Transportation technology doesn’t change very often. If you live in a massive sprawling city like I do you’re pretty much stuck with the same kinds of options we’ve had since the middle of the century. Buses, Trams, Trains. If you’re lucky you get conveniently disguised death traps we call bicycle lanes. The argument can be made that we’ve been stuck with these because they work for a majority of people and the development of new transportation technologies is expensive, time consuming, and might have the unintended effect of making poor people’s lives a little easier to live. Buses make sense because they can carry a lot of people short distances and their routes can be tailored quickly for adjustments. But they’re inconvenient. Trains are perceived as rolling homeless shelters that still prove to be problematic and dangerous for some riders. And in most large urban areas, trams are non-existent.
We have to look at what we want urban transportation to do. Do we merely want to reduce the number of cars on the road? Do we want to decrease the cost of living? Connect communities? Provide economic opportunity for depressed areas? Continue the hell of a knife fight we’re having with climate change? The answer is all of these things for some people, most of these for others. In a city like mine, the answer first and foremost will always be convenience. We want public transportation to increase the convenience utility of travel. Probably not much else.
Enter the LA ART (Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit), our possible future of travel. I’m an all solutions kind of person. I believe that in order for us to face this future we’ve had designed for us we’ll most likely need every solution we can get our hands on. I do not however fully trust that this is something we can just engineer our way out of (I’m open to persuasion). The ART is a gondola. Familiar to people who go to mountains to do snow things. Completely unfamiliar to anyone born and raised in a place that has a vaguely Spanish name. As with many things, it’s a test. If the problem is getting widespread adoption as a traffic solution for the future, why not try it out in a heavily trafficked but completely non-mandatory location? Get people from Chinatown to Dodger Stadium. Easy.
Old people won’t ride it because it’s scary. Young people one hundred percent will because parking at Dodger Stadium is a nightmare and Angelenos will slap their own mother if it means avoiding traffic. Many people might quickly learn they have no fear of riding a steel toaster over an extremely busy freeway suspended by a thin cable. I have no concerns on whether people will ride it. It won’t release emissions, decreases the number of cars on the road in a highly trafficked area (the 101, before and after games). The benefits are there. You just have to get to Union Station. Which people will most likely drive to.
It’s a cool plan and hopefully it catches on. As of this writing, the metro authority is holding public hearings explaining exactly what the heck it is and how it will somehow drive up the cost of rent. For more information on the LA ART check out metro.net/aerialrapidtransit.
Way Past Policy 