San Francisco Trolley Bus powered by overhead catenary lines. Photo courtesy of By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64552498
I am not a fan of Battery Electric Buses (BEBs) due to their expense and operational difficulties. We need to stop burning stuff that produces greenhouse gases, but we also need to provide the most bus service for the most riders possible.
Buy American mandates for US transit agencies have them in a bind with too few American BEB manufacturers, all of them in and and out of bankruptcy, and difficulty getting repair parts. In fact, many BEBs have been mothballed despite billions spent on them and specialized charging infrastructure.
I had always wondered why we didn't utilize the century-old technology of electric trolley buses powered by electricity from overhead lines (called Catenary). In California, only SF Muni still operates them in 2025.
What is stopping other California agencies like LA Metro from using Trolley Buses? They are cheaper to buy, maintain, power and store. You need fewer of them compared to BEBs, which need to be taken out of service during the day to recharge. Trolley Buses can even be driven off-catenary using small (compared to fully BEBs) on-board batteries.
CEQA requires that any project needs to be evaluated against the status quo. Criteria include Visual Impact Assessment. Since a landscape with overhead wires always scores lower than the same landscape without overhead wires, you can't install them anywhere that doesn't have them. San Francisco still had overhead wires, so they were able to maintain and upgrade their overhead wires without running into CEQA veto points. Los Angeles once had catenary, but had already removed them by 1970s.
There was no going back--until AB 2503 passed in 2024. Now, electric wires/catenary for buses and trains can be built without running the gauntlet of decades (yes, decades) of CEQA lawsuits.
In May, 2025, we visited Berlin and took articulated electric buses, some that can run hybrid on and off catenary wires. They ran in dedicated bus lanes, often next to wide bike lanes. It was so easy to get around by bus in Berlin. We loved it.
Look at the size of that bike lane!
We rode both German and Polish-built buses, which run on different lines.
Narrower bike lane this time, but that's because road width is tight on a bridge.
I was so impressed with the Solaris hybrid articulated buses. They can run up to 1/3 of the time off-catenary, can recharge while on catenary, and they never need charging during the day. They can move up to 100 people all day without interruptions of service. This means fewer buses serve more people. So cost-effective and clean.
Oh, the 100-passenger bus needs only a 700 kWh battery. Compare that to the Tesla Y's 60-80 kWh to move 1 person around. Saves on material costs, too.
Anyway, they accelerate/deaccelerate smoothly with just a quiet whirr. We really enjoyed sightseeing from inside the buses. I also rode my first double decker bus!
More on Berlin and our April-May Germany trip later. I still need to post pictures of our bicycle cruise on the Mekong Delta in February. My husband jokes that we save carbon by not driving (in Los Angeles!) and avoiding beef, and then blow our carbon budget on international travel. Fair enough.
I wrote an LA Voter newsletter (for members of League of Women Voters in Los Angeles County) article about Motonormativity and the way that local, state and federal governments reinforce it with their laws and actions.
Past WIG speaker and public health researcher Isabella Chu, MPH, also spoke about the hidden public health hazard that is the top killer of US children. Indirectly, through air pollution and involuntary inactivity by making active transportation (walking, cycling) dangerous, cars may be the top killer of people in the developed world of all ages.
Transportation, mainly private automobile use, is the largest contributor of CO2 emissions in Los Angeles County and the largest source of PM2.5 pollution (except in the occasional years when particulates from wildfire smoke affects populated areas of LACO.)
Yet, all this is invisible to most people and especially law and policy makers. In California, it is legal to kill with a car as long as you were not intoxicated, were not speeding, and stayed at the scene of the death. This applies even if a driver kills a cyclist in a crosswalk.
ILO wrote a letter to Metro’s Board of Directors for omitting protected bike lanes on the Vermont Ave BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) project plans. The City of LA’s Mobility Plan 2035 (adopted in 2014) promised to address identified shortcomings by 2035 by implementing the plan as each section of the roadways had work done. The Mobility Plan showed Vermont Ave would receive both a protected bike lane and a bus priority lane.
Local actions are even more important as we can no longer count on the Feds to help us. Under the Reagan Administration, Federal transportation dollars were allocated in a rigid formula of 80% to highways and 20% to transit.
The Secretary of the Department of Transportation is Reality TV and Fox Business personality, Sean Duffy. He made headlines recently when he rode the NYC subway with NYC mayor Eric Adams and subsequently told Laura Ingraham on Fox News that "even big men don't want to ride the subway."
“Most transit trips include active transport (walking and/or cycling) links, and transit users tend to walk and bike more in total than motorists (Lachapelle et al. 2011). These modes have relatively high per-mile casualty rates, although this risk is largely offset by reduced risks to other travelers and improved public fitness and health, so per capita crashes tend to decline and overall health and longevity increase with more active travel in a community (Rojas-Rueda et al. 2011).”
Transit is so safe that a 1% increase in transit mode share would result in a 2.75% reduction in road deaths.
State lawmakers show similar characteristics of motonormativity. Until September 6, 2023, Californians could purchase EVs (electric cars) secure in the knowledge that they would receive guaranteed rebates of up to $7,500 for each EV, and that these would stack on top of Federal rebates of $7,500. The income cap was $200,000 for joint filers. California passed out over $1 Billion in EV rebates.
