Mass Transit Favored : Necessity, Not Love, Fuels Car Addiction

In mythic California, motorist and car are seen as all but inseparable. According to this fable, the car in the Golden State is far more than a mere status indicator or an essential tool of mobility along the region’s concrete byways.

In California, the car is supposed to be an extension of one’s identity, something to be revered, even loved. And only with great trauma would stereotypical Southern Californians trade their trusty conveyances for mass transit, the fable-makers say.

Alas for those who cherish that popular image, car-crazed California no longer exists, at least not to the degree that the myth-makers would have it.

A growing number of urban planners and others who have looked closely at the car’s role here say there are common-sense reasons why Californians drive as much as they do.

“The car-loving Californian is a myth that has been spun by the press, mostly the Eastern press,” said urban planner James Ortner, who represents the Automobile Club of Southern California on planning issues.

“It’s just another of the cliches about California that are repeated endlessly but never examined,” said Peter Gordon, a professor of urban planning at USC.

In examining the myth, social scientists have found that in the past three decades, the same high-driving pattern has emerged in other areas of the country that have far-flung suburbs.

In fact, experts noted, Los Angeles, which has always been viewed as the heart and soul of car-loving California, lags behind some other American cities in miles driven daily per person.

And a recent Los Angeles Times Poll of San Fernando Valley residents buttresses the emerging consensus among urban planners that Californians drive out of necessity, not out of some peculiar love for their cars.

In the poll of 616 adults, 36% said that if a subway or light-rail line were available, they would ride it often, while another 39% said they would use it once in a while. Only 22% said they would not use a rail line.

By a margin of 48% to 42%, those interviewed said they support raising the sales tax another half-percent, to 7%, to pay for more mass transit projects.

“These people seem to be saying that they drive because they have to, not because they want to,” Times Poll Director I.A. Lewis said. “That certainly seems to challenge the conventional wisdom.”

Actually, many transportation planners believe that Los Angeles County voters signaled 8 years ago that they were less than enthralled with their cars when they approved by a vote of 54% to 46% the first half-percent increase in the sales tax for public transportation.

In the 5th Supervisorial District, which includes most of the Valley plus outlying areas, voting on the 1980 tax increase finished in a virtual dead heat.

By favoring a tax increase affecting everyone, voters gave a strong indication that they were not wedded to automobile travel and wanted an alternative, planners said.

If not wedded to their cars, why do Angelenos spend so much time in them?

“Given the region’s sprawl, with origins and destinations all over the place and no realistic transit alternatives, it should be no surprise that people respond by driving a great deal,” USC’s Gordon said.

And the car “provides random access, connecting every point with every other point,” he said.

“Los Angeles was developed entirely in the car era,” said Stanley Hart, an engineer who represents the Sierra Club on transportation matters. “It is sprawling subdivisions with ample street parking and the two-car garage is the norm.”

He finds it “no surprise at all that the car became essential to getting around because the land-use pattern dictated that it become essential.”

When incentives such as widespread free parking and freeways are factored in, both said, the car has a commanding advantage over any form of public transportation.

Donald C. Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, studied the response of employees at Commuter Computer, a government-funded agency that matches commuters with others who want to car pool, when the agency stopped paying the $57 monthly parking cost for each of its employees 5 years ago.

Instead, Commuter Computer decided to give the $57 to its employees and let them choose what to do with it, Shoup said.

Those who continued driving to work could use the money to pay for their monthly parking. Those who car-pooled or rode a bus could keep the money.

In a report delivered in April at a UCLA symposium on “The Car and the City,” Shoup said that car-pooling increased from one-sixth of the 60-person work force to nearly three-fifths in a short time.

“Keep in mind these were people who knew all the arguments in favor of ride-sharing,” Shoup said. “But it took that economic push to get them into shared rides.”

Shoup, who also dismisses the notion of a special relationship between Californians and their cars, thinks that removing direct and indirect parking subsidies would have a similar effect.

“If you give people the choice between free parking or money, I feel many will keep the money and find alternative ways of getting to and from work,” he said.

But without that push, people are “responding quite rationally to the incentives to drive their own cars.”

The Sierra Club’s Hart has taken the concept of hidden incentives for driving much further than Shoup or other planners who participated in the UCLA symposium.

Using the Pasadena city budget as a model, Hart has added up the value of free parking, free roads, the costs of delivering police and fire services to motorists, the cost of street cleaning and maintenance and street lighting--and concluded that each car is subsidized at the rate of $2,500 a year.

To cover that cost, the present gasoline tax of 18 cents a gallon would have to be raised to $4 a gallon, said Hart, who admits to maintaining four cars at his Altadena house because “there aren’t any alternatives in Los Angeles.”

The property tax bridges the gap between what motorists pay in gas taxes, license fees and fines for speeding and other infractions, and what it costs society for all motoring-related services, Hart said.

“Of course, quite often the property taxpayer is the same person as the driver, but many people do not drive, and they are heavily subsidizing those of us who do.”

Further, if motorists bore the full cost of providing these services, Hart said, “public transportation would suddenly begin to look like the bargain it is.”

Hart contends that America’s automotive fixation sops up one-fourth of the gross national product and drags the economy down.

That gives Japan, which has less than one-third the cars per-capita as the United States, a significant edge, Hart said.

“We can no longer compete with more efficient societies such as Japan that don’t have the automobile dragging them down,” he said.

WHO DRIVES THE MOST?

Average Daily Miles Driven per Person Los Angeles: 17.4 Dallas: 24.7 Minneapolis: 18.2 San Diego: 18.1 San Francisco: 16.5 Denver: 16.4 Chicago: 14.5 New York City: 5.9 Source: Southern California Assn. of Governments