Interview with Amy Ford of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

Background and Credentials

Amy Ford is a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.

Interview Questions

Who do you think are the primary beneficiaries of public transportation in Los Angeles?

Ford: Transit in LA seems to serve a wide spectrum of people, but the primary benefactors are probably the working poor and students. We often see people on the bus who appear to be homeless, but on the subway we usually only see people who appear to be going to work.

Do you think public transportation in Los Angeles is as affordable as it should be? If not, what could be done to make it more affordable?

Ford: I think it is a good deal, given the actual cost; however, for those who are very poor and dependent on transit, it is probably a substantial portion of their monthly budget. We would like to see fare restructuring in Los Angeles that gives some consideration to income level. We would also like to see time-based fare structures that would give some discount to those who travel during non-peak hours. We imagine these are people who have a fixed income or non-white-collar jobs, as they have the flexibility to travel at off-peak hours. In addition, we would like to see distance-based fares in LA that would charge more for longer distances traveled. If we could combine distance, time, and income-based structures, we think we could come up with a fare structure that is more equitable, and hopefully more affordable as well.

Are there obstacles preventing Los Angeles public transportation from expanding and improving? If so, what are they?

Ford: Despite LA's reputation as sprawl capital of the world, on a regional basis, LA has a very high population density. It also has some areas that are even denser - as dense as San Francisco or Paris. So the perception that LA is too sprawling to make transit work is not borne out by population density figures, as far as we can tell. However, it may be possible that LA, unlike Manhattan, still does not have the dense core of activity or enough one-way peak-hour travel to justify the expense of the more costly transportation systems, such as region-wide subway. (I am still undecided on this point!) What is a fact is that LA has terrible traffic jams, and putting more buses on these crowded roads does little to improve a transit rider's experience.

Another obstacle is certainly the negative public image in LA of transit. Too many people have said to us either "I would never think of getting on the bus" or "I thought buses were just for the homeless" to make us think transit will be an easy sell in LA. And, the vast, vast majority of riders that we personally see on the bus are probably dependent, and not choice riders. However, LA is experimenting with BRT/Rapid Bus and other high-service (but still less costly than subway) transit systems that may begin to change this public perception and open up new markets of people who just may get on the bus for the first time in their lives - by choice.

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most accessible, how accessible do you feel public transportation is for the average citizen? How do you think access to public transportation in Los Angeles may be improved?

Ford: I think that access to public transit is very good - the system is vast and has generally good spatial coverage. As well as the big transit systems, there are many smaller systems that cover the gaps between the larger carriers. That said, service can be sparse on a given line, meaning that even if you live next to a bus stop, you might have a bus coming by only once an hour in places. Additionally, the traffic congestion is such that timetables cannot, in general, be guaranteed. One day you can set your watch by the local bus, the next day your bus is caught in some road maintenance traffic, and you wait and wait with no idea when the bus will appear. If you do not count service as part of access, we honestly think that access is really good - about an 8 or 9; however, the service irregularities bring it down to about 5 or 6. Still decent, in my view, but not reliable enough to bring choice riders aboard.

If accessible is defined by ADA requirements, we would say it's about a 7 or 8. All equipment is ADA compliant, but operators can vary greatly in how helpful they are to ADA patrons. We am afraid we do not know much about the paratransit services in LA.

How does public transportation technology in Los Angeles compare with that of the rest of the world? How does it compare with the technology of private transport?

Ford: LA is beginning to use some new technologies that are quite revolutionary in the US: smart cards, GPS locators, signal synchronization, etc. Due to very high air quality standards in southern California, most buses are running on clean fuels, such as CNG or LNG or clean diesel and we believe this type of technology is ahead of the pack. Compared with other countries, however, we think LA's technology is probably outdated or behind the times. I'm not very familiar with other countries' technology, though, so my impression is only anecdotal.

Do you think the presence of public transportation and its facilities facilitates social interaction in the community?

Ford: I do. We feel very strongly on this point, and it is a point that is often ignored in anti-transit polemic. We think especially compared with the aggressiveness that we observe among automobile drivers on LA roads, transit is a great facilitator of social interaction. Whether this is simply awareness of people from other income classes or ethnic groups, or actually meeting and chatting with fellow riders, it is a social interaction that you don't see in other places.

How does public transportation in Los Angeles affect urban structure and vice versa? In other words, is the Los Angeles geography conducive to the expansion of a public transportation network? And how does public transportation affect the spatial structure of the city (segregation of neighborhoods), etc.?

Ford: Oooh, this is the famous "transportation-land use" debate, no? we am certain we am not going to settle this question, but here is what we think about LA in particular. We believe it's pretty much an accepted fact that the streetcars of the early 1900's in LA initially helped to determine its spread-out nature. So, LA began as a more spread-out area in the first place, and then the freeways and cars helped to further push the boundaries outward. Today, we think the existing transit has responded to this spread out built environment, but people are trying to make the environment respond to transit instead. We am still waiting to decide whether that is working or not. When MTA's Gold Line opens in the summer, we will have more evidence to ponder.

As for spatial segregation, we am not sure how much transit, again, is determining things or just responding to the existing road pattern and demand. For example, you will not see buses in the residential areas of Bel Air or Beverly Hills, but buses do travel on the major streets that border these very wealthy areas.

How does public transportation in Los Angeles affect social mobility? For example, is it useful in providing transport services for people commuting between their residence and place of employment? Can you think of a transport service which it should, but does not, provide?

Ford: This is such a good question, but so difficult for us to answer. We can say only from my own experiences that we see many poor Latino people travel on the bus to Beverly Hills, where we assume they are working as domestic or landscape laborers. So, people are able to use the bus to get to their jobs, but is this truly social mobility? If social mobility is a movement in income or social class, we don't think transit does a whole lot to help that. I'm sure, though, [that] there are stories of people who ride the bus to get to school, and maybe an argument for social mobility can be made this way. I'm not proposing an anti-transit argument, by the way, just saying that if people expect transit to solve our problems of division of classes and disparities in wealth, we think they're going to wait a long time.