Contrast that with the California eBike incentive, which has an income cap of $61,320 for a family of 2, and which exhausted the entire $10 Million allocated to eBikes within minutes. eBikes received only 1% as much money as EVs, despite global research showing that dual-mode households drove 19% less than before they obtained an eBike.
“Transportation is a climate and feminist issue. CA DMV data shows that women will spend twice as many years aged out of driving as men. Yet, our cities have not built infrastructure for people who don’t drive.
…
Car dependency is not just ruinously expensive, but it’s destroying the planet, and preventing nondrivers from fully participating in society. Women, as primary caregivers, are paying the time tax of chauffeuring people around. Protected bike lanes are mobility lanes, suitable for children on bicycles and seniors on mobility scooters alike.
Local government decisions have kept us isolated and stressed.”
First off, I think it's important to state that I used the Torrance Transit 8 bus line as an example, but I do not want to pick on Torrance Transit in particular. The example is just indicative of transit declines and difficulties in our region overall.
-How have you seen the quality of Torrance buses declined in the last 5 years?
I wrote the post in 2022, when many people were working remotely from home. Those were the lowest years for transit service. In our area, transit service had declined for 15 years, and then fell off a cliff during Covid 2020. However, service is slowly being added back. We went from a high of 41 Torrance trips/weekday to 13-14, and we are back up to 24. I am cautiously optimistic that more service will be added as ridership returns and more bus drivers are hired.
-What areas have you noticed the most decline? (cleanliness, punctuality, bus frequency)
I notice the lack of bus frequency the most. Punctuality isn't a problem any more because the schedules are adjusted 2x/year for actual bus travel times. Buses report their real-time location and I can check how soon my bus is coming on my phone. Torrance Transit also provides a text number at each stop that sends a return text of when the next bus is arriving.
While knowing when the next bus is arriving is helpful, the bus is still stuck in traffic too much of the time. Dedicated bus lanes and bus signal priority would be most helpful. Bus stop consolidation (Torrance 8 and 13 stops can be as little as 700 feet apart), would also speed up buses.
-Can you share a time where you were heavily inconvenienced by an event you scheduled and your method of transportation was Torrance Transit (TT)?
I don't schedule my League of Women Voters of the Beach Cities meetings. But, the Torrance 13 schedule means I am either 20 minutes early or 10 minutes late for the 3pm meetings in Hermosa Beach. There are worse things in life than hanging out for 20 minutes with an ocean view. During the summer when it stays light later, I ride my eBike. Motorists hit so many cyclists at dusk and at night, I feel safer taking transit or driving in the winter.
My daughter chimed in that she was ghosted by 2 buses this month. She also got on the wrong bus one time and ended up at Torrance Transit Center instead. But those things can be fixed with a taxi or scab cab. She has the RideYellow (yellow cab coop) and Lyft apps on her phone and the charge goes to her parents' credit card. She uses it only in an emergency or when the bus goes awry.
Not every transit rider can afford a backup cab fare, and that is an issue that needs addressing. Metro sometimes reimburses riders for cab fare, but the amount doesn't cover the full cost of the cab fare.
-What do you believe TT could do to improve their public transportation throughout the city?
-Do you have any assumptions as to why TT has declined in quality over the years?
I have talked to TT staff and know why service has deteriorated. It's partly due to ridership declines and partly due to reduced schedules. Those are chicken and egg problems. In a poorer neighborhood, people would pay the time tax and keep riding transit. In a wealthier area, people respond by purchasing cars and driving instead of riding transit. This has also worsened competition for street parking. Torrance is unique in passing a law that bars the city for charging for parking on city land, including streets and all city-owned lots and garages.
DMV data shows that the South Bay has a decreasing number of residents with drivers licenses and an increasing number of registered cars. In fact, registered cars outnumber licensed drivers in the South Bay.
Everyone complaining about difficulty parking is right. But we are the problem and transit (and eBikes/bikes) are the solution.
Another big problem is elected leaders. Torrance city council and mayor make decisions about TT priorities, and they don't ride transit.
They purchased a fleet of diesel "trolley buses" that resemble old-style streetcars from a century ago, instead adding to their existing fleet of the normal CNG (compressed natural gas) buses they already have. Not only are diesel buses dirtier, but they also mean that the staff have to maintain 2 different fleets with spare parts for both.
Metro Los Angeles created a distribution network for CNG sourced from landfills, sewage treatment plants, but mostly dairy farms. Transit agencies throughout the region use Metro's refueling stations. Thus, the CNG buses throughout the region are 100% fossil fuel-free.
People who don't ride transit are also obsessed with door to door service. So Torrance is investing in "micro-transit", which is incredibly expensive. LA Metro's experience is that it costs about $1-8 to serve a bus rider (depending on how many passengers are on the bus), but it costs over $60 per micro-transit rider. It is incredibly wasteful and takes money and staff time away from fixed transit and para transit.
Torrance Transit employees know this, because it is their job to keep up with developments in transit. However, they have to follow the direction of elected leaders who don't know transit and won't believe staff.
-Do you think that if enough people rallied together about the inconsistencies of the transit system the company would work harder for a solution?
