Southern Californians Prefer Driving, Not Trains
27th January 2016
City planners in Los Angeles who think (albeit very incorrectly) that they have control over how residents live are famously pushing for general plan to “get people out of their cars” in this massive city and onto bikes or into mass transit and creating communities nestled around transit hubs. It’s called their Mobility Plan 2035. It would recast the city with a heavy emphasis on pedestrian and bicycle traffic, possibly at the expense of supporting motor vehicles.
There’s a slight problem with such a plan: This does not appear to be how the citizens of Los Angeles actually want to live. Use of mass transit in Los Angeles and Orange County continues to decline even as more and more money is thrown at it. To the extent that residents rely on mass transit, they seem to prefer buses to light rail, and when the costs of riding buses goes up and the availability or quality of service goes down, riders take a hike.
Funny thing about that whole democracy business; people keep trying to make their own decisions.