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

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by JManc

I think it's about not having to drive for everything compared to outside of those cities. If I moved to SF instead of the East Bay, I would have still had my car but probably wouldn't use it outside of commuting to work or driving to the other end of town or the Bay Area. I would walk or take Muni to most placed around SF proper. In most cities, you have to drive to go to the nearest restaurant, bar or store.

So then why is Muni Metro's ridership only 47% (Q3 2023 vs. Q3 2019) of what it was pre-pandemic? Unlike BART, Muni Metro is an urban rail system with lots of stops serving city neighborhoods. And most of those neighborhoods are, by density and built form, friendlier to cars. Muni bus, the main mode of public transport, is at 71% compared to the same period.

You can see where I'm going with this.

So, again, how are people getting around the city?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by craigs

I still don't see how having local residents holed up all day in offices nearby, as opposed to holed up all day in offices a couple of miles away, makes any specific difference in terms of downtown urbanism or vibrancy. Either people live downtown or they don't. Either people work downtown or they don't. If a critical mass of people do both, then a city center is more likely to be vibrant. I don't think it matters if the people living there and working there are the same.

It’s a quality of life issue. A city where the vast majority of people have decent and well paid stable careers, who are able to own property near (or perhaps rent) where they work so that they have less time, effort, and money to spend on their transportation to work will actually result in a more vibrant city with fewer dead zones, less ghettoization, more activity, and more enjoyment than a city where 4 in 5 people have to commute more than 30 minutes away because they can spend that extra time and money doing leisure and personally productive activities. That shift in cash flow from essential (energy and transportation) to non-essential sectors of the economy (leisure, personal) will result in more vibrancy.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Quixote

So then why is Muni Metro's ridership only 47% (Q3 2023 vs. Q3 2019) of what it was pre-pandemic? Unlike BART, Muni Metro is an urban rail system with lots of stops serving city neighborhoods. And most of those neighborhoods are, by density and built form, are friendlier to cars.

You can see where I'm going with this.

I don't know. In SF, a LOT less people were/are working in the office compared to the 'before times" and in general, people tend to be more homebodies partly due to Covid but also services like Drizzly, Doordash, Uber Eats and Instacart make it easy to never have to leave the house.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by Quixote

And most of those neighborhoods are, by density and built form, friendlier to cars.

What? SF is very dense and walkable, with at least one commercial strip in almost every neighborhood (and corner stores and whatnot scattered around) and the vast majority of the street grid was also laid out before cars were a thing. Muni has great coverage too (mostly buses nowadays, not trains, though the entire city used to be covered in an extensive streetcar network), which is why so many people use it.

Downtown hasn't recovered yet, which explains most of the drop in ridership on muni metro, where all lines converge on downtown.

[Segun]

^ Commercial streets. The veins of urbanity. 3-D urbanity: Large areas with many different walkable, pedestrian-friendly commercial streets, intersecting, interacting. This is where LA is different. In my opinion, downtown LA comes the closest to having this feel within the metro.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Klippenstein

I don't think it's one or the other. Having more downtown residents is a plus. So is having more street life from people walking or biking to work as you mentioned. I would think as a decentralized metro area it would be in LA's favor to have people working closer to where they live. That's all I've been saying. This is one advantage that I'd love to see LA take advantage of. I'd be curious to see LA's average commute time/distance as well as how work from home changed these numbers.

I don't have data for distances or how working from home has changed the citywide statistics, but the St. Louis Fed put the mean commute time in Los Angeles County at 30.9 minutes--just a hair shorter than the mean commute times in New York City (31.8 minutes) and San Francisco (also 31.8 minutes).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Quixote

So then why is Muni Metro's ridership only 47% (Q3 2023 vs. Q3 2019) of what it was pre-pandemic? Unlike BART, Muni Metro is an urban rail system with lots of stops serving city neighborhoods. And most of those neighborhoods are, by density and built form, friendlier to cars. Muni bus, the main mode of public transport, is at 71% compared to the same period.

You can see where I'm going with this.

So, again, how are people getting around the city?

I think ridership is down because so many people no longer commuter to work.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by pj3000

LA's urban environment is certainly distinct from the cities you mention.

Few cities in the nation...& world too....combine an urban scene with the type of housing patterns not found in older cities of the US & Europe...cities like Tokyo too...