I don't think the staff is the problem. They cannot provide better fixed route bus service until we elect better leaders.
Staffing is another bottleneck. It's hard to recruit new bus drivers as older ones retire. For a new trainee class of 20, they are lucky to have 3 graduates who complete the training and sign on as bus drivers. Finding the 20 trainees is also difficult as many young people cannot pass the mandatory drug test.
The media is finally catching on that getting around by cars can be a PITA and bicycling for transportation can be fun, efficient, and healthy. It can be normal, if only we reallocate space for it. We shouldn't have to fly to Paris to experience a city with great food by bike. I mean, Paris is great, if you like French food, but the food in Torrance is way more exciting (I am saying this unironically).
South Bay weather is nicer than Paris'.
We have the beach, we have mountains (or the hills of Palos Verdes Peninsula).
We could be paradise. And we don't have to go on vacation to experience it. We can stay right here at home, and live our best lives just by going about our normal business. It would also be cheaper, for both our personal pocketbooks and for society's.
I took down a tweet that was getting a lot of traction for reasons I want to explain here. This whole phenomenon and the complex politics around it, deserves more than microblogging.
It all started when I linked to this article in the LA Times/Daily Pilot about local elected officials participating in the "Week Without Driving" challenge. Costa Mesa Councilwoman Arlis Reynold said, "I haven't been on a bus in, like, 30 years."
On the fifth day of Reynolds’ week without driving, the councilwoman was joined by Mayor John Stephens, Thomas and transportation services manager Jennifer Rosales. [snip] Stephens, who’s lived in Costa Mesa for 30 years but cannot recall ever taking the bus, said he was stunned to learn how many denizens rely on the local transit system.
I tweeted at how awful it was that elected officials who vote on transit issues don't use it.
That resonated with a lot of people, and got much attention, retweets. However, I also received comments that it hurts the cause to criticize elected officials who have been allies for safer streets and who agreed to do this experiment and invited the press along to write an article about it.
They further pointed out that these particular officials don't vote on transit; decisions are made by the Orange County Transit Authority (whose board is made up of elected officials from cities or the county board of supervisors).
These are valid points and I took down my critical tweet.
However, I just want to point out that city officials are responsible for the lack of amenities at bus stops, e.g benches, shelters, trash cans, bike racks, way-finding. Bus stops are notoriously hostile places sitting right next to traffic on the busiest and most polluted stroads (street+road).
Waiting for a bus is literally bad for your health due to air and noise pollution and exposure to car violence. Drivers have rammed through bus stop benches on both Artesia and Aviation Boulevards near me with enough force to break concrete benches and even pushing one bench (with a woman sitting on it) through the glass windows of the store behind it.
Cities will use eminent domain and spend $$$,$$$ to buy land to widen intersections for new turn lanes, but they won't do the same to buy a few square feet to move bus stop benches further from the street edge. They don't install plexiglass sound barriers to block wind and dampen noise. They won't install air filters like they do in Korea to protect bus riders from tire and asphalt particulates.
In conclusion, I'm glad that these particular allies spent a week understanding the challenges of those traveling without cars. I wish it was mandatory for all elected officials and candidates. Actually, I wish it was required for everyone, including drivers.
I am deeply saddened that people are so scared to lose the few allies that they have in Orange County, that they don't feel free to note that officials should have been riding the bus, walking and biking around their cities regularly all along.
“I was surprised that [buses] were pretty well packed with people,” he [Stephens] said Tuesday. “We don’t usually walk through the neighborhood like this when we don’t have campaign literature in our hands — whenever you do something like this you become more aware.”
Reynolds, who officially concluded her week without driving last Sunday, is already thinking of improvements for transit riders, first by evaluating all the city’s bus stops to ensure they meet the same standards and adding vital shade and seating where they are currently lacking. And that’s just the beginning.
“I’m interested in looking at broader routes. What I haven’t done is zoom out and see the whole network,” she said in a debriefing Tuesday. “I think there’s an assumption transit can never work in Orange County, but, actually, it could.
“I’m two days past the campaign, and I’m walking still.”
I was discussing Metro's Traffic Reduction Study for pricing roads (aka Congestion Pricing) to discourage driving. This very unambitious plan is targeting just three areas:
DTLA (cordon area)
I-10 between Santa Monica and DTLA (toll road)
I-405 through the Sepulveda pass, including canyon roads (corridor pricing)
I wrote an analysis from a data-based and science (climate change, pollution) perspective, and encountered a lot of pushback. Everyone in the group is a driver, but I'm the only utility bicycle rider that rides in traffic. Others ride recreationally on the beach bike path or on low-traffic foothills roads.
The reflexive response was, "What about the low-income (or moderate income) drivers?"
I was making maps using data from Los Angeles County CVA Social Sensitivity Index and was struck by how some areas of LA County are much older than others. That is, the coastal and hill sections have extremely high proportions of seniors. It's especially dramatic if I map the census tracts by how many standard deviations they are from the mean.
Darker magenta areas have more people over 65 years old than average. Bluer areas have fewer seniors.
By implementation time for congestion pricing, today's 65 year olds will be > 73 yo. How long do you think they will be able to drive mountain roads?
