WHAT’S THE POINT?
Public transit in Los Angeles is doomed because of our wealth. It might sound coun-terintuitive, but let me explain my logic.
Like large chunks of this country, I’ve been traveling this past week. I’ve been in Boston, Provincetown and New York. In this part of the country, there is an extensive and well-developed public transit system. You can travel from city to city easily, and getting around in the city is an easy mix of actually walking, buses, subways, ferries and taxis.
There are two main reasons I believe that public transport is so much easier on the East Coast: Age and poverty.
The East Coast has been around so much longer as a population center that it has actually had time to mature and understand the needs of its populace. Built like European towns and cities, it was forced to develop in an analogous manner, with public parks and transport being necessary to keep people complacent.
This was important when the Northeast was a major manufacturing center and there were large numbers of workers needed to produce goods in factories. The industrial revolution concentrated people. There were many people who had to be able to get to work but their jobs were not located close to their homes.
That created the need for buses and trolleys, which laid the groundwork for the expectation of a public transportation system. As the industrial revolution expanded and trains became more commonplace, subways and elevated tracks were developed so that factories could be placed further out of town on inexpensive land.
The development of an infrastructure took place over decades and became part of the fabric of a society that came to value neighborhood life,and cheap easy transport.The Boston T and the New York Subway are as iconic as Fenway Park and the Statue of Liberty.
That's why poverty helped force the development of people-moving systems. It was to the advantage of the big industrialists to have buses and trains that were cheap and efficient for their workers to get around.
In Los Angeles, we are the victims of our own good fortune. We are a young city in a young country. Our development has always grown horizontally, not vertically because land was cheap and plentiful. It is only now that we are running out of land that we are looking to grow up.
Historically, the LA basin has had little heavy manufacturing. We were spared the ugliness of steel forges, factories and assembly lines, for the most part. Our history is short and glittery, with an emphasis on new, glamorous and exciting lifestyles that we could export to the rest of the country.
Our development of suburbs and gated communities is indicative of our place in America being special. We live large, and far from our jobs. It has always been that way in Hollywood. It is the way we proclaim our wealth.
From the stunt guys who live in Canyon Country to the pampered poodles who live in Malibu waiting for their next leading role in a feature film, the car is the symbol of our success. From the lowliest PA to the biggest studio head, you drive your own car.
It is not just the movie people who partake of this curious snubbing of public transport — it is office workers, busboys and sales people. In the land of the beautiful people the first criteria for status is your car.
Where did this mania come from? Probably Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn can be credited with setting the first standards for success in the land of illusion. It started with the star system and then it moved off the lots to the general public. In a city where the famous are publicly ranked by their box office, is it any wonder that no one wants to be common?
Los Angeles is a highly competitive pressure cooker, where everyone is trying to one up each other. Had we a large employer and more people were forced into humility, we might use a public transport system but as it stands, we lost the opportunity to have it as part of our culture back when D.W. Griffith was making movies.
When fortunes were made 75 years ago the men who ran this town could have built the infrastructure, and the hearts and minds of the population would have followed, but they didn’t because they didn’t have to. The people who worked at the studios were relatively well paid and soon became homeowners in the suburbs and automobile owners.
There was enough money being made that people were happy. When cars became commonplace thanks to Ford, the car went from luxury in the rest of the country to a necessity in Los Angeles.
Today, a large percentage Hispanic gardeners, housecleaners and nannies have their own cars.
And the only time you’ll see a celebrity on a bus is if they are shooting a remake of “The Honeymooners.” So long as our economy is as rich as it is, public transport is never going to really work well in Los Angeles. We’re just too well off to care. (David Pisarra is a lawyer in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He can be reached at dpisarra@pisarra.com or (310) 664-9969.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 8, 2006. Read the original PDF.