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^ however, as true of most US cities, there's a lot about LA that, unlike cities in Europe, was built when money was in short supply & land use standards weren't too high.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by Quixote

So then why is Muni Metro's ridership only 47% (Q3 2023 vs. Q3 2019) of what it was pre-pandemic? Unlike BART, Muni Metro is an urban rail system with lots of stops serving city neighborhoods. And most of those neighborhoods are, by density and built form, friendlier to cars. Muni bus, the main mode of public transport, is at 71% compared to the same period.

Work from home.

A lot of the routes going downtown have lower ridership. But the ones going across town connecting neighborhood to neighborhood have similar pre-pandemic ridership if not exceeding.

Originally Posted by Quixote

You can see where I'm going with this.

So, again, how are people getting around the city?

Walk, bike, scooter.

And no, I don’t think anyone here can see where you’re going with this.

What’s your actual point?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Quixote

If the general consensus is that you don't "need" a car in the five cities (Chicago, Philly, SF, Boston, DC), then why do the vast majority of households in those cities (people who actually live there) own cars?

Because most US households tend to be wealthy enough to own a car, and since there's only one US city that makes car ownership egregiously onerous at scale (NYC), most middle class and up households in said cities will opt to own a car (because they can).

I didn't "need" to own a car as a bachelor in Chicago for 12 years, so I didn't.

Now that I'm part of a family household with two incomes and two young children, yeah, we own a car, just like the vast majority of middle class Chicago households in our situation.

But Chicago still allows us to very easily live "car-lite", so we only have one car for our household, and it spends plenty of days collecting dust (or more recently, snow) on the parking pad in back of our building, which is nice......

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I think ridership is down because so many people no longer commuter to work.

Exactly. I go into the office 3 days a week but a lot of employers downtown like Salesforce are still MIA all week. It is not as if people are driving more they just are not going into the office as much.

[eschaton]

We primarily engage with urban neighborhoods on foot, not by transit.

Transit (whether mass transit or via car) is needed for neighborhood-to-neighborhood travel. If your neighborhood is suitably walkable, you'll only have to leave it on a daily basis for work or - for certain people - to go to a university or something similar.

Other travel needs are rarer. For example, the average person may order food or dine out a few times per week, but if there are sufficient restaurants in a 15-minute walkshed, they aren't going to have to travel outside the neighborhood on a weekly basis. The same goes for shopping: if they have access to local walkable grocery and convenience options, they're going to need to travel outside the neighborhood less than once per week on shopping trips.

There will likely be some trips that will need to go outside the neighborhood, like certain doctor's appointments, access to certain governmental services like the DMV, maybe going to the movies or a Home Depot-type place, etc. But these happen rare enough that it's not going to be a regular part of most people's weeks.

Speaking personally as someone who has lived a "car light" life for almost 20 years now, my general rule is that if I can handle shopping errands as part of my regular work commute via transit/and or bike, I do so. So I'll stop in target if I'm taking the bus home, because I literally stop by two Targets just by walking. Or when it's biking season, I'll stop going home from work and pick up a six-pack at the mix-and-match place. But if it's the weekend, and I'm starting from home, I'm likely gonna be driving unless the weather is nice and it's somewhere I can walk to in 15-30 minutes. I'd never just jump on the bus on the weekend just to go somewhere and do an errand, because the combination of infrequent schedules and cheap/easy parking in most areas means it's not really saving anything.

If one of our two cars dies any time soon, we could 100% go back down to being a one-car household and only be inconvenienced for maybe 1-2 hours a week though.

[Segun]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Because most US households tend to be wealthy enough to own a car, and since there's only one US city that makes car ownership egregiously onerous at scale (NYC), most middle class and up households in said cities will opt to own a car (because they can).

I didn't "need" to own a car as a bachelor in Chicago for 12 years, so I didn't.

Now that I'm part of a family household with two incomes and two young children, yeah, we own a car, just like the vast majority of middle class Chicago households in our situation.

But Chicago still allows us to very easily live "car-lite", so we only have one car for our household, and it spends plenty of days collecting dust (or more recently, snow) on the parking pad in back of our building, which is nice......

Yessir. For large purchases, a car is the best option (unless you pay for delivery). For long haul trips, a car is a likely option (but not necessarily). Chicago has enough of a large, densely populated area that facilitates small-scale shopping, running errands, going out at night, taking walks, attending classes, patronizing new businesses, going out to restaurants, attending events, & working jobs. Within this area, public transit is the best and most convenient option.

[iheartthed]

I think number of cars per adult in a city gives a better idea of car dependency than just cars per household. Using the number of vehicles per household (2016) from this Governing article, I was able to calculate the cars per adult using 2020 census data for the largest cities.

