Should there be any doubt that LA belongs among the big 6 urban US cities?

[jd3189]

Honestly, I don't see cars are necessarily bad for the urban form. It's really building the urban form to accommodate cars over buses, trains, bikes, and people that's the problem.

Living in LA, I do still use my car, but it's more of a choice now rather than something I need for daily activities. I live within walking distance of my job and a Metro station, so I only drive for leisure and getting groceries.

I couldn't do that in the IE, let alone newer car centric development where you have a bunch of SFHs in a cul-de-sac on one plot of land adjacent to a commercial area with a shit ton of parking lots, stroads, etc. That postwar layout is extremely hostile to walking and anything else that's not a car.

There has to be some sort of balance and the interwar urbanism provides that balance, in my opinion. We ain't getting rid of the automobile, but it doesn't need to be the only way to get around in the majority of our country. Even in NYC with the highest percentage of car-less households you still have a strong car culture among folks who hate that one lane of traffic on a street is being converted to a bike lane.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Quixote

The point is that "car-lite" seems to better capture the actual experience of living in SF and the other four cities. Based on an examination of their cityscapes, transit shares, and anecdotal experience, it feels about right.

I mean, is the Southside of Chicago with its vacant lots, underdeveloped commercial corridors, and freeway median-running heavy rail really conducive to pedestrians and car-free living? Are the fringes of DC not reminiscent of what you'd find in inner-ring suburbia?

I don't think anyone has argued that 100% of any city is conducive to a truly car free lifestyle. Just that the Big 6 have the most people who can and do live car-free. You've pointed out that when you take away NYC, the rest of the 6 have car ownership rates of about 67%. Well, LA has a car ownership rate of 87%. So clearly it's in a different realm in terms of traditional urban orientation than the 'big 6'.

There's also shades to 'car-lite'. I think I lead a pretty car-lite lifestyle in LA. I walk to bars and restaurants, the post office, the grocery store, etc. I drive to work 2 days a week (~5 miles each way), and will drive to the gym (~under 2 miles), friends houses, plans outside my neighborhood, etc. My car is 5 years old and doesn't even have 25,000 miles on it. Some days I won't use my car at all, but I definitely wouldn't be able to live my life as it's currently set up without my car. On the other side of car-lite, my sister has a car in SF, and maybe uses it once or twice a month. She commutes to work, the gym, friends places...really everywhere within the city either on foot, public transit, or uber. The car is used for an occasional Costco run, or to drive out to wine country for a weekend or whatever. SF is a compact enough city, and has the sufficient urban design and infrastructure to encourage that type of lifestyle. I don't think LA does.

[38 Geary]

Car ownership doesn’t seem like a great metric to determine if a city is car lite. I would think car usage plays a bigger role.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by edale

I don't think anyone has argued that 100% of any city is conducive to a truly car free lifestyle. Just that the Big 6 have the most people who can and do live car-free. You've pointed out that when you take away NYC, the rest of the 6 have car ownership rates of about 67%. Well, LA has a car ownership rate of 87%. So clearly it's in a different realm in terms of traditional urban orientation than the 'big 6'.

Of course no city has all residents living car-free. Car-free living was mentioned very early on in the thread. I interpret "car-free living" to mean "you don't need a car to live there."

The statement: "You don't need a car to live in (city)" implies that car-freedom is the norm or "mainstream" way of living in that city. But that's far from the reality. SF in particular has unique demographics — affluent and 75% white and Asian. I find it interesting that only 10.73% of homeowners elect to be car-free (if you own a home in SF, chances are you can afford a car). Even more interesting is that the percentage of total households with 2+ vehicles (27.5%) is not that far behind the total number of car-free households (30.8%). And most interesting of all, majority car ownership is common even in prime urban areas where renters outnumber homeowners.

I don't presume to know what those people use their cars for and how often, but it's clear that owning a car is perfectly normal for both homeowners and renters alike. In fact, not owning a car puts you squarely in the minority. Does this mean SF is not urban or livable without a car? No. But it does sort of confirm what the eye suggests: SF isn't hostile to cars. Wide streets (some with perpendicular parking), narrower sidewalks, crosstown arteries with 3 traffic lanes, rowhouses with driveways and an attached garage.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Quixote

The statement: "You don't need a car to live in (city)" implies that car-freedom is the norm or "mainstream" way of living in that city.

I disagree.

The statement "You don't need a car to live in (city)" implies only that "You don't need a car to live in (city)".

And car ownership in said city can also be the mainstream norm.

