has to be expanded if we ever want to leave the house after breakfast and get home from work before the kids have logged off Facebook and put themselves to bed.

And it's not just a new tax for mass transit that says Angelenos have had it with the traffic. Just look at the explosion in the number of locals riding bikes, motorcycles and scooters that can weave between the stagnant flow, the growth in telecommuting at least part time and the number of people moving closer to work or, if they own the store, moving work closer to home.

As anyone who leaves his or her crib before sunrise to commute to work can tell you, LA's traffic hurts more than just the commuter. In a big city like this economic prosperity, never easy to achieve but especially hard to find in recessionary times like now, goes hand in hand with mass transit. Trains and rapid buses help get workers to their jobs as quickly and efficiently as possible or at least on time.

Just talk to the thousands of business owners, large and small, who know they are losing their competitive edge, as their hard working employees look for work closer to home or in less traffic clogged cities, and clients opt for less logistically challenged suppliers.

With Measure R passed, as tempting as it is to kick back and wait for the train to come, the hard work has only just begun. Now we actually have to build the dozen train lines and other transit improvements that Measure R funds are earmarked for. And perhaps most importantly, we have to accelerate the process - 30/10 as the Mayor's dubbed it - to complete within 10 years the transit system LA needs today not three decades from now.

The campaign for 30/10 will need volunteers and dedicated activists, concerned citizens who get involved; motivated by their exasperating experience commuting in this endless suburb of a city.

It will take people like C, a Masters graduate student in City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley concentrating in transportation who wrote me following my last blog about how he wants to do something about mass transit in his hometown; or M, who describes himself as one of those who for now waits patiently on the Metro 761 bus but is up for the fight to get a train or rapid busway built through the Sepulveda Pass; or K, who works in reality TV and has to drive the dreaded 101 through the San Fernando Valley instead of riding a comfortable train back and forth to work.

Move LA has a laundry list of important encore projects it will need to achieve if it wants to see the benefits of the Mayor's 30/10 initiative realized. These include a national infrastructure bank committed to supporting mass transit projects like the Subway to the Sea, enhanced Federal funding for regional mass transit projects through the Federal transportation re-authorization bill, a set of guidelines for public private partnerships for mass transit development; and a State constitutional amendment that enables agencies like Metro to seek voter approval of new taxes for mass transit by a 55 percent vote rather than a two thirds majority of the electorate.

A comprehensive mass transit system for Los Angeles constructed within a decade will help the region address its crushing traffic problems and will be an economic lifeline to the poor, middle class, and rich alike who try to live and work here.

If you like living here, it's time to join with the chorus in working for the train a comin'. Together we can move LA.