It gets more grim when I divided by transit access. These are high senior population percentage divided by standard deviations from mean transit access (which is already not great in LA County).
Those are areas where we either need to improve transit and micro-mobility (for electric wheelchairs or sit-down scooters), or we need to move seniors out. Because people like to stay near their community, my preference is to coax them down from the canyons to multi-family housing where they are probably already driving for shopping, services, dining, recreation, or work.
This leaves some voids in the flatter areas, which can be fixed by street space allocation, improved bus service, and some apartments near bike lanes & bus routes (hello, East Manhattan Beach).
Anyway, congestion pricing is not going to harm seniors living in the canyons of Bel Air, Malibu, or Brentwood. They will soon age out of driving. It might cost them more to receive senior care in their homes if their caregivers have to pay to drive there.
On the other hand, if it does improve traffic, then lower income workers will have more time for paid work and less unpaid time sitting in traffic. E.g. they can accept more clients per day because they will spend less time driving. This starts a virtue cycle where they won't have to pad their per visit charge as much, making senior care more affordable.
You know what would create less traffic? If we let seniors live in congregate settings, where they each have their own small apartments, but caregivers are on site and can simply walk between clients. That would help alleviate traffic, the shortage of elder caregivers, and improve caregiver pay per hour.
Instead of thinking about changes with fear, look critically at what is not working and how we might improve the status quo.
I need you to fill out a public input survey about a vital active transportation project for Redondo Beach and surrounding cities in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County. This is our chance to reverse some of the damage wrought by past auto-centric road design in North Redondo Beach and allow those who can ride a bike to make school and shopping trips with confidence that they can make it home alive and in one piece.
The current street allocation with car parking on both sides and massive SUVs speeding down our streets is not safe or welcoming for cyclists. The proof is in the declining bicycle mode share.
When filling out the survey, select the options that give a protected bike lane every time. Scroll down past the background info to see my recommendations and why.
Paint is not protection. Never select an option with a paint-only bike lane in the door zone. If someone opens a door, a cyclist in the door zone will be knocked off their bike and suffer grievous injuries. If they swerve to avoid the door, or are knocked into the traffic lane, they could be killed. No one wants to be killed or have their child killed while riding to school.
Two-way cycle tracks are a good option, particularly near schools. When kids are arriving or leaving school, there will be a lot of traffic congestion on all modes. But cars are particularly dangerous. The less car traffic they cross while leaving the congested area, the safer they will be. Keep them on the school side of the street, with wide lanes so that there is passing room in the bikeway (keep the kids out of the car traffic lane).
Plastic poles are not physical protection, but likely the best we can get as a first step. Plastic poles can be replaced with bollards or concrete barriers later if we allow enough buffer space to install the plastic poles in the first place. Do not let the perfect get in the way of actions we can do right now.
You can skip the background (but I hope you read it when you have more time).
Background: The Connection with Schools
The project area below was originally going to be along the old freight route from Redondo King Harbor to the inland rail routes, but Ripley was found to be too steep (several areas with 15% grades) to be feasible for safe cycling.
A Redondo Beach traffic study determined that 30% of the city's AM/PM peak traffic is the child school run. This travel corridor includes
Adams Middle School: 1066 students: 6-8 grades
Washington Elementary School: 801 students, K-5
Jefferson Elementary School: 509 students, K-5
That's almost 2400 K-12 students arriving and departing each day on this corridor.
But that's not all, because all students in Redondo Beach Unified School District (RBUSD) attend Redondo Union High School (RUHS) in South Redondo Beach*. Jefferson ES students also attend Parras Middle School south of RUHS.
Assuming 350/grade at Adams MS and 90/grade at Jefferson ES,
350*4 + 90*7 = 2030 students cross 190th Street to attend school and return home each day.
About half of all RBUSD students traverse this corridor every school day.
But that's not all; El Camino College (ECC, 22,000 students, many from the Beach Cities) is on the eastern end of this travel corridor. Some RUHS and MCHS students do concurrent enrollment and take classes at ECC while they are in HS. Due to many factors, including cost and lack of housing at UC campuses, a large number of students are enrolling in grades 13/14 at ECC before transferring to a 4-year college/university.
When filling out the survey, think about what you would send your kid to school on. Think about what you would be comfortable riding on as you accompany your younger child to school or run your errands. I ride this area 1-2x/week to run errands in North RB or West Torrance. I want better infrastructure for my safety, too.
Watch this video of the horrifying existing conditions as ridden by two fit MAMILs (Middle-Aged Men in Lycra). Would you ride these steep hills? Next to fast-moving busy traffic?
Here's another video of the area where Kyle, an area father, rides his kids to preschool.
My opinionated guide for the survey choices and why they matter:
Every cross-section shown is facing either Eastbound or Northbound.
Q1: For the westernmost portion of the corridor, which alignment(s) do you prefer?
I picked D because that would give us a 2-way cycle track on Lilienthal and the longest length of protected bike lanes on 190th. 190th St is also the only way to avoid steep hills.
The problem with B: The first video shows just how steep Ripley is. Notice that the lead cyclist on a light road bike has trouble getting up the hill (and the trailing cyclist with the camera is on an eBike). Going up a 15-16% grade is difficult, but going down them is downright dangerous. Do not send kids on this route.