Both things can be true

I know this because I easily lived car-free in Chicago (a city where car ownership is the norm overall) as a bachelor for nearly 15 years.

Who knows, had I never met my wife and never become a family man, I could easily see myself being car-free in Chicago to this very day.


But I love my family way more than I hate cars.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

SF has fairly high ridership compared to LA. And likely far more choice riders.

BART's daily ridership is slightly more than twice that of LA MTA subway. SF light rail and SF-Oakland bus are about about 2/3 that of LA. Caltrain tops Metrolink. Given the population differences SF has much higher proportional ridership.

Both areas see hundreds of thousands of transit riders on an average weekday, but there is no question that a higher percentage of commuters in the San Francisco MSA take public transit than in the LA MSA.

Per APTA's 2023 Q3 Ridership Report, average weekday ridership (by MSA):

Heavy Rail
LA: 73,700
SF: 158,400

Light Rail
LA: 115,500
SF: 77,500

Commuter Rail
LA: 17,000
SF: 28,200 ***

Bus
LA: 985,100 *
SF: 591,000 **

*LAC Metro, Long Beach, Orange OCTA, Santa Monica Big Blue, Anaheim RT, Culver City, Gardena, Lancaster, Montebello, Norwalk, Redondo, Torrance, West Covina. Not included: Ventura, Oxnard, San Bernardino or Riverside.

**Muni trolley and regular buses, Oakland ACTransit, Livermore/Amador Valley, SamTrans, San Rafael Marin, Vallejo, Antioch, Concord ECCT, Fairfield, Napa. Not included: San Jose VTA.

***Caltrain, BART DMU (Antioch), SMART. Not included: San Joaquins.

[craigs]

Double post.

[JManc]

What counts as heavy rail for SF? I thought it was Caltrain.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by JManc

What counts as heavy rail for SF? I thought it was Caltrain.

BART is heavy rail and Caltrain is commuter rail. Muni Metro is light rail. Although functionally it gets a little blurry. BART in the East Bay suburbs functions more like commuter rail whereas in SF and Oakland it functions more like rapid transit. Muni Metro sorts functions like rapid transit too when it’s in the subway and all the lines converge. On the surface then it becomes like a streetcar where it shares the road with cars and buses, often times without any separation at all.

MUNI Metro's N Judah Line by James Belmont, on Flickr

[Steely Dan]

^ Chicago is like the opposite of the bay area's fuzzy rail transit line functionality.

We have the L, which only operates as a third rail intra-city heavy rail rapid transit system (with the yellow line as a bit of an oddball).

And then we have the metra system, which operates as a big old diesel locomotive powered longer distance commuter rail radiating out in all directions across the vast suburban sprawl, with the exception of metra's aptly-named electric district on the Southside, which runs off of overhead catenary lines, and in some sections has stop spacing similar to rapid transit.

Though there are plenty of at-grade sections of both systems, neither ever runs with mixed traffic, they always have a dedicated ROW.

Chicago has nothing that could be called light rail.

[38 Geary]

I'm also fairly certain that SF has a higher % of commuters that walk and bike than LA as well. I'm not really buying Quixote's assertion that car ownership has a meaningful impact on the ability of residents of a city to live car lite.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Even in NYC with the highest percentage of car-less households you still have a strong car culture among folks who hate that one lane of traffic on a street is being converted to a bike lane.

The bridge and tunnel people are the absolute loudest critics of taking away any lanes from cars in NYC, and it's very annoying. So much of the city is so much better today than it was a decade ago simply because they stopped dedicating so much space to cars.

Recently the NYC DOT posted a little victory lap on Twitter for the projects that drastically reduced vehicular lanes on Broadway between 59th Street and downtown. Here's another YouTube video from Streetfilms showing some of the changes, along with city officials claiming back in 2005 that the changes couldn't be done. I cannot overstate how much better Broadway is now than it was in 2005. People have to be batshit crazy to ever want it to go back to the way it was before.

The great thing about NYC is that policy making never got completely taken over by the types of planners that put cars ahead of every other consideration about city life. And now, thanks to Bloomberg, we're finally in an era of seeing how far the city can push back car culture before it really starts to hurt. NYC is probably light years ahead of any other North American city in that regard, but still decades behind Europe and Asia.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ Chicago is like the opposite of the bay area's fuzzy rail transit line functionality.

We have the L, which only operates as a third rail intra-city heavy rail rapid transit system (with the yellow line as a bit of an oddball).

And then we have the metra system, which operates as a big old diesel locomotive powered longer distance commuter rail radiating out in all directions across the vast suburban sprawl, with the exception of metra's aptly-named electric district on the Southside, which runs off of overhead catenary lines, and in some sections has stop spacing similar to rapid transit.

