RE-ENVISIONING THE L.A. RIVER & LOS ANGELES’ URBAN ENVIRONMENT: A Working Issues Briefing Paper on the Los Angeles River and the Urban Environment of Los Angeles
Prepared for the Mayoral Debate: Which Way for the L.A. River and L.A.s Urban Environment
September 14, 2000
Compiled by the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College, in conjunction with the Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN) and Co-sponsoring Organizations |
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Can Los Angeles be made more livable? From the neighborhoods of Highland Park and El Sereno, to South Central and the Westside, and up through the San Fernando Valley, the issues of Los Angeles’ deteriorating urban environment remain compelling. It could be three-hour car commutes, high asthma rates, or the toxic air contaminants we breathe. But can we actually meet air quality standards? Create safer and cleaner workplaces? Eliminate the myriad of environmental hazards that our most economically-stressed neighborhoods face? Turn vacant lands in the inner city into community gathering places? Re-envision a true river running from one end of the L.A. Basin to the other?
These are issues that need to be discussed at the grassroots level, among policymakers, and by our candidates for office, including those for the upcoming April 2001 mayoral election.
Los Angeles, while still the scourge of environmental critics, is ready to be reinvented. Take the Los Angeles River. Beginning sixty years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers, county and city agencies, and leading power brokers in the City decided to "declare war on the L.A. River." They transformed the river into a concrete-lined flood control channel. Today parts of the L.A. River have been designated a state park, and an impressive array of community groups and environmental organizations have sought to identify new ways of re-greening the river, creating bike paths and walk ways, and making it accessible to individuals, families, and communities. Some groups have boldly raised the issue of managing the River differently, applying new strategies that can both remove the concrete, restore bird, plant and other kinds of wildlife, and still effectively protect against floods.
These kinds of initiatives extend beyond the issues of the L.A. River. Community-based and issue-oriented organizations have tackled key community and environmental problems. These could include the lack of open and recreational space, vacant and contaminated lands, lack of access to crucial services due to inadequate transportation, pedestrian safety concerns, lack of affordable and high quality food, water, air, and land contamination problems, hazardous workplaces, and/or energy-related issues. Many of these groups have also sought to propose – and in some cases implement – innovative solutions to the myriad of problems their constituents confront. For example, the Community Coalition, a South Central-based organization, sought to monitor the problem of food access, price, and quality in the Vermont-Manchester area of South Central. The group discovered, among other findings, poor quality food at the supermarket, only one sit down restaurant compared to 53 fast food restaurants in a two-mile stretch in the neighborhood, and, generally, lack of fresh produce and other high quality food. Consequently, the group helped pressure the supermarket to improve their food quality, developed plans to initiate a farmers’ market, a community garden, and a quality-based food court in the neighborhood. While these kinds of initiatives demonstrate a vibrancy of civic action at the local level, in many cases they have yet to translate into citywide policy. This Issues Briefing Paper on the L.A. River and the Urban Environment – and the corresponding Questions for the Candidates – seek to provide a broader context for understanding and hopefully addressing the issues that speak to the question of whether Los Angeles can indeed be made more livable.
The Issues Briefing Paper is divided into four segments:
We welcome your comments and feedback. We hope the Briefing Paper becomes a living document, bringing in new issues even as we seek to deepen our understanding of the issues presented here.
RE-ENVISIONING THE LOS ANGELES RIVER (index)
A New Agenda
The Los Angeles River lies at the heart of the Los Angeles region, connecting L.A.’s diverse communities from one end of the L.A. Basin to the other. Its central place in the geography, land patterns, and ecological shifts of the region can also be seen in the myths, stories, and imaginative recreations of Los Angeles through film, poetry, written narratives and journalism. Defined since 1938 by its primary function as flood control channel and, subsequently, as repository for treated reclaimed water, the L.A. River has primarily if not exclusively served those functions and remained an urban river only in the imagination.
Across the country, however, urban rivers are making a comeback, including here in Los Angeles. With interest in urban greening, "smart growth" strategies, and ecologically-based community development, urban rivers such as the Los Angeles River are increasingly valued for their multiple purposes, including watershed management, river restoration, parkland, and recreation. A wide array of community and environmental groups have sought to identify strategies that could "re-envision" the L.A. River as a community and ecological asset, rather than an eyesore or a place of danger. Policymakers have also begun to respond to these initiatives with the understanding that the River can become the place where Los Angeles and its diverse neighborhoods can be reconnected and communities made more livable as the River and its surrounding areas undergo change.
