User-Friendly Mass Transit

As much as Southern Californians love to complain about traffic, it’s unlikely that hordes of us will be abandoning our cars in favor of public transportation any time soon. But if anything is going to coax us out of our cars, it’s going to be public transit hubs like the one just completed in Sylmar.

The first phase of the Sylmar / San Fernando Intermodal Transit Hub, a Metrolink station, opened in 1994. Since then, the hub has gotten better and better. Services now include a child-care center, bike lockers and racks and transportation services for the handicapped.

The final phase added a bus transit layover area with spaces for 11 buses and a passenger boarding area. Commuters immediately praised this latest addition for making it easier to find the buses they need.

Transportation planners have learned the hard way that just laying tracks or establishing a bus route isn’t enough to attract riders. Public transportation has to be able to compete with the automobile in convenience and speed. That means connections between rail transit and buses must be seamless, without the inconvenience of a missed connection and a long wait.

And they’ve learned that there’s more to a transportation hub than buses and trains. One of the reasons cars are more convenient than buses is because they allow commuters to make stops and detours, drop off dry-cleaning and pick up bread and run all the other errands they must cram into already overly busy days. That’s why a child-care center, like the one at the Sylmar hub as well as at the Chatsworth Metrolink station, cuts down those errands by one. Now they only need dry cleaners and grocery stores nearby.

Smart developers have already taken advantage of the Sylmar hub to locate a housing development called Village Green, which uses energy-efficient design and environmentally friendly materials in addition to making it easy for residents to spare the air by taking public transportation.

Such commuter-friendly design should be encouraged around the North Hollywood Metro Red Line station, scheduled to open in June, with a cross-Valley link to another transit hub planned for Warner Center.

No, this sprawling, low-rise city will likely never end its love affair with the automobile. But commuters who treasure their freedom to choose to drive need to honor others’ choices not to. People who are poor, elderly, handicapped, who are concerned about air pollution or who just don’t want to sit in traffic deserve a choice too. And each person who chooses to use public transportation eases the congestion already gridlocking San Fernando Valley streets and freeways. Such congestion is guaranteed to get worse as hundreds of thousands of new residents move into the area over the next 20 years--unless we plan alternative ways for them to move around.

If anything is going to coax us out of our cars, it’s going to be public transit hubs like the one just completed in Sylmar.