Transportation Policy - Control of Transit Companies, Fare Structures, and Planning Goals

What Is Los Angeles' Public Transportation Policy?

Ecological theory about transportation has been largely incorporated into urban and transportation planning (Lowry 1959; Hansen 1959; Peat, Marwick, Mitchell, & Co. 1975; Daniels, 1972; Putnam, 1975; Cheslow & Olsson, 1975; cited in Yago, 1983). In these planning models, as well as in Federal transit funding formulas, the ecological and spatial structure of cities are used to prescribe transportation policy thereby reinforcing existing travel patterns and promoting highways as solutions to congestion (Yago, 1983).

Clearly, an association exists between the timing of urban growth and the city's emerging transportation system, but that alone cannot account for the wide variation in the application of transportation technology. The limitations in a given transportation technology's use are often political rather than technical. For example, the lack of crosstown route development, which would have more densely populated the interstices between urban rail routes, resulted from political decisions, not from the technical exigencies cited by urban ecologists on the basis of US research. In Europe, crosstown routes were the norm, while US interstitial development occurred later with the automobile. The causes of the difference are to be found in differences in urban and transportation policy concerning the ownership and control of transit operating companies, fare structures, and planning goals, and not in any inherent technological limitations of rail transportation (Yago, 1982). Ecological analysis sensitizes us to the impacts of spatial development upon urban development. To this must be added an historical analysis of such development - not only of the technological evolution in transportation that has helped to generate it, but also of the social forces that have constrained it (Yago, 1983).

Dr. James Ortner, manager of Transit Technical Services for the Orange County Transportation Authority, identifies obstacles and addresses changes that need to be made in order to improve and expand the Los Angeles public transit network. "Major obstacles include insufficient taxpayer support to address operating, service, and reliability issues. Expansion of the growing rail system is hampered by the lack of capital funds. Bus service is impacted by a U.S. Federal Court decision requiring overcrowding issues to be addressed first. Union work rules impact efficiency objectives."