What is the role of the City in this process? To date, the city’s policymakers have largely been absent from the efforts to transform this critical resource that runs through the heart of the city and yet has been so absent in its recent development. A new agenda is in the process of being developed, even among agencies that have long focused exclusively on the flood control needs related to river management. The City needs to become more formally part of this dialogue and help identify the policy issues and options that would contribute to the further development of this "re-envisioning the L.A. River" agenda.
Community Development and the River: The Cornfield/Chinatown Yards Debate
The Nature of the Issue
The Los Angeles River has become the object of interest over recent years as the site(s) for communities to come together in different ways. Many community and environmental organizations, as well as city and state agencies are working to re-green the banks along the river. The Governor’s recent budget authorizes five riverside projects to create park and recreation space along the River, made possible by the passage of Propositions 12 and 13 this past spring.
But the re-envisioning of community development around the River does not have to be limited to park and open space. A key piece of the state budget was eliminated from the version the Legislature approved—funding to buy property in the Cornfield, or Chinatown Yards. This controversial project is at risk of becoming a missed opportunity by both the State and the City to redevelop a vacant, contaminated brownfield site with the surrounding communities.
The 47-acre site known as the Cornfield is the last large vacant parcel of land in or near downtown Los Angeles. Just north of Chinatown and adjacent to the Los Angeles River, the Cornfield is a former rail yard that has been on the market for over a decade. Its proximity to the River has inspired visions for its inclusion in a planned River greenway. On the other hand, its nearness to Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, and the William Mead Housing Project, areas that lack adequate housing, schools, jobs, and open space, have inspired visions of meeting some of the pressing social needs in these communities. However, the site’s current zoning for industrial use and its placement in a zone of declining light industrial and warehousing facilities (a zoning decision that was itself controversial) was the result of a competing view about the area’s needs based more exclusively on industrial use. This view emerged because the site had been acquired by a large developer with plans for a massive warehousing and light manufacturing project, a project that would be subsidized by millions of dollars in federal brownfields redevelopment money that the Mayor’s office worked to secure.
These contending views regarding the development of the Cornfield/Chinatown Yards identify competing visions of how different community and regional needs can be met. The existing warehouse/manufacturing plan of the developers argues that their proposed development will create up to 1,000 jobs, at an average pay scale of $20,000/year. The opposing view, led by groups that have also focused on the River, contends that a mixed use approach that includes a park, a playground, a middle school, affordable housing, and appropriate, community-centered economic development, would create more and better jobs, increase property values, create a stronger tourism focus, and eliminate the problem of air quality impacts associated with the diesel truck trips generated by the warehousing approach. These issues have now resulted in a lawsuit and a highly charged planning and decision process by the City that the next mayor will inevitably need to confront.
Policy Options
A recent UCLA study commissioned by the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute identified core community needs for housing, open space, schools and job-creating strategies that identify and draw on the strengths of the neighboring Chinatown communities. But in the case of the Cornfield, despite the area’s designation as a brownfields site, the City has done little to involve the communities that are impacted by these redevelopment projects in identifying core needs that can be met with the project.
Out of the controversy surrounding the Cornfield redevelopment, a number of lessons can be learned which can point the way forward for the City in guiding this and future developments:
Specifically, in relation to the Cornfield site the following policy options are available for the next mayor:
Re-Greening the LA River
The Nature of the Issue
Innovative projects have been implemented along the L.A. River to beautify the area, provide habitat, open space, and increased access to the River. Through a series of parks and pocket parks, multiple organizations have collaborated to create spaces for community along the L.A. River. Many of these parks serve as the backbone for what the Friends of the Los Angeles River has called a "Los Angeles River Greenway." Such a greenway could function as open space and contribute to flood management. The River flows through many different communities, and a watershed approach to flood management could take into account all the interrelated surface and subsurface water issues.
Policy Options
In order for these parks to remain community assets, longterm maintenance, upkeep, and security is vital. Given the complex web of agencies with jurisdiction along the River, funding and coordination is required.