Q2: The proposed street section for 190th St (Alignments C and D) is shown here. How satisfied are you with this proposal?
I picked Very Dissatisfied: These cross-sections are looking towards the east, with Torrance on the Right Hand Side (RHS) and Redondo Beach on the LHS. Cars are coming down the hill from Flagler and often speeding 50 eastbound mph. People drive with the sun in their eyes during the morning and evening commutes. Do you feel safe with just paint and plastic poles designed to bend when run over by vehicles?
I recognize that people living in the apartments in Torrance on the right need overflow parking, but let's swap the bike lane and parking lane. Install a parking-protected bike lane like this one in Long Beach on the Torrance side with breaks to preserve sight lines at each driveway or street crossing.
Q3: Select Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the east side, next to Washington ES.
Option 1 provides separation from cars, and is wide enough for passing, and allows parents to ride side by side with a child gaining confidence in their bike skills. In 2-way cycle tracks, people riding opposing car traffic are facing approaching cars, so they can see and react to dangerous drivers. It would be better to have solid protection here, but Option 1 gives us room to retrofit with more solid barriers later.
Option 2 puts kids in the door zone on one side and makes them cross the street to get to school. It's a dangerous situation.
Q4: Select Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the east side, next to Washington ES.
Don't be distracted by the stock visualization image with a tall solid wall. There is currently short solid wall on the parking lot side and a wood and rope fence on the road side.
Option 1 gives a clear place for kids to ride that is physically separated from cars. The 2-way cycle track would replace the wide grassy area.
Option 2 is sharrows in a place where drivers are more focused on making a turn at Ripley than cyclists approaching from behind them.
Motorists trying to make a right turn will pull over to the right, trapping cyclists behind them. Small children on bikes and tall, boxy hoods on todays trucks and SUVs mean that parents may not be aware of cyclists in front of them. This has led to an epidemic of frontover crashes where drivers run over people in front of them because they can't see them over their hoods. Or, they look at their screens and forget that there are children in front of them.
Option 2, sharrows, is a safety disaster.
Q5 on Ripley: Pick Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the Adams MS side
Option 1 keeps the kids on the school side as long as possible. It also preserves the car unloading curb space that people are currently using.
Option 2 puts kids in the door zone, at precisely the time that kids being driven to school are unloading. This is a safety disaster.
Q6: Grant Ave from Inglewood to Kingsdale; I am very dissatisfied but I selected other and explained why we need solid protection instead of plastic bendy poles
They are proposing paint, a buffered (space separation) and plastic bendy poles.
This is better than existing conditions, but not safe. Cars pick up speed heading downhill and frequently misjudge the curve, so they end up sideswiping cyclists in the bike lane. We really need a concrete barrier on the downhill (right hand) side.
I ride by bike to shop at the Galleria and this is the scariest part. I saw a guy almost get killed here. If we want more people to bike through this area, which connects to shopping, the South Bay Transit Center, and the 300 new homes under construction, then we deserve solid protection in this dangerous area.
I gotta break for lunch but I'm going to hit Publish on this so you can get started. I'll finish after lunch.
...
I'm back. Stay with me because we are on the home stretch, but the most dangerous one that crosses the 405 Freeway and has the most high-speed traffic.
Q7: Artesia Blvd from Kingsdale Ave to Redondo Beach Blvd pick Option 2.
Existing conditions are awful and you see very few cyclists brave enough to ride here. If they do, they are often on the sidewalk, conflicting with pedestrians.
Option 1 puts cyclists next to vehicle lanes, but protected with a concrete curb. Pedestrians and cyclists would intuitively understand where they are supposed to be, as faster bike traffic is at the street level. However, this would interfere with bus stops.
Option 2 puts pedestrians next to the vehicle lanes, but also next to the bus stop. Trees would provide shade. There could be some confusion with pedestrians wandering on the bike path, but that can be solved with good signage.
Our community has experience with pedestrian and bikeways next to each other in the North Redondo Beach Bikeway (NRBB). While there is some spillover, people have already learned where pedestrians and rollers have priority on the NRBB. Option 2 will work best for us and we already know how to use it.
Q8: Redondo Beach Blvd from Artesia Blvd to Hawthorne Blvd. Is a tossup but both Options are so much better than the status quo.
Option 1 pits cyclists against pedestrians, but provides 2-way access to Walgreens and Starbucks. It's not terrible as long as cyclists slow down when passing pedestrians and motorists exiting the parking lots look both ways.
Option 2 provides a clear separation between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Cyclists are curb-protected on the eastbound RB side, and parking-protected on the westbound Lawndale side. However, coming westbound from Walgreens/Starbucks, people will likely bike on the sidewalk until they meet the 2-way cycle track.
Although you lose a traffic lane, it's not the cyclists' fault. One can just as easily blame the space allocated to free car storage (on-street parking) and a turn lane. Motorists are losing a travel lane to other motorists, not cyclists. Don't forget that.
Option 1, the 2-way cycle track, provides a better alternative not suggested by Metro for the next section.
Q9: Redondo Beach Blvd from Hawthorne Blvd to Prairie Ave. I am Very Dissatisfied & propose a better solution.