Vehicles per adult by city (2020 census)

1. New York, New York - 0.30
2. Boston, Massachusetts - 0.46
3. Washington, District of Columbia - 0.48
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 0.55
5. Baltimore, Maryland - 0.57
6. Chicago, Illinois - 0.58
7. Detroit, Michigan - 0.60
8. San Francisco, California - 0.61
9. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 0.62
10. Miami, Florida - 0.63
11. New Orleans, Louisiana - 0.64
12. Cleveland, Ohio - 0.68
13. Oakland, California - 0.69
14. Atlanta, Georgia - 0.70
15. Minneapolis, Minnesota - 0.72
16. Milwaukee, Wisconsin - 0.72
17. Los Angeles, California - 0.72
18. St. Louis, Missouri - 0.74
19. Cincinnati, Ohio - 0.75
20. Orlando, Florida - 0.75
21. Seattle, Washington - 0.76
22. Tampa, Florida - 0.77
23. Portland, Oregon - 0.78
24. Sacramento, California - 0.79
25. Las Vegas, Nevada - 0.79
26. Houston, Texas - 0.81
27. San Diego, California - 0.83
28. Phoenix, Arizona - 0.83
29. Columbus, Ohio - 0.84
30. Dallas, Texas - 0.84
31. San Antonio, Texas - 0.85
32. Indianapolis, Indiana - 0.87
33. Raleigh, North Carolina - 0.88
34. Austin, Texas - 0.89
35. Charlotte, North Carolina - 0.90
36. Denver, Colorado - 0.90

A higher ratio means more cars per adults in the city. A city that is more car dependent will naturally have more cars per adult.

The ranking lines up pretty closely with my understanding of prewar vs Sun Belt cities. The top five cities are the five major cities of the BosWash Corridor. All of the top 10 were major prewar cities. The cities with a higher ratio mostly grew in the postwar era.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I think number of cars per adult in a city gives a better idea of car dependency than just cars per household. Using the number of vehicles per household (2016) from this Governing article, I was able to calculate the cars per adult using 2020 census data for the largest cities.

Vehicles per adult by city (2020 census)

1. New York, New York - 0.30
2. Boston, Massachusetts - 0.46
3. Washington, District of Columbia - 0.48
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 0.55
5. Baltimore, Maryland - 0.57
6. Chicago, Illinois - 0.58
7. Detroit, Michigan - 0.60
8. San Francisco, California - 0.61
9. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 0.62
10. Miami, Florida - 0.63
11. New Orleans, Louisiana - 0.64
12. Cleveland, Ohio - 0.68
13. Oakland, California - 0.69
14. Atlanta, Georgia - 0.70
15. Minneapolis, Minnesota - 0.72
16. Milwaukee, Wisconsin - 0.72
17. Los Angeles, California - 0.72
18. St. Louis, Missouri - 0.74
19. Cincinnati, Ohio - 0.75
20. Orlando, Florida - 0.75
21. Seattle, Washington - 0.76
22. Tampa, Florida - 0.77
23. Portland, Oregon - 0.78
24. Sacramento, California - 0.79
25. Las Vegas, Nevada - 0.79
26. Houston, Texas - 0.81
27. San Diego, California - 0.83
28. Phoenix, Arizona - 0.83
29. Columbus, Ohio - 0.84
30. Dallas, Texas - 0.84
31. San Antonio, Texas - 0.85
32. Indianapolis, Indiana - 0.87
33. Raleigh, North Carolina - 0.88
34. Austin, Texas - 0.89
35. Charlotte, North Carolina - 0.90
36. Denver, Colorado - 0.90

A higher ratio means more cars per adults in the city. A city that is more car dependent will naturally have more cars per adult.

The ranking lines up pretty closely with my understanding of prewar vs Sun Belt cities. The top five cities are the five major cities of the BosWash Corridor. All of the top 10 were major prewar cities. The cities with a higher ratio mostly grew in the postwar era.