While the idea of tearing concrete from the bed of the L.A. River faces significant hurdles, longterm planning and zoning should not preclude these options in the future. Zoning and planning that takes into consideration the River is one step toward a reconstructed, more natural river system. Advocacy, education and leadership from the mayor would be important in such an effort.
Community Art Projects/Murals Along the River
The Nature of the Issue
Community art projects and murals along the River are another strategy to make the River more of a community asset, especially in areas that are lined with concrete on three sides. This concrete-rich environment lends itself to perceptions of the River as a hostile landscape, but community art projects can change perceptions and the channel itself. Mural projects have the potential to link local youths and artists for summer job programs that give youth an opportunity to better their neighborhoods and communities.
Policy Options
A community arts program, perhaps similar to initiatives developed by the Arroyo Arts Collective and Hollywood Beautification Team, to develop murals along the L.A. River is one action that the Mayor can initiate through the Cultural Affairs Department. However, in addition to start up costs, resources for maintenance and upkeep are also needed.
The L.A. River Bikeway
The Nature of the Issue
One of the most promising developments along the L.A. River in recent years is the extension of the L.A. River Bikeway. The Bikeway connects communities with the LA River, and connects those communities with recreational, commercial, and employment opportunities. It encourages environmentally-friendly transportation, betters public health, and improves property values.
The L.A. River Bikeway project has developed significant interest and support. In August 2000, the new Atwater Village segment opened. Further extensions are fully- or partially-funded to extend the existing Bikeway along the Arroyo Seco and into Downtown LA, as well as creating new bike paths along the River in Studio City and along Compton Creek.
The L.A. River Bikeway can serve as an important alternative transportation network to allow commuters from the Valley and North East LA to leave their cars at home on their commute into downtown. Such a River Bikeway and Parkway can establish recreational amenities in park-poor neighborhoods. A strong mayoral commitment would be needed to ensure that funded River Bikeway segments would be completed, and that gaps would be closed to create a bikeway along the entire LA River.
Policy Options
In order to improve the L.A. River Bikeway, the following steps could be made:
PLANNING FOR THE LIVABLE CITY (index)
Livable City Plan
The Nature of the Issue
Los Angeles and the region face a number of significant problems including traffic, a lack of affordable housing, environmental degradation (of the air, land and water), and the growing number of low-income jobs that cannot provide a living wage despite a growing regional economy. Each of these problems can be traced in part to a lack of coordinated land-use planning and economic development strategies that focus on short-term gains at the expense of long term sustainability for the city and its residents. Additionally, many different departments in the City, such as Public Works, the Health Department, the Department of Water and Power, the Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Environmental Affairs Department, deal with one or another aspect of the urban environment. There is little or no accountability in this system of fragmented community development and environmental policy.
Some cities like Seattle and San Francisco have turned to Livable City or Sustainable City Plans to create a broad community-based environmental mission statement and set of goals for their city. These plans are also designed to help overcome the compartmentalization of community development and environmental policies, and to govern the activities of all city departments in the context of the sustainable city or livable city mission.
Policy Options
The City of Los Angeles could draw on many of the strategies that other cities have used in their Livable City of Sustainable City programs. The City could develop coordinated long range planning processes that focus on "smart growth" that integrate housing, commercial and transportation infrastructure to reduce traffic, pollution, and create functioning neighborhoods. The City could also create sustainable economic development strategies that seek to attract high wage, low-polluting industries and that provide economic incentives to promote resource efficiency and discourage waste and pollution. The City could coordinate strategies for its operations to reduce waste and pollution, improve resource efficiency, and save money--strategies that help the city to lead the rest of the community by example.
To help establish such approaches, the City of Los Angeles could establish a Livable City Plan, developed with community input, that contains the following components:
To develop such a mission statement and plan for implementation, the City could develop an extensive outreach and community input and planning process. The City could also insure that the information about progress toward target indicators and improved environmental conditions be made available to communities through a broad range of venues-including formal publications, the internet, City Council offices and neighborhood council offices.
Access to Information and Decision-Making
The Nature of the Issue
All too often community members or workers find themselves without the knowledge base or tools to allow them to effectively participate in key environmental decisions. At the same time, situations arise where the lack of knowledge or information is used to close off or block participation. In environmental matters, one should not have to be an expert in order to be a participant in decisions.