Although the status quo is very bad, we shouldn't rush into the proposed door zone bike lane next to high-speed traffic heading to the freeway onramps. It is extremely dangerous. This will greatly reduce the number of people brave enough to ride to Alondra Park and El Camino College.
If there is enough room for on-street parking, then there is enough room for a parking-protected bike lane. That may require narrowing the car lanes a bit, but that would also inhibit speeding, making that stretch safer and quieter for all road users.
The freeway onramp is on the north side of RB Blvd. A 2-way cycle track on the south side of RB Blvd would keep cyclists away from the crazy line of cars trying to merge onto the 405 on-ramp. Suggest that in Q11.
Q10: Redondo Beach Blvd from Prairie Ave to Dominguez Channel. Pick Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the North side, next to the park and El Camino College.
Option 1 puts cyclists next to the park and ECC. Although it is shown with plastic bendy straws, it can easily be fitted with bollards or a concrete curb for better protection when cycling to and from evening classes at ECC.
Option 2 puts cyclists in the door zone, where they can be knocked into fast-moving traffic and killed. Drunk or malicious drivers can also harm cyclists easily with only "paint as protection".
Q11: Additional Comments: This is where we ask for a protected 2-way cycle track on on the south side of RB Blvd between Hawthorne and Prairie.
What do you need to be comfortable bicycling this corridor? Tell them!
Keep in mind that younger Beach Cities kids will probably only ride the western side of this corridor, west of Inglewood or Kingsdale. But older teens and young adults may need to ride to ECC or to retail jobs between Kingsdale and Crenshaw.
There are a lot of children and seniors in Lawndale and Torrance who would benefit from these bike facilities, whether they are riding a bike, trike or mobility scooter.
We should make this corridor welcoming for ages 8-80.
Think about who needs to travel through this corridor and at what times. What kind of cycling facilities do they need to get there comfortably and safely? What about seniors in mobility scooters or electric wheelchairs? Would you like to see food delivery robots in the bike lane or more food delivery by privately-owned cars?
With better bike facilities, I may choose to bike to stores further east than I currently feel safe. Every trip I make by eBike instead of car, I am "sparing the air", not taking up road space in front of you, and not competing with you for parking.
Another thing that excites me about this project is that it connects us to the Dominguez Channel. In a separate project, LA County Public Works will be extending the bike path along the channel southwards. It currently goes north to 120th St, past Amazon, Space-X, Lowe's and to the Metro Green/C Line. A southbound channel bike path would connect to the Harbor Gateway Transit Center, with very fast connections to the Silver/J Line to USC/Expo Park (15 min) and Downtown LA (20 min). Harbor Gateway TS is already linked up to CSU Dominguez Hills. This is a large step forward for a transportation transformation for the South Bay.
Bike lanes benefit you even if you don't ride a bike, but your neighbors do.
Bike lanes will save you time currently spent chauffeuring your kids short distances.
Bike lanes will benefit your kids because students who get exercise before school do better.
Bike lanes will benefit you when you age out of driving.
This bike corridor will touch the lives of half the students in RBUSD and can be transformative for the way our community gets around. If half of our households can shed just one car, we would be richer, our street parking and traffic congestion problems will evaporate, our air and water will be cleaner, and we will have done our part to slow climate change. Oh, we'll be fitter and happier, too.
* A very few students living in North RB attend Mira Costa HS in Manhattan Beach, but only if MBUSD will take them.
This post was inspired by a Twitter exchange with a Culver City resident who was able to shed one of her family's two cars due to the Move Culver City Project to reallocate space from cars to transit (bus lanes), active transportation (walking/biking) and micro-mobility (scooters, wheelchairs).
Culver City's city council balance changed from 3/2 in support of this street space reallocation to 3/2 opposed. The new city council wants to reverse the street space allocation and give 100% of the public space to cars again despite the city's own data that transit and bike use grew explosively while car use declined. Read the Move Culver City Mid-Pilot Report.
I think reversing Move Culver City is a big mistake for many reasons, but I will just get into the financial angle in this post.
Car ownership is so normalized in US society that I think we stop paying attention to how much it's really costing us. When AAA published their annual report "How Much Does it Really Cost to Own a New Car 2022", it surprised many people. [2023 Update is even grimmer, $12,182/year]
$10,728 is an underestimate for the cost to own a car in Los Angeles. That price also does not include the cost of a parking spot, which you are paying for whether it's a line item in your budget or not. Everyone seems to complain about parking, even though Los Angeles has more homes for cars than for people.
If households with multiple cars can shed one car, they can save $10,728/year.
Median Culver City household income in $97,540 with a marginal tax rate (CA+Fed) of 33.3%.
Owning a car costs $16,084/year pre-tax.
If that money were put in a tax-deferred retirement savings account every year for 30 years, that household can accumulate just under $1 Million!
Using a conservative 4% above inflation estimate for VGIAX, the Bankrate Compound Interest Calculator shows that the household that was able to shed a car winds up with $916,300 after 30 years in their retirement savings account. Yes, you do pay taxes as you withdraw that money, but that's a huge chunk of money nevertheless.
In Summary, if Move Culver City allows families to shed one car, then that is a $1M gift to the families in Culver City.
