Measure R – the $40-billion initiative for transportation upgrades that passed in 2008 by a two-thirds majority in Los Angeles County – has been referenced by everyone who believes the same can happen here, including the Minister of Transportation Todd Stone. But if it failed, there would be another Los Angeles story to tell.
Failure would mark an historic turning point for this region just as it was in Los Angeles in 1948.
Never heard of that? Probably most Los Angelenos haven’t either. But here’s what happened, according to Drew Reed in The Gobal Urbanist:
In 1948, voters had one more chance to save the rail system. In the 20 years that had passed, the Pacific Electric languished. While still boasting considerable ridership, it was under fire from city officials, the Los Angeles Times, and citizens who protested the poorly maintained “rat coaches” still in service.
More importantly, the critical funding received by rail companies from their real estate concessions was drying up due to the depletion of open land, and in addition, city regulations required them to pay for the maintenance of all streets they used, even the parts used exclusively by cars. This put them in financial jeopardy, with the only hope for long-term survival being an increased stake in operations by the city government.
Meanwhile, car-centric plans continued to march forward. …
To maintain the city’s rail system, a plan was conceived that would create a network of light rail lines; as a sign of the times, this network was connected with highways. But the plan was voted down, and the stage was set for the death of the red car.
Vancouver is obviously not going to lose its rail transit system. Indeed, we’re currently expanding it. No, the loss is not in the physical infrastructure as it was in L.A. It is in the consequences for our ability to function as a region, as a community, as a society that values public goods and places – and is prepared to fund them.
Just as it was in Los Angeles:
The degradation and removal of the urban train mass transit network in Los Angeles was also crucial in setting off a long drawn-out chain reaction seen later in Chavez Ravine, homeowner feuding, and ultimately LA’s historic low point in the early 1990s.
This is because eliminating well used public transit, along with the rejection of other public space improvements such as Frederic Law Olmsted’s comprehensive park plan in the 1930s, negated citizens’ concern for the wellbeing of other residents of the city, narrowing their world view to a radius of a couple of blocks around their homes. If LA is often seen as a patchwork quilt of “88 cities in search of a center”, that quilt was nonetheless held together by the thread of an imperfect, privately owned, yet functional transit system.
Voters, without realising it, destroyed this system and created a new one in which future generations of voters would be propelled by their urban environment to fight to the teeth for superficial reforms such as the Valley boundary redrawing, while ignoring reforms that really matter. This is the real tragedy of Los Angeles.
That’s not the end of the story.
But the upside to local democracy is that the enduring legacy of changes to the urban structure can occasionally help voters to learn from the mistakes of previous generations. In Los Angeles, the post-riots catharsis combined with rising gas prices led to a shift in people’s outlook on the city.
Slowly but surely, the value of public space and public transportation began to be recognised. Park programmes were implemented and CicLAvia, a successful copy of the “Ciclovia” bicycle-based street closure event, said to be feasible only in cities like San Francisco and New York, drew 100,000 participants on its first day. In 2008, nearly 70% of voters approved a tax increase to overhaul the regional transportation system, vastly expanding the city’s fledgling new rail network that had been started a decade earlier.
And there’s the irony: just after Vancouver would be voting down its future, Los Angeles would be celebrating the opening of new transit lines to shape its growth – and wondering, What the hell was Vancouver thinking?