Policy Options
Another key planning issue is access to information and decision-making. To facilitate full public access to information and equitable participation in decision-making in all environmental programs and policies, the City could create a policy for full-disclosure of information. Information about environmental impacts, hazards and programs could be expanded in the City’s published resources as well as available through a variety of venues, including the internet. Models for successful information-based environmental web pages exist and are maintained by Communities for a Better Environment in Los Angeles, and the Environmental Defense nationally, among others.
The City could also provide specific information about community, neighborhood and workplace environmental issues and options to reduce or eliminate environmental impacts or hazards through an environmental education and outreach program. Public forums, such as neighborhood council meetings, could be used to increase access to information and opportunities to pursue alternative strategies.
The City, for all environmental-related commissions, boards and agencies, could establish mechanisms for democratic input and community and worker access to decision-making. The City can also develop policies that outline the ways in which communities could become more involved in the decision-making that surrounds planning, zoning, and land use issues.
Parks and Community Places
The Nature of the Issue
In 1930, a detailed and imaginative planning document commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, known as the Olmsted-Bartholomew report, was released. The report proposed a wealth of parks, playgrounds and parkways centering around the Los Angeles River that would have dramatically transformed the city and the region. "Continued prosperity [in Los Angeles]," the Report concluded, "will depend on providing needed parks, because, with the growth of a great metropolis here, the absence of parks will make living conditions less and less attractive, less and less wholesome, though parks have been easily dispensed with under the conditions of the past. In so far, therefore, as the people fail to show the understanding, courage, and organizing ability necessary at this crisis, the growth of the Region will tend to strangle itself."
For a number of reasons, not the least of which was a competing notion of the need to eliminate open space and forego park land on behalf of the demands of developers and other commercial and industrial interests, the city’s policymakers never seriously considered adoption of the recommendations from the Olmsted-Bartholomew report. As historians Greg Hise and William Deverell point out in their introduction to the reprinting of this Report, the City’s policymakers lost an opportunity that would later come back to haunt the city.
Los Angeles today is park poor. The City has fewer acres of parks per thousand residents compared to any major city in the country. With only nine-tenths of an acre of park land per thousand residents, the City falls far short of the national average of ten acres. There are also vast disparities in access to parks. The inner city has 0.3 acres of parks per thousand residents, compared to 1.7 acres in wealthier white areas of Los Angeles. Poorer communities in the urban core have been historically short-changed by City funding formulas for parks and recreation programs. Money is not invested throughout the City based on need but is distributed equally among the 15 City Council Districts.
The poverty of parks is aggravated by the disappearance of playgrounds and schoolyards at alarming rates, due to the epic overcrowding at public schools in Los Angeles and the concomitant use of portable classrooms. Almost 4,500 of LAUSD’s classrooms – housing over 100,000 students – are portables that deprive children of playground space. Children are forced to share cramped play areas that significantly curtail physical education activity. On many campuses, over one in four classrooms are temporary portables that devour playground space.
Policy Options
The passage of Proposition 12 in March 2000 established major new funding opportunities for park expansion in urban areas. The City needs to take the lead in identifying new park space that provides opportunities for both recreation, restored habitat and open space, and safe community places that serve as new centers of community life.
There are two immediate transitional steps and target goals that could move the City in the direction of a parks commitment: a) achieving in the near term the City's Recreation and Parks Department immediate goal of 4 acres of community and neighborhood parks per thousand residents and b) reaching the national average of ten acres of parks per thousand people over a given period of time. At the same time, this commitment could identify "equity" criteria by evaluating the location and quality of existing park lands, inventorying the vacant or underutilized land in the city by location, and identifying a strategy of future park development that factors in the disparities in location of the existing park sites and the community need for park land and community places. To achieve those goals would also require an increase in staffing of park sites, which in turn could represent an opportunity for new community-based job training and development. The City could also encourage the important role of community and park advocates such as Northeast Trees and the Trust for Public Land in facilitating the acquisition of sites, pursuing the planning and outreach required to address community needs and needs for open space, and identifying the multiple goals – both environmental and community – that need to be incorporated into any park land development.