Reversing/removing the street improvements--making buses too slow to use and bicycling too dangerous to attempt--forces families into cars again. If they have to own a second car again, then Culver City families lose $1 M.
Elected officials should think long and hard about whether they want to force car dependency and costs onto their residents. It's not good for residents, it's not good for the planet, it's not good for the city. Finally, I don't think it's good for the elected officials' ability to get re-elected.
I've given a talk in December 2022 and am scheduled to talk again in January and February 2023 to groups comprised mainly of older homeowners concerned about lack of transit and wheelchair-accessible housing in their communities. Most are unaware that those are connected.
The High Quality Transit Areas (HQTAs) is within one half-mile of a well-serviced transit stop or a transit corridor with 15-minute or less service frequency during peak commute hours.
Founded in 1965, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is a Joint Powers Authority under California state law, established as an association of local governments and agencies that voluntarily convene as a forum to address regional issues. Under federal law, SCAG is designated as a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) and under state law as a Regional Transportation Planning Agency and a Council of Governments.
The SCAG region encompasses six counties (Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura) and 191 cities in an area covering more than 38,000 square miles. The agency develops long-range regional transportation plans including sustainable communities strategy and growth forecast components, regional transportation improvement programs, regional housing needs allocations and a portion of the South Coast Air Quality management plans
Seniors want to stay in their own homes, or at least in their own communities. And they want frequent transit to serve them. They've looked around and are deeply unhappy with what they have found. Why can't we have frequent and good transit like other places they have vacationed at?
Why doesn't the South Bay have good transit? We're visibly a transit hole. High quality, frequent transit does not touch most of the residential areas of the Beach Cities, El Segundo, Torrance and Palos Verdes Cities.
Is it because wealthy people can afford cars and don't need transit? Nope, not if you compare to Santa Monica, Culver City, Pasadena and Beverly Hills.
When we purchased our home in the late 1990s, we researched bus lines, bike commutes and USGS geologic maps. We really liked that the Torrance 8 bus ran between our home, daycare, workplace at 30 minute frequency throughout the day and even more often during peak commute hours. Those buses were well-used by people who worked in El Segundo and lived along the route in Torrance, North Redondo Beach and Hawthorne.
Over time, the service degraded noticeably and wasn't reliable any more. That's the main reason why I ride my eBike during the day and drive at night. Transit isn't viable for me any more, even if I want to take a bus to dinner and then walk home (burn off dessert) or catch a ride home with my dinner companions. Even during peak hours, the buses are infrequent and often get canceled at the last minute.
Moreover, the southern terminus of the route used to be at Newton St and Hawthorne Blvd, a short walk from hundreds of homes. Now the route has been shortened to end at the intersection of two state highways, Pacific Coast Highway (CA1) and Hawthorne Boulevard (CA107). To reach the stop, people have to walk farther from their homes and cross wide highways with 7-9 lanes of deafening traffic.
When I regularly took the bus, they were well-utilized. Most seats were occupied at peak hours. Even after peak, about half the seats were taken by people out shopping or going to their retail/service jobs.
Buses operate at a loss. That's why we pay taxes to subsidize them. But roads and parking lots also operate a loss and we never question whether or not they are necessary. Fuel and registration fees cover only about half the costs of roads; the rest comes from general funds.
The cost of "free parking" is borne by customers or tax payers, including those that didn't drive there. The subsidy is flowing towards drivers, not bike riders. In fact, pedestrians receive the lowest subsidy, then bike riders (cost of bike racks), then transit riders, then drivers.
But I digress. Let's get back to poor bus service. The seniors I talk to all want frequent buses that run near their homes. They would prefer the buses to run past their existing homes, but are willing to move to a condo or apartment complex within their communities if that is the only way they will get high-quality transit.
Sounds good. Let's pick some areas to serve intensively with transit, and then build lots of homes there. The more transit riders there are, the better service we can maintain; it's a virtuous cycle that serves seniors aging out of driving well.
Not so fast, building housing is politically toxic throughout the southland. Today's seniors have elected (for decades) local leaders running on platforms of preserving the "neighborhood character" of their "unique community", and fighting "overbuilding" and "Sacramento overreach".
Elected leaders are suing the state of California about whether they should be exempt from state housing law (like the Housing Accountability Act) and questioning both the legality and the numbers in the Regional Housing Needs Allocation.
The State of California's Department of Housing and Community Development (the CA analog of the Federal Government's HUD), tells each regional planning authority how many homes their region needs to build to provide for existing and future residents. Each region decides for themselves how they want to allocate those homes based on their goals and values.
The formula is a product of our professed values. We claim to value opportunity, so we assign more housing near where the jobs are. We claim to value clean air and want to lower Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, so we place homes in HQTAs. We claim we want to address inequality, so we assign more low income housing to places that traditionally have not provided lower income residents.
Conversely, it assigns more higher income housing in poorer communities that can benefit from the tax base provided by higher earners. It's not forced gentrification or ghettofication. It's just trying to level the playing field to help everyone succeed. The goal is to work together with neighbors to solve regional problems like pollution, congestion, and the housing crisis.
