New Valley Transit Plan Long Overdue : ‘Hub and spoke’ routes would eliminate many annoyances for commuters

“Like the rest of Los Angeles, the ( San Fernando ) Valley is multicentric. Warner Center, Universal City, Chatsworth and Van Nuys (and many other areas, for that matter) all provide large numbers of jobs and are hubs of activity within the larger region. And yet Greater L.A.’s transportation system is quickly evolving into a monocentric network, with the central hub located at Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles. This contradiction between the spatial form of the metropolitan region and the emerging transportation network is troubling, because it reveals the incompatibility of the existing urban form and the transportation infrastructure that is supposed to serve the people living and working within the region.”

--Beyond Suburbia: The Changing Face of the San Fernando Valley. UCLA, 1993.

*

If you’ve ridden a bus lately in the San Fernando Valley, you probably know exactly what that rather stilted passage means: Once you get off of that bus, you’re likely to be nowhere near your eventual destination. In fact, you’re probably at least one long transfer away, and perhaps more. Even then, you may have to hoof it for a block or two. That’s the basic problem with the current “grid-based” bus transportation system, which requires too many transfers. With such annoyances, who can blame so many of us for relying on automobiles, or for aspiring to have one as soon as financially possible?

The solution is the so-called “hub and spoke” system, and what Beyond Suburbia referred to as a timed-transfer system that directly links buses to other forms of public transportation, such as Metrolink and Metro Rail. Such a system would also synchronize arrival and departure times among buses, trains and subway cars.

Quite simply, the hubs are the places that most of us are trying to get to in the first place. The spokes are more direct bus routes that (Gadzooks!) might not even require a transfer. Well, in the glacial world of Los Angeles mass transit (as in speed, or lack thereof), we may be finally closing in on our destination.

By mid-1995, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will revamp two dozen bus lines that serve 5,200 riders from Warner Center in Woodland Hills in the west to the foothill communities in the Valley’s northeastern corner. These moves must be carefully studied. Considerable care must be taken to ensure that the changes serve those who depend upon the buses to get to work and to conduct their personal affairs. We hope that similar measures can be taken soon afterward for the other Valley bus lines that serve--in total--about 150,000 people on a daily basis. An overhaul that better serves the Valley’s bus riders is long overdue.