Community Development and Brownfields
The Nature of the Issue
Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or underused industrial and commercial properties where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived contamination. This definition is broad and can cover an entire industrial zone or a single abandoned building. Failure to recycle urban brownfields is a contributing factor to suburban sprawl, as industrial zones are left vacant while greenfields on the fringe draw new factories, office parks, and shopping malls. The re-use of brownfield sites will prove critical for meeting the needs for housing, schools and open spaces, as well as commercial and industrial space, in the city and can become a rallying point for a wide range of public and private efforts to focus attention on urban reinvestment and economic development within Los Angeles.
Policy Options
The federal government provides cities with funding to help in the redevelopment of brownfields and leaves the decision-making process to the local governments and communities as to the best use of the property. After the City of Los Angeles was designated a Federal Brownfields Showcase Community in 1998, the City created a cross-organization Resource Team for brownfields redevelopment. However, the City does not have a comprehensive brownfields policy to guide its brownfields redevelopment efforts. A brownfields redevelopment policy for the City of Los Angeles can include goals for:
RESOURCE ISSUES: WATER, ENERGY, FOOD (index)
Water Issues
The Nature of the Issue
Los Angeles is a water-dependent region. Since the turn of the 20th century, the City and the broader Southern California region have predicated future development on the basis of available water supplies imported from distant sources, beginning with the authorization of the Los Angeles Aqueduct from Owens Valley in 1905. Such an approach has created serious conflict with the areas where those water supplies originated. It has been compounded by the range of environmental impacts associated with the importing of water. And it has underlined the absence of any kind of sustainable policy framework that would emphasize development of local sources, managing the demand for water, and establishing an "ethic of use" in the region.
Those long-standing imported water supply strategies are now in serious trouble. A series of court rulings and subsequent agreements has significantly reduced the amount of water that could be exported from both Mono Lake and the Owens Valley. The Colorado River and the State Water Project from Northern California, representing the two other imported water supplies for the entire Southern California region, have also become problematic as firm supplies. Imported water for Los Angeles and for Southern California can no longer be considered an expanding source of supply; if anything, we have reached a zero-sum game.
These problems of available supply have also been magnified by the concerns regarding contamination of the City’s groundwater sources in the San Fernando basin. Recent questions about the levels of hexavalent chromium (chromium VI) detected in these wells represents the latest in a series of discoveries about the extent of groundwater contamination and possible loss of wells and further reduction of supply. How the City can best address these stresses to its water supply remains a critical question facing the DWP and the next mayor.
Policy Options
Los Angeles can begin by developing an integrated watershed management approach in relation to resource management and use, water quality, environmental protection of rivers, coastal waters, groundwater, and streams, water reuse and sewage treatment, and runoff issues. The goals of this approach would be to:
Energy Issues: Green Buildings
The Nature of the Issue
Homeowners, members of the design and building professions, and cities across the nation are turning to construction and design methods that emphasize health, energy-efficiency and the environment. Green building materials have at least one of the following characteristics: nontoxic, recycled content, resource efficient, or long life cycle.
More than 70% of Los Angeles’ electricity is generated from coal and nuclear power. These sources pollute the environment and contribute to global warming. An alternative to these power sources is green power--electricity produced in an environmentally friendly manner that is pollution free and natural, including water, wind and solar power. Renewable electricity technologies are among the cleanest and have the least impact on the environment. Launched in 1999, the City’s Green Power for a Green L.A. program offers Los Angeles utility customers the opportunity to sign up for and choose new, clean energy from renewable sources.
Policy Options
The Cities of Austin, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Santa Monica have all adopted green building initiatives. Los Angeles has developed Sustainable Building Guidelines, covering implementation of energy and water efficiency measures, use of recycled materials, and reduction of toxics for the rehabilitation of housing. The City of Los Angeles can show its commitment to environmental, economic and social stewardship by expanding its sustainable building program with the creation of a green building initiative that has three overarching principals:
Thus far the City has initiated retrofits of municipal buildings to reduce energy and water consumption. The City of Los Angeles can continue this path by enacting a Municipal Building Policy to finance, plan, design, construct, manage, renovate and maintain its facilities and buildings in a sustainable fashion.
The City of Los Angeles can set the example for all residents and private businesses by implementing the City Council directive to purchase green power for municipal operations. Major strides have been made in converting some City operations, but leadership, education, and full implementation is needed.