The number of cars is also a measurement of the walkability/accessibility of the suburbs and nearby cities and attractions (can you easily visit them and get around them by public transit or not?), and to some extent is also a measurement of wealth. Detroit and Baltimore for example, are not less car-dependent than SF despite having fewer cars per capita (they have much lower transit usage and density), but they do have higher poverty rates. And SF for example, also has lots of nearby wilderness/parkland areas with poor transit access (and car-dependent suburbs as well, like everyhere else), with highly-car-dependent cities and more rural/wilderness areas beyond the metro area, which is unlike the Bos-Wash corridor for example, which is lined with large, dense, walkable cities with easy transit access to each other.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by tech12

The number of cars is also a measurement of the walkability/accessibility of the suburbs and nearby cities and attractions (can you easily visit them by public transit or not?), and to some extent is also a measurement of wealth. Detroit and Baltimore for example, are not less car-dependent than SF despite having fewer cars per capita (they have much lower transit usage and density), but they do have higher poverty rates. And SF for example, also has lots of nearby wilderness/parkland areas with poor transit access (and car-dependent suburbs as well, like everyhere else), with highly-car-dependent cities and more rural/wilderness areas beyond the metro area, which is unlike the Bos-Wash corridor for example, which is lined with large, dense, walkable cities with easy transit access to each other.

I'm not sure that income and transit would dramatically change the ordering. Yes, it seems intuitive that Detroit has low car ownership because it has high amounts of poverty, but I doubt Detroit would have dramatically higher car ownership rates even with higher income residents. I think it's more likely that Detroit would just have more walkable amenities catering to higher income people and better transit.

And SF has a higher adult to car ratio than other dense cities too, not just Detroit and Baltimore. It is higher than Boston, DC, and Chicago, despite SF being more densely populated than all of those cities.

[Segun]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

And SF has a higher adult to car ratio than other dense cities too, not just Detroit and Baltimore. It is higher than Boston, DC, and Chicago, despite SF being more densely populated than all of those cities.

Perhaps the omnipresent garages found at the bottom of buildings plays a factor in this.

[Segun]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Vehicles per adult by city (2020 census)

1. New York, New York - 0.30
2. Boston, Massachusetts - 0.46
3. Washington, District of Columbia - 0.48
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 0.55
5. Baltimore, Maryland - 0.57
6. Chicago, Illinois - 0.58
7. Detroit, Michigan - 0.60
8. San Francisco, California - 0.61
9. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 0.62
10. Miami, Florida - 0.63
11. New Orleans, Louisiana - 0.64
12. Cleveland, Ohio - 0.68
13. Oakland, California - 0.69
14. Atlanta, Georgia - 0.70
15. Minneapolis, Minnesota - 0.72
16. Milwaukee, Wisconsin - 0.72
17. Los Angeles, California - 0.72
18. St. Louis, Missouri - 0.74
19. Cincinnati, Ohio - 0.75
20. Orlando, Florida - 0.75

What's also interesting about this list is that (with the exception of Atlanta, Orlando and Miami), all these cities were large and urban before WW2.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

And SF has a higher adult to car ratio than other dense cities too, not just Detroit and Baltimore. It is higher than Boston, DC, and Chicago, despite SF being more densely populated than all of those cities.

SF also has more outdoor lifestyle orientation than those other cities (close enough to drive to but too far to walk/take transit to).

Take a drive North on 1 from SF to Bodega Bay or South to Santa Cruz and you'll see why.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by tech12

What? SF is very dense and walkable, with at least one commercial strip in almost every neighborhood (and corner stores and whatnot scattered around) and the vast majority of the street grid was also laid out before cars were a thing. Muni has great coverage too (mostly buses nowadays, not trains, though the entire city used to be covered in an extensive streetcar network), which is why so many people use it.

Downtown hasn't recovered yet, which explains most of the drop in ridership on muni metro, where all lines converge on downtown.

When I said "friendlier to cars," I was referring to neighborhoods like the Sunset District, Ingleside, Bayview, even Noe Valley, as compared to Chinatown, Nob Hill, North Beach, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill. Places where the roads tend to be wider, and there are blocks of single-family homes rather than apartment buildings.

Car friendly doesn't necessarily mean pedestrian unfriendly, but being car unfriendly generally lends itself to pedestrian friendliness. SF is car unfriendly enough to make pedestrianism viable, but not to the degree where having a car is both unnecessary and a total liability like it is in, say, Paris. Nobody is saying that SF has Parisian-level urbanism — I know. I'm just using an extreme example to make my point.

Going back to what I said earlier, U.S. cities are structured (i.e. blocks and blocks of rowhouses anchored by a main retail strip) in ways that allow cars to be part of the equation. Urbanism works best with mid-rise typologies (Paris, Barcelona, Madrid) that achieve high enough densities to demand/support more amenities and robust transit infrastructure while also keeping to a human scale.