Just select your city of interest in cell D5. Here's Torrance, the city that runs Torrance Transit and presided over its demise. Torrance is big mad at their 6th Cycle RHNA "quota" of 4,939 homes over the next ~8 year RHNA cycle. They have never been given such a high allocation before. Their 5th Cycle allocation was 1,450, and they didn't even meet that.
I paired Torrance with their neighbor, Gardena; and Redondo Beach with neighboring Lawndale. Notice how the smaller cities are given higher RHNA allocations than their larger and more affluent neighbors. They are assigned 2-3x as many homes per capita.
Is it because of job access? Look at the SCAG GIS map of Job Centers. Torrance is smack dab in the middle of one of the largest job centers in Southern California, with ~129,000 jobs.
Both loudly-complaining cities, Torrance and Redondo Beach, have more jobs and easier access to jobs than Gardena and Lawndale, hence they were assigned more homes in the Jobs column.
What explains the big differences then?
Go back and look at the HQTA map. It's all based on existing population in the HQTAs within each jurisdiction.
The more people already living inside the existing HQTAs used in the planning formula, the higher their HQTA-based RHNA allocations. Most cities like jobs (with the possible exception of pre-pandemic San Francisco) so they don't play as many games with that.
Cities know that the way to finesse lower RHNA housing allocations is to minimize the areal coverage of HQTAs in your city, and then to minimize the number of people who live in the HQTAs.
This is how El Segundo, home to LAX and the 121,000 jobs in the LAX job center,
and with 3 light rail stations inside of their cities and one just over the border at LAX, got allocated just 1 home due to HQTA. Yes, just 1 home!
When El Segundo fought to avoid permitting homes east of PCH, this is the subtext. They gave up land to Hawthorne to avoid having homes in their jurisdiction near a rail station.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but South Bay seniors who want to live in wheelchair accessible home with viable public transit will have to move away. Transit sucks now and will not be added back if it will expand HQTA coverage area. No new homes will be built in HQTAs if local officials can stop it.
(This is also why California enacted laws to preempt local officials to force them to permit home building in HQTAs.)
It's all connected to the decisions made by the people we elected and the incentives they operate under. When they talk about preserving the "neighborhood character" of your "unique community", and fighting "overbuilding" and "Sacramento overreach", they collect donations and win elections.
They don't tell you that they will never allow expansion of HQTAs within their jurisdictions if they can help it. This is a large part of the subtext of the fight over Metro C line extension routing. Your elected officials are fighting to ensure you don't get access to rail transit (which is harder to cancel/decrease than bus lines) so that they won't have to build housing.
They don't even want to build in existing HQTAs lest it expose them to higher RHNA allocations in future cycles. So instead, they talk about shadows and view sheds, impose high parking minimums. These all serve to reduce the number of homes that can be built and the number of people in the homes.
They don't tell you that the kind of low-density zoning they are protecting will only every yield townhomes with stairs, built on top of car garages. Low density zoning and height limits makes building accessible apartments with elevators prohibitively expensive to build. They hope developments don't "pencil out" (can't be built profitably), so that the developers go away.
What homes do get produced will be very expensive because they have to cover the parking and land. If you can build 2 stories of housing over 1 story of parking, they have to charge a lot more than if they built 4 stories of housing over the same parking structure on the same land. To maximize affordability, they could even stop requiring parking since seniors and the disabled are much less likely to drive or own cars anyway. Parking is another proxy war to suppress housing.
If you want to solve a problem. then you solve the problem. You don't spend decades screaming the problem doesn't exist. You don't enact ordinances that make the problem even worse. You don't sue people who point out that the problem exists. You don't defund researchers who collect data and evidence on the problem.
This applies to climate change and our regional housing crisis.
Enough, tonight. I just want to point out that it's all related.
Enjoy the Metro C Line (Green) Extension to Torrance Project Simulation Video. Think about how you want to live as you or your parents age out of driving. Think about where you want your children and grandchildren to live as the planet gets hotter and hotter. Do you want them on the cooler coast with you? Then make room for them.
I know that I will fight for a light rail route that is closer to my home. And I will also fight for a 7th Cycle RHNA allocation that can't be gamed by climate arsonists.
Even if we get a higher RHNA allocation based on light rail routing, California law gives us local control about where we place that home growth. We can and should spread it out, particularly as our area ages. The medical industry jobs in Torrance keep growing, and South Redondo Beach is very close to those jobs.
Aside:
Coastal Los Angeles Communities are facing a Silver Tsunami of aging residents and a dearth of younger families. Housing is so expensive, our children move far away. (A few may live with us.) The SCAG RHNA formula projects future housing needs based on demographics of existing residents. If you have few current residents of child-bearing age, then you won't have many births or future residents to house.
Since we have moved homes affordable for young, families so far into the inland deserts, they were assigned higher RHNA allocations than older communities along the coast. I included the data for Coachella in my comparison table.
Coachella has 14,277 Households in 2020, while Culver City has 17,146. Yet, Household Growth in Coachella is projected to be 5,794 while Culver City's is only 296. That's a 20-fold difference!
If you push young people out of your city, you will be assigned lower RHNA numbers. But then, who will help you change your senior diapers? How often will you see your children and grandchildren?
Anyway, stop fixating on "winning" a game of foisting housing elsewhere. Plan for a better future for yourself by planning for a more inclusive future in your community.