Food and Nutirtion
The Nature of the Issue
Despite the protracted and deeply embedded food and nutrition problems in this region, there exists no public policy framework to address such problems. While increases in the number of jobs and reductions in the welfare rolls have been widely cited as proof of the economic health of the region, food insecurity has only continued to grow. This can be measured by the number of people dropping in and out of hunger and the continual increases in use of the emergency food system. It is also reflected in the epidemic of obesity that cuts across class, race and ethnicity lines, the range of diet-related diseases, and the lack of access to affordable, fresh, high quality foods in many neighborhoods.
The problem of food insecurity is compounded by the existence of a two-tiered food system where these indicators of food insecurity are even more pronounced in low-income communities that are at the bottom tier of the food system. For example, while some middle and upper income communities may have access to organic food, most low-income or communities of color do not. Thus, low-income residents do not have the choice of a more nutritious and less contaminated food source. Yet opportunities for policy innovation are substantial.
Policy Options
Food Security and Hunger Indicators Report and Plan of Action: Before the City can identify equitable and comprehensive food and nutrition policies, an assessment of regional food security needs should occur. The City, along with other local and regional jurisdictions, could prepare an annual Food Security and Hunger Indicators Report, to identify the arenas for community and policy intervention and establish benchmarks to measure food security improvements. The City could then prepare a Plan of Action to address the findings in the Indicators Report, identifying resources and implementation strategies. Because food policy planning and development does not currently have a home within city, county or regional levels, the City of Los Angeles could also take the lead by creating a Food Policy Council that can operate at both the city and county level, to create a coherent public policy agenda for food issues.
Transportation/Food Access: The City’s food policy could also include transportation planning that factors in food access considerations. The City, the MTA and other public agencies could work with academics and researchers to conduct a study to identify neighborhoods in need of bus routes to food markets. The City could support a variety of transportation mechanisms such as jitneys, improved intra-neighborhood bus routes, and siting of new markets along highly utilized bus routes. The City could also encourage markets to offer shuttle service and delivery in transit-dependent communities, as well as support community-based ownership or joint ventures of food market-related transportation services.
Farmers’ Markets, Community Supported Agriculture, and other Direct Marketing Opportunities: Farm-to-consumer programs provide a crucial strategy for enhancing a community’s food security and access to healthy foods. These direct marketing programs increase fresh food access for local residents as well as help insure the economic viability of small family farmers. The City could facilitate further development of the popular Los Angeles farmers’ markets (of which there are less than 10 that serve over 3 million residents), particularly in low- and mixed-income communities, by funding local groups to establish farmers’ markets and develop strategies to make the markets economically viable. Strategies could include one-stop permitting, allowing markets to utilize the city’s insurance available to markets, and expanding the use of food stamps and WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program coupons at farmers’ markets. The City could also institute an education and outreach campaign to increase awareness of the opportunities and benefits of farmers’ markets.
The City could also support development of community supported agriculture or CSAs, which enables a group of consumers to contract with a farmer to get produce from the farm for the whole growing season in exchange for an up-front payment for a share of the cost of producing it. While supporting development of CSAs, the City could also support development of direct marketing opportunities such as delivery of farmers’ market produce to schools, family day care and after-school programs and other public food programs.
Community Gardens: By using underutilized or vacant lands as sites for urban agriculture, Los Angeles could establish a foundation for developing access to fresh food in urban neighborhoods through small farms, community gardens, or edible landscapes. To encourage community gardens, which provide important public space as well as food security needs, the City could use a number of tools. The City could create policies to acquire under-used, vacant land for permanent or temporary use as community gardens or farms. The City could establish policies and funding mechanisms to help sustain community gardens by assisting gardens in obtaining sites, making surplus right of way available for gardens, installing needed infrastructure, providing assistance with organizing and publicity, and working with non-profit agencies, community groups and co-operatives working with gardens.
TRANSPORTATION AND LAND USE (index)
The Nature of the Issue
Many people in Los Angeles cannot afford a car, yet they live in a city whose transportation system is based on policies and investments that facilitate driving. Not only has this situation caused great inequities in access to transportation, such policy choices have promoted sprawling development that encourages and rewards the abandonment of the urban core for new communities on the fringe by employers, investors and the middle class. Sprawling land use patterns have resulted in an increase in the region’s auto dependency as well as an increase in the distances everyone, including transit-dependent commuters, have to travel to get to jobs.
