PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC TRANSIT : A Powerful Tool to Shape Growth : We must coordinate transportation planning, because it impacts everything else in Southern California.

In the next 30 years, $184 billion will be spent on transportation improvements in Los Angeles County, linked to additional funds of up to $30 billion in adjacent counties--an average regional expenditure of $7 billion a year. If the attention and editorial interest that will be concentrated on the race for Los Angeles mayor were directed at the soon-to-be-merged Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and the Rapid Transit District, the potential for transforming and improving Southern California’s future might be realized.

Students of city-building know that transportation is the most powerful tool available to shape growth, and that the impact of transportation on land use, housing, the environment and economic development are far more consequential than relieving traffic congestion alone. Yet the missions of our transportation agencies are so narrowly public-transit-driven that their de facto role in regional redevelopment is not given adequate attention.

By virtue of the billions of dollars these agencies feed into the local economy each year, they could also be prime movers in the rebuilding of our infrastructure for the next century, by providing accessible rights of way for sewers, utilities and fiber optic cables. Through the promotion of technology transfer from aerospace to a transportation and consumer electronics industry, the new Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority could help revive the regional economy. Money spent on transit creates jobs and thus could help educate the work force so that we need not employ managers and skilled workers from outside the region. Schools could be located on free land over parking lots acquired next to transit stops, which could increase ridership by students during slack hours.

The point is not that many of these ideas have not surfaced within the agency and its board (commendably, they have), and not that some are not being explored or implemented, but that the merged transportation authority was conceived as a single-purpose bureaucracy, with a single-purpose culture de-emphasizing integrated policy planning. The planning impacts of transit expenditures are still considered secondary. Because the legislation establishing our single-purpose bureaucracies (the South Coast Air Quality Management District is another example) did not address the relationship between transit, land use, economic development, social policy and the environment, there is little policy coordination, within or between agencies.

We live in a region whose dispersed pattern of settlement and relatively low densities create problems for transit planners, especially those who are committed to fixed rail. Some of these problems center on the public’s resistance to changing modes of travel, such as from car to train, and the associated problems of parking. More significant, however, is the fact that the vast majority of our citizens will continue to rely on automobile travel because it is the most convenient way to use a regional transportation system designed to service the way we live and work. The huge sums to be spent improving transit must be understood as relatively small, though significant, interventions when compared to the overwhelming persistence of automobile commuting.

What should follow from this analysis is a recognition that since the region will operate much as before even with welcome new transit facilities, we need to think more about how these expenditures may address transit-related community needs. It is crucial that the definition of these needs clarifies the established relationships between transportation systems and land use, housing, economic development, the environment and social policy.

Properly understood, the relationships might promote higher-density mixed use development around certain stations, which could improve ridership and contribute to housing, business and educational and cultural enrichment. Viewed this way, we can see that the new authority could have as substantial a role in addressing these issues as it does in addressing transit directly, and further, that transit-driven policies may need to be redesigned.

It is now clear that we must scrutinize both the appointments to the board of the new authority and its management structure with the same attention we give to the qualifications of our mayor. We must demand that our media inform us on the issues and that our civic organizations elevate the debate and activate informed constituencies. We must also insist on coordinating policy among our major single-purpose authorities. If necessary, we must find the legislative means to redefine a portion of their mission to promote coordinated planning. The activities of the AQMD will directly affect land use, while the transportation authority will have similar impacts, whether by design or through the unintended consequences of narrow policy.

In response to the federal Surface Transportation and Clean Air acts, the Southern California Assn. of Governments has been designated to provide the framework to bring transportation and air quality planning into constructive engagement. Is this happening? How quickly? To what extent are land use, economic and social impacts being considered?

Our mayor debates with the City Council each year on expenditures of public money that are both trivial by comparison with our annual payments for transportation and less potent in their impact on our future. The main game affecting the future of Southern California is being played out by our well-funded public authorities. But their expenditures can lead to cross-planning, the proliferation of redundant regulatory constraints, interagency turf battles resulting in friction and program delays and waste of public money.

In a severely constrained economy, with increasing social problems threatening our economic base, we must find the political will to target our resources through coordinated public policy and planning among these authorities, and reduce the fragmentation that is short-changing our future.