Demand for Transit Services

Demand for Transit Services Determined by Urbanization

The ecological characteristics of Los Angeles are considered to be the primary determinants of its urban transportation system. The size of its population approximates the market scale for transportation services; its population density estimates its economy of operation; and its age indicates the timing of the city's emergence as a metropolitan center, which determines its physical organization as well as its adaptability to private or public transportation. Michael Manville, UCLA graduate student, remarks that "LA is very large--some would say sprawling--and this does not help efforts to build successful public transit. Transit requires certain base densities to be viable, and these densities exist only in very few places in LA."

The physical structure and settlement patterns of early Los Angeles were denser, especially when the city still had its old train and trolley network, which optimized access to and efficiency of public transportation. Urban research in both the United States (Hawley, 1950; Schnore, 1968) and Germany (Weber, 1978; Losch, 1952; Christaller, 1966; Klemmer, 1971; Iblher, 1970) viewed transportation infrastructure as the outcome of a city's spatial organization and population characteristics (Yago, 1983). As for transportation affecting a city's spatial form, Manville says that "I'm not sure that transit affects the spatial form of the city. The car certainly does--parking lots, parking garages, and other accommodations to the private vehicle have profoundly influenced LA's [Los Angeles'] urban form. But transit has generally (in my opinion) followed form, with the exception of the streetcars 100 years ago, which were used to promote dispersal and sprawl (they were owned by real estate speculators, who used them to open up new land for development)."

Regarding the advancement of sprawling by early 20th century street cars in Los Angeles, Amy Ford, also a UCLA graduate student, says that "I 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." Ford also feels that transit is responding to, and not determining, spatial structure. "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."

The previous arguments have emphasized how the urban characteristics of size, age, and density determine demand for transit services. This finding is widely repeated in sociological and planning studies of US cities (Schnore, 1968; Kain, 1967; Guest & Cluett, 1976; Council on Municipal Performance, 1975; Leggitt, 1976; cited in Mamon & Marshall, 1977).