While Los Angeles still maintains its reputation as the "land of the car," this perception of the region hides some startling facts about transit usage and needs. Southern California’s MTA bus system is one of the largest in the world, and 76% of its bus riders have no access to a car. The income of the typical California household with access to a car is $33,833, however half of all bus riders have incomes of less than $15,000. The percentage of people who are licensed to drive in California declined steadily during the 1990s, and California ranks 46th out of 50 states in the percent of population licensed to drive. In downtown L.A. 30 % of all trips are now made by transit, 25% of all trips are by transit in East L.A., and 15% of trips on the Westside are by transit.
There is a need in Los Angeles for more and better public transit, as well as land use practices that support transit usage, walking and biking as alternatives to the automobile. In addition, many dense, low-income communities that are located near freeways, major arterials and regional attractions, where people do walk, bike and take public transit, are overrun with commuter and truck traffic. This heavy traffic has seriously degraded the quality of life in these communities, exacerbated air quality problems because of dangerous emissions, and helped rank L.A. County as the most dangerous county for pedestrians, where Latino and African American children are statistically at most risk of getting hit by a car.
Policy Options
To establish a more equitable and environmentally sound transportation and land use approach, a number of policy options are available for the City:
Equity: Improving Los Angeles’ bus system (making it better, cleaner, less-crowded and cheaper) is an invaluable step in improving transit in an equitable, efficient and environmentally sound way. More transportation programs need to be designed and funded that are specifically tailored to meet the needs of the transit dependent (those who do not own or who have to share the use of a car) who must access employment, child care, food shopping and other health and human services. Promoting improved collaborations between the organizations responsible for designing and providing these services can facilitate this. Such programs could promote increased public transit services near the places that the transit-dependent need to access, the increased use of para-transit (where public transit is lacking) and the targeting of additional transportation resources on programs that promote car-sharing first and car ownership as a last resort.
Pollution: There are a number of ways the City could play a role in decreasing pollution in the region. The City could phase out all diesel vehicles from its own fleet, and influence and support other city and county agencies to do the same. Additionally, the City could establish its own more stringent fuel efficiency standards for its fleet as a transition towards the conversion to zero-emission and ultra-low emission vehicles. Legislative efforts to utilize gasoline tax revenues to support public transit improvements could be supported. The City could also facilitate the development of an alternative fuel infrastructure (charging stations, alternative fuel availability, free parking for these vehicles on city streets and lots, etc.) to support the use of these vehicles.
Neighborhood/Bicycling: Dealing with traffic congestion means offering people alternatives to the car. Local streets need to be made safer for all users of the street, including pedestrians and cyclists, and not just motorists. One way to do this is to build walkable neighborhoods that have lower speed limits, safer intersections, traffic calming measures, and environments that make walking and cycling enjoyable. To make bicycles a viable means of short-distance transportation, the City needs to implement its L.A. Bicycle Master Plan, approved in 1996. Projects yet to be implemented include resurfacing and re-striping for bike lanes and routes and access on all transit lines. In addition, continuing the tradition of the quarterly Mayor’s Ride will bring visibility to biking in L.A.
Smart Growth: Transportation problems can be also be addressed by land use solutions. Land use changes that correct for the imbalance between jobs and housing, and by zoning for mixed-use development are ways that land use strategies can work to decrease or manage the demand for new roads and transit. Incentives need to be provided for healthier mixes of jobs and housing near existing services and public transit. Transportation investments and incentives can also be tied to better land use, and disincentives for poor land use. Communities need to be designed for better non-auto-related purposes and for greater livability. Current general plans, zoning ordinances and design guidelines have separated land uses and have required car-oriented setbacks along with ample parking—making use of the automobile a necessity. The City can instead adopt flexible design standards that allow developers to build mixed-use districts without the car-oriented setback and parking requirements.
For more information on Re-Envisioning the Los Angeles River, please call 323-259-2991 or email lariver@oxy.edu. We welcome feedback and input, as this is a working paper.
***This working issues briefing paper is prepared in conjunction with the September 14 Mayoral Candidate Debate on the L.A. River and the Urban Environment. Contributions were made by co-sponsoring organizations of the debate, the Re-Envisioning the L.A. River program (a project of UEPI), and in conjunction with the Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN) process. The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily the views of the co-sponsoring organizations. The sponsorship of the debate does not constitute endorsement of any candidate. |
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