There are cities where high investment in public transit makes sense. Those are usually older northeastern cities with high levels of urban density where each foot of real estate is dear. That's not a description that fits California too well, but Governor Moonbeam is obsessed with light rail and more investment in public transit.
There's just one problem, no one except the technocratic policymakers want it.
For almost a decade, transit ridership has declined across Southern California despite enormous and costly efforts by top transportation officials to entice people out of their cars and onto buses and trains.
It's not the job of government to entice people to do things. This is half of what's wrong with liberal policymaking in a nutshell. Instead of providing the services that people want, they provide the services they think people should want... and then try to make them want them.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option.
Most other agencies fare no better. In Orange County, bus ridership plummeted 30% in the last seven years, while some smaller bus operators across the region have experienced declines approaching 25%. In the last two years alone, a Metro study found that 16 transit providers in Los Angeles County saw average quarterly declines of 4% to 5%.
Clearly people are voting with their feet. And their steering wheels.
Officials say ridership is cyclical and customers will return as traffic congestion worsens, bus service improves, new rail lines open and more of the region's population moves to walkable neighborhoods near transit stops.
Translation, let's keep pouring more money down the hole while trying to figure out how to make driving a car into an even worse experience. They can take a few tips from Bloomberg.
But some experts say the downturn could represent a permanent shift in how people get around, propelled by a changing job market, falling gas prices, fare increases, declining immigration and the growing popularity of other transportation options, including bicycling and ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft.
Fewer people going to work, for one reason or another, along with the growing strength of online retail, is an issue no doubt. But people don't tend to enjoy mass transit. Some do enjoy driving.
The decline suggests that Southern California policymakers are falling short of one of their longtime goals: drawing drivers out of their cars and onto public transportation to reduce traffic congestion, greenhouse gases and the region's reliance on fossil fuels.
So public transit isn't about providing a service people want, but imposing on them a service they don't want. There's your failed liberal totalitarianism.
But the question takes on new significance in Los Angeles County, where politicians and transportation officials are considering whether to seek another half-cent sales tax increase in November that could raise $120 billion for major transportation projects, including several new rail lines.
Let's raise taxes to fund the thing no one wants, but that we decided is good for them. All Hail Liberalvania.
"It's a bit perverse," said USC engineering professor James E. Moore II, who has been a critic of rail transit. "You're spending all this money and you're driving ridership down. If you're investing heavily in transit, you'd hope ridership would increase."
But... you're signaling your morally superior virtue. It doesn't matter what people want or what they do. It matters that this is the right thing to do. It's on the right side of history. We must end democracy and replace it with a glorious utopia that will build unneeded rail lines everywhere and tax all the businesses into departing to pay for it. Then when no one has jobs and no reason to ride at all, we'll have to pass a mandate forcing everyone to buy a rail pass and then claim that this proves the system works. And then there'll be annual reports claiming a 95% increase in transit ridership. It worked for ObamaCare.
Forward!
"We're not building for today," Washington said. "We're building for 100 years down the road."
Great plan. You have no clue how to do anything for today. No doubt you have a much better read on the future 100 years from now.
This reminds me of all those psychics who can't predict the lottery, but can predict the distant future.
Since we're in the People's Republic of Liberalvania, the article quickly collapses into a politically correct singularity by blathering about racism and sexism. (Trains are racist, buses are more P.C.) And then there's a whole other problem with minorities...
According to census data, up to 7% of Los Angeles County residents commute using transit while a lower percentage do so in surrounding counties. Metro's goal is to convert 20% to 25% of the county's population into regular transit riders, Washington said.
The longer immigrants live in the U.S., the less likely they are to take the bus or train, either because they begin to drive or move to suburbs with less transit service. After two decades in the United States, about 6% of immigrants ride transit, only slightly higher than native-born residents, Blumenberg said.
As with so many other policy goals, the solution is to import mass numbers of immigrants to keep metro ridership up.