I’ve spent time in three cities with excellent public transportation (relative to LA): New York City, Tokyo, and Osaka. I was a vacationer so maybe it’s different for residents but being able to access pretty much any part of the cities at almost any time of the day without worrying about parking or gas was like a superpower. Meanwhile when I lived in Pasadena, taking the train to Santa Monica was only slightly faster than biking there.
Toronto is also quite walkable and has good transit!
The only way I see that being possible is if you tore down the entire city and rebuilt it from the ground up.
Good. I look forward to a future where people who fought transit have their lives improved by it, even if they’re too small minded and foolish to recognize it.
I can offer a preview of what the future holds: People-oriented areas of the city that are beautiful, interesting, safe, and pleasant to spend time in. The carbrained people will want to go there, but they will carp endlessly about the lack of parking. The connection between lack of parking and the desirable destination won’t occur to them.
There’s that political cartoon that’s like two people on bikes through a beautiful downtown, and one says to the other “If anyone tried to add bike lanes like this back home, I’d murder them”
Every city needs to be doing this.
Affordable gasoline is a thing of the past. Affordable cars are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Soon, the $7 minimum wage will be older than the newest generation of voters, and no one in Congress is honestly considering passing a living wage.
Bikes, e-scooters, walking, and public trans are going to be essential in the coming years.
We will witness the rise of the Taxi Cash Conduit. They do not exist as a human being - simply a process by which oil is burnt by the demands of capitalism.
The oil is burned to extract more oil, which is then used in the Uber driver’s car. The driver pays exactly as much in gas costs as he charges for rides. He does not eat, and he sleeps in that car. When it breaks, he breaks. The passenger would just walk, but the city was built to specifically punish non-riders.
The uber driver and passenger will each get one free ride a year, for the specific purpose of driving to city hall to vote against a bike lane.
I couldn’t agree more
They said Mamdani wasn’t experienced enough either. Experience doesn’t matter when you’ve done nothing noteworthy with all your supposed “experience”.
You know, like a city.
To be fair, the US has only a handful of cities, such as New York. Mostly, it has urban agglomerations, like Los Angeles.
Much has been written about the generational gap in LA’s mayoral race. Bass, 73, tried to paint Raman, 45, as inexperienced; “not ready for prime time.” When Raman takes office — and statistically, it’s looking more like a blowout — LA will have a mayor, city attorney, and city controller with an average age of 38. Younger voters, who turned out in big numbers this election, care deeply about transit and were overwhelmingly supporting Raman. But the gap is about more than just age and transportation habits. The complacency of car dependency is what’s propping up the establishment Democrats; it’s the same reason corporationsand tech companies are spending big on them to keep us from the city that we deserve.
It’s such a glaring flaw when you visit LA. You’d think a city that fixated on its image would improve transit just to save face if nothing else. Car culture is a beast.
