05/26/2024
WE BUILT IT AND THEY DIDN’T COME
By Doug McIntyre
There’s trouble in East Timor. I don’t know what kind of trouble because, truthfully, I don’t know anything about East Timor. I couldn’t even tell you where East Timor is if you spotted me North, South and West Timor. Still, occasionally I see a headline about “trouble” in East Timor.
There’s also trouble on Los Angeles County buses and trains, or so I hear. I never take the bus or ride the rail system in L.A., choosing instead to spend my life trapped in soul-robbing gridlock at $5.80 a gallon. (On a good day.) Metro is practically invisible to me, but I see the bad headlines. It’s the East Timor of public infrastructure.
Years ago, out of curiosity, I did take the Red Line from North Hollywood to Pershing Square. And once I even used Metro to get to a Lakers game, but after that experience, I got a ride home from a stranger which seemed like the safer choice. And this was long before Metro abandoned their shiny new system to “civilian ambassadors”, bowing to anti-police Leftist groups like the Bus Riders Union and the Alliance for Community Transit L.A. Is it any surprise the headlines are negative?
I’m not proud to say this. I practically lived on trains and subways growing up in New York where everyone, rich and poor, all races and demographics imaginable, rides mass transit all the time. So, why not here?
On four separate occasions voters in L.A. approved sales tax hikes to fund the construction of light rail and buses in the City and County, yet very few of our 10-plus million residents are willing to ride the system they paid for, including pro-mass transit guys like me.
“This is not a system to be proud of.” Said L.A. County Supervisor and Metro Board Member Kathyrn Barger to KNBC-TV’s Conan Nolan in response to an epidemic of horrific crimes against Metro passengers and employees, including shootings, stabbings, beatings and more stabbings. When a member of the governing body of a major civic institution is not proud of the system she helps run, why should anyone else be on board?
And the public is not on board. Metro ridership continues to plunge year after year because, as awful as driving might be, it’s still better than the public transit system we have allowed to degenerate into a rolling outhouse/homeless encampment/insane asylum/crack house. Or so I hear.
Recently, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass posted about her video chat with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pitching more Federal dollars for Metro in advance of the Olympics. X user, , commented, “First you have to take care of the stabbing problem.”
Duh.
This is not exclusive to L.A. Covid kept thousands of commuters at home working remotely, many of whom continue the practice today. Ride share apps weren’t a thing when Metro began building light rail and that has cut into fares. And then there is the consequence-free crime wave courtesy of post-George Floyd murder DAs like George Gascon who have set transit riders fleeing by the thousands. The MTA in New York has also hemorrhaged customers, as has BART in the Bay Area and nearly every metropolitan public transit agency, except one, Richmond, Virginia, which has seen a 14-percent increase over the pre-covid days
So, what did Richmond do right? They Invited the public to ride for free and folks in Virginia happily accepted.
FREE? Could that work here?
Of Metro’s enormous $9-billion budget, only 13-percent comes from fare-paying riders. 13-percent is still $1.17-billion a year, not exactly pocket change. But consider the long-term benefits of free transit travel in L.A. County. Just maybe we could chip away at the automobile-only DNA of the most traffic snarled city in America, creating new generations who grow up using mass transit as a matter of course like most major city dwellers here and around the world. The boon to local businesses from increased foot traffic, increase in productivity and disposable income would likely more than make up for the additional expense to Metro. Plus, a good transit system helps communities in a less tangible but hugely important way.
Mass transit systems remain one of the great unifying institutions in any city. Next time you visit New York, take a train to or from Wall Street and you’ll find millionaire stock brokers riding elbow-to-elbow with the janitors who clean the Exchange floor. That never happens in L.A. Here the classes do not mix. Crowded trains and buses are also safer trains and buses. Passengers help protect each other and the equipment from miscreants and vandals who they greatly outnumber. L.A.’s working poor and the mass transit dependent have been left to fend for themselves by City and County leaders cowed by activists who insist on their no police concept of social justice no matter how many people get killed.
Los Angeles desperately needs functional, state-of-the-art mass transit-- not just for the Olympics-- but for the day-to-day life of its citizens. We taxed ourselves to build a system, but unlike the “Field of Dreams”, they did not come. Or if they did, they have not come back.
Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. Reach him at: [email protected]. His novel, “Frank’s Shadow” is available at Amazon.com.
