Oh man, this video is so good. But it's also really bad because it means I'm going to have to up my game when it comes to maps. Thanks for setting the bar higher for RU-vid urban planning videos. 👍
@@john-wo4rv what do you mean by democratic? The people sure don't want this. And name ONE Republican who has ever even MENTIONED this problem. I'll wait. THEY are the ones that say that everything is okay and we don't need to change.
@@john-wo4rv What democratic policies? LA was solid conservative in the 50s and 60s. Hence why they didn’t built public transit systems like rail or bus lines
@@roadguy4214what is the minimum amount of lanes needed on a freeway? (hint: there is limited land; we need land to have homes, food, goods [like metal and wood], and schools among many things)
@@0Defensor0 NGL when I think "metro" in the context of transport, I think subways and rail. not freeways and not even really roads unless you include buses. And I live in LA.
@@houstontexas8738 it’s not a subway, they have public transport but it’s very lackluster and doesn’t have much reach. Thankfully new lines are being built and they are much less destructive than freeways. I hope LA is a better place to live in the coming decades
LA used to have a extensive streetcar network. The Los Angeles Railway served most of the central city. By the 1930s, LA’s streetcars had become wildly unprofitable and were quickly losing riders. During the war years, transit ridership spiked because of government gas rationing. But the streetcars emptied out again in peacetime. Between 1945 and 1951, the number of riders carried each year fell by nearly 80 million. Cheaper to operate and requiring less maintenance, buses began phasing out the streetcars very early. Buses were an attractive choice for transit operators; they could be easily rerouted as the urban area developed and rider demand shifted. The streetcar could have been saved if LA subsidized this transit service.
@@yellfire thats strange, european cities with streetcars and light rail swear they are more efficient and cheaper to run once installed. Only in the US can rail based transportation be expensive for confounding reasons.
There tends to be a gap of a number of years between the knowledge a certain practice is wrong and actually stopping doing it. There is also a failure to adopt best practice even when it is being demonstrated to work elsewhere.
@@johnnymartinez478 . No, that is simply two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. The needs of the many should take the needs of the few into account. The main problem is piecemeal development with no future planning. Interestingly dwellings which are in walking distance of a range of services, fetch a higher price than those that aren't.
Blame your corrupt politicians which Los Angeles citizens elected. The expressways were needed but also with a world class subway, bus, train, and bicycle system (properly separated from cars). Engineers do not make municipal choices and decisions; politicians and political city managers made those municipal choices in policy.
Do you have evidence that the decision where to put freeways was motivated by more than economics? I'm not questioning who was displaced by the expropriations, but whether a colorblind city planner would have done things differently. The land owners had to be financially compensated, after all.
7:58 “more than 21 billion USD” Jesus. That’s around three times larger than the budget for Rail Baltica to build high-speed rail in the Baltics. Do the american officials know that trains exist? They don’t even need HSR, just regular trains do the job
The population pattern is a bit of a challenge, though. Say that, for a train station to be economically viable, it needs to have a certain number of people living within walking distance of one, and working within walking distance of another (if you can't walk at both ends, you'd probably drive instead). LA is mostly suburbs with very low population density, so there don't live or work many people within walking distance of anything. They could build train lines, but few people would be able to use them effectively. They would have to re-zone the districts around the stations to make them work, and NIMBYs would have a real field day with that.
Just have car parks at the railway stations, plus secure cycle storage. Also cycle storage at the other end, Waterloo station in London has around 250,000 passengers per day, it also has storage for 5,000 cycles.
If only there were examples of large cities in Europe with no freeways, much smaller streets, extensive public transportation and no gridlocks. Oh, wait... 🤪
I lived for 2 years near a freeway with 14 lanes in Europe, I was coughing all day long, then I moved to another neighborhood. A year later I visited back the place where I used to rent, and I saw the blackened air in that place, it's when I realized how polluted it was. My coughing went away by the way
@@Codraroll It's a bad comparison though. European street grids and housing density is result of their age. They are literally based on and built on cities that are thousands of years old, using the same thousand-year old infrastructure that the Romans paved. LA and Atlanta were built using relatively modern principles, eschewing density and favoring a suburban configuration, which, as we know now, was idiotic. But you can't undo that sprawl. I don't know what the solution is, I'm just saying that it's a weird comparison.
@@sor7en07 Not sure if I fully align with that argument, for a few reasons: 1. Many towns and cities in Europe were levelled during WWII and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. They were still built with density in mind. Look also to Japan, which was in the same situation if not worse, and didn't end up with the post-war sprawl of the US either. Then again, there's little room to sprawl in Japan, so they kind of had to. 2. European cities have grown during the car age too, far outside the old street grids the Romans planned (those are mostly confined to historic downtowns and make up a very small share of most cities). Still, they were expanded without building the endless suburbia of American cities. 3. US cities used to have dense, walkable street grids too. Look up historic photos of Chicago or Baltimore, for instance. The country existed for a century and a half before the car came along, and had several settlements long before that again. The US did the fairly unique act of abandoning and reforming their historic downtown, then expanding their cities using the same pattern of thinly spread development. Luckily (?), we can assume that a culture that demolished and abandoned their historic downtowns within a generation could do the same to parts of their sprawling suburbia, and re-densify their cities.
When will they learn that making an already super wide highway even wider will NOT solve their traffic problem? And it's not just LA, but many cities across the US! Call it un-American, call it stupid, call it loosing freedom, but just take a look at how European cities deal with their rush hour traffic despite having way less lanes of freeway: it's because large amounts of people make use of public transit, not because they have to, but because they want to. You don't get people to want to use public transit when you have a poor public transit network, with poor connections, filthy buses etc ... you got to make an efficient network, with several modes of transportation being interlaced, creating interesting, quick and efficient connections/routes throughout the city. NOt just to connect suburbs with downtown, but connect all areas with each other. Just a small example from the Bavarian state's capital city with a population of 1.7 million in the city. Besides 8 highways going towards or into the city, they have all kinds of train services including regional and commuter trains on a local basis, subways, trams and buses. Let's take only at a major commuter rail track downtown: during rush hour they run commuter trains on a 2 minute schedule, which equals 30 trains per hour and direction. Each train has a capacity of up to 1,632 passengers, that's close to some 49,000 per hour, in only one direction, on only one track ... not counting all those on other routes, other trains, subways, trams or buses. Imagine if all of them would be using their private car instead. Public transit takes lots of people off the road. Of course you'll feel rush hour, but there's no daily rush hour traffic jam. And let me be clear: Munich public transit is by far not among those which can be called very good, very efficient or anything like that
It seems like here in Europe the closest a freeway gets to the city center, is a ringroad going around the outer edge of the city that connects to connecting roads leading into the city, and highways going out of the city area
@@onelyone6976 yeah, here in cologne there's a ringroad around the city, with 1 highway that continues into the city (actually 2, but the 2nd one ends after a few hundred meters). There are some big roads with 2 lanes (in rare cases 3), but everyone else either happily uses public transport or suffers in traffic. Actually the ringroad, which is the busiest in Germany, is one of the few places here where you actually see roads as wide as American ones, at one junction there's up to 6 lanes per direction I think, with all of it being at least 3 lanes, but it's actually necessary as it doesn't only serve cologne but is a hub for people from Frankfurt/the south (A3), Benelux (A4) and the north (A1)
@@ababababaababbba I know it is, but to most train goers they say it sometimes smells like a combination of a homeless shelter and a portapotty. The metro should dedicate more money to hardcore cleaning crews to clean the shit (literally) off the trains.
That does make sense, since it will fill up until alternatives are faster. At which point people will take the alternative and an equilibrium is reached, until the alternative becomes slower again.
Unless you build the freeways so big that every car in the city could be on them at the same time without traffic slowing. After all, there is a finite number of cars available to fill up the freeways. Then again, good luck paying for that using the same city's taxes.
@@zephyros256 Well put. This is probably why the U.S. cities with decent rail seem to only get gridlock during the worst hours. Chicago has very good traffic for how large it is. Without Metra and the L it would be horrific.
The economic equilibrium of ultra high traffic cities (ie. LA, NYC, Chicago) is an average travel time in line with public transit/walking/cycling times for the same route, which rarely get longer as a result of demand. Note that a lot of travel takes place in zones that aren't ultra high traffic, hence why highways outside cities are usually pretty fast
Wow, just imagine what public transport LA could be realizing with 20 billion dollars... They already made way for it, you just have to take it away from cars at this point.
Copied my reply from another comment thread: This is a very complex issue. For example, in order to pass a sales tax measure for more transit projects, you have to throw each area of the county a bone. It's why the Metro Gold Line light rail was built early on despite going through wealthy suburbs. Unfortunately, people are not simply going to vote to tax themselves(nor will the politicians in each area support it) so only one part of the county gets an expensive subway with no benefit for their own neck of the woods. Also, the vast majority of people in the LA basin drive. So the argument could made that transit projects serve a (very) small portion of the traveling public even though the vast majority of the tax revenue to fund the projects is coming from drivers who probably won't ever give up their car to ride transit. I want more rail and BRT as much as the next transit advocate, but there is reality. At the very least, there are a number of great transit projects in Los Angeles now under construction.
@@panzer_TZ okay, but it doesn't need to be an expensive metro line at the start. Just an idea; you could start with designated bus lanes which would make taking the bus much faster than taking a car and it's easier to reach all parts of the city with busses in stead of metro or train. Where possible, make designated bike lanes. Make parking more expensive. You have to start taking space away from cars at some point or you'll end up with 25 lane highways and nowhere to go.
Incredible video. I’ve always wondered how significant induced demand really is in LA, where demand for car transportation must be fairly inelastic because there are few alternatives.
Problem is, LA isn't dense enough for that to be viable. In suburbia, any bus stop would service very few passengers within walking distance, so you'd need a lot of stops for a bus to cover enough customers to be viable ... and a bus that stops all the time would take forever to get anywhere and not be attractive. What LA needs is to densify around public transport corridors, to gather enough people in one place for public transport to be effective. That would be really expensive and meet tons of local opposition, but it's not like it can afford any alternatives. Installing bus lines with the current population pattern would not do enough. It needs to fix the population pattern too.
I was wondering why my cousin's house was on side of the hill near a highway. Urbanist RU-vid has shown me what's eluded me my entire life, why I found those wide asphalt pits so weird, why it's a pain to get anywhere here. That and that minorities like me were targetted when came to this shit.
If you’re so targeted then don’t ever drive your car again. You’re contributing to the problem of traffic so therefore stop driving and new freeways won’t need to be built. Stop crying racism
The 710 freeway’s northern terminus should be through Pasadena but was stopped by wealthy white people so now it ends in Alhambra where Asian and Hispanic people live.
I live in Washington but I still want to help. It's really disheartening seeing our poor, archaic infrastructure being used as a money dump when life could be so much better if we invested that money wiser.
Give me the name of one LA resident who freeways haven't helped and I'll give you the name of a liar. Freeways aren't bad, lack of public transit is bad.
It is not because "racism". The reason is why they build it in poorer districts is because lands are way cheaper there, so the city or state can afford it.
the land was cheaper because of red lining which was racist but i see your point, racist or not we shouldnt be expanding and inducing traffic no matter the historical context
Were the displaced people compensated for the loss of their homes? Sure. Then it seems likely the freeway locations (neighborhoods) where chosen to minimize the cost of compensation.
now and days yes they have to and if you don't accept they just build over or around you. Back in the 50s thru late 70s i highly doubt it since they were black and latinos which were obviously looked down upon.
@@Batman-qe7igWith the exception of the East LA interchange and the 10 freeway thru the Sugar Hill neighborhood of West Adams, most of the neighborhoods cut in half by freeway construction were white. When the 110 Harbor Freeway was first being built in the 1950s, South Los Angeles was majority white, but poor and "blue collar". Only Watts and the area immediately surrounding South Central Avenue had many blacks and latinos. In some cases, such as the 605 freeway thru northeast Downey, the houses torn down were only a few years old. But don't let actual history get in the way of your need to see everything as racist 😂
@@derek20la That is true. My (white) grandparents and great aunts and uncles lived in south LA, Santa Fe Springs, and Inglewood. My Mom (also white) went to Inglewood High School with Sonny ("Sal" at the time) Bono who also lived there. The 105 destroyed my great aunt's house. Correlation does not equal causation. Because some freeways went through black neighborhoods does not mean that the people who built them decided to "get the blacks" any more than it means they wanted to "get" the working class whites. They had freeways to build (for better, or more likely, worse) so they took the land under Eminent Domain (and paid for it) and built them. It's bad enough that freeways suck and that Metro is continuing to make them worse without sidelining the real problem with a class and race conflict.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that construction or car or gas company lobbies have something to do with this (probably all of the above). I don’t think government officials will continue to make a mistake and pass it off as a good idea every single time for no reason. Definitely need to follow the money and organize against it
I'm