Though there are plenty of at-grade sections of both systems, neither ever runs with mixed traffic, they always have a dedicated ROW.

Chicago has nothing that could be called light rail.

NYC doesn't have light rail (yet) either, but there are two light rail systems on the New Jersey side: a streetcar in Jersey City, and a streetcar+subway hybrid in Newark.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

NYC doesn't have light rail (yet) either, but there are two light rail systems on the New Jersey side: a streetcar in Jersey City, and a streetcar+subway hybrid in Newark.

I guess there's a sort of pretend light rail in Kenosha...

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I guess there's a sort of pretend light rail in Kenosha...

Indeed it does. . . and although it connects the Metra station to the harbor community, I don't think it's used as anything other than an amusement park ride during mostly warmer times of the year. . .

. . .

[CalUrbanist]

Originally Posted by homebucket

BART is heavy rail and Caltrain is commuter rail. Muni Metro is light rail. Although functionally it gets a little blurry. BART in the East Bay suburbs functions more like commuter rail whereas in SF and Oakland it functions more like rapid transit.

The only place genuine rapid transit exists in SF proper is underground down market street. And along this limited stretch of like a couple miles, Muni is duplicative for BART, and BART is completely interlined as well.

Beyond this, SF has no rapid transit, as it were.

And for a city of its size, MUNI Metro is shameful. The remainder of SF muni is not unlike Bostons T. Under serviced by good reliable and efficient transit for its level of density. Essentially Muni metro everywhere else in SF is a glorified streetcar network running at glacial speeds, and even still, has limited reach.

Sure SF Bay Area transit is leagues better than LAs, but honestly speaking, outside of NY, no American city has good (“world class”) transit, and we’re just splitting hairs amongst a bunch of losers at the end of the day.

But I have lived in Asia and EU, so to me even NYs system and NYs urbanism kinda sucks, albeit for reasons beyond service level, which is actually really really good.

[38 Geary]

I made this post earlier in the thread. I think most would be in agreement that there’s a Big 1 in the US being NYC. And then a traditional Less Big 5, which are much closer to LA in terms of urbanism than they are to NYC.

But again just my opinion as a small town hick quibbling about town squares so what do I know.

Originally Posted by homebucket

Miami I think is a solid tier below LA. Maybe more, but definitely at least one.

I have NYC by itself in the S tier. Then in no particular order, Chicago, SF, Philly, DC, Boston in the A tier. Then LA as a tweener in between A and B. Then your B level cities where I think Miami probably fits. Miami is also relatively spread out like LA, but doesn't have nearly as many walkable districts, and even then the quality of the walkable districts is probably below that of LA's. The podiumism is also at least a tier or two more blatant, and the public transit system is a tier or two below.

There's just no way Miami is on the same level as LA.

[Docere]

Years ago Peter Ustinov described Toronto as "New York run by the Swiss."

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Crawford

SF has fairly high ridership compared to LA. And likely far more choice riders.

BART's daily ridership is slightly more than twice that of LA MTA subway. SF light rail and SF-Oakland bus are about about 2/3 that of LA. Caltrain tops Metrolink. Given the population differences SF has much higher proportional ridership.

Keep in mind that the most important transit line in LA - the Wilshire subway - was supposed to be the first one built. It could and should have been operational sometime in the 1990s instead of 2028~.

[CalUrbanist]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Keep in mind that the most important transit line in LA - the Wilshire subway - was supposed to be the first one built. It could and should have been operational sometime in the 1990s instead of 2028~.

It will be interesting to see how well Wilshire to VA does vs BART yellow line.
I’m sure Wilshire subway will be transformative for LA, drawing a bulk of choice ridership for the first time in LA metros history, the way BART has always done tying the downtowns of Oakland with SF through Market St .

Though even with this line, the Westside will never be as walkable or urban as SF. LA’s wealth is just in the wrong part of town for great urbanism to flourish.
Great urbanism requires wealth, and LAs wealth isn’t super urban, unfortunately. LAs most urban parts are its poorest and least desirable.

I have spent some years in LA and can also vouch that transit use, particularly train ridership, is far less prevalent in LA than SF. Choice riders even less amongst all. Overall, there’s a palpable lack of transit culture, with many people still having to learn escalator etiquette, etc.

Also, built-in capacity outside of LAs subway is wanting. It feels like a lightweight system, with extensive LRT track mileage, as though built with low expectations in mind. It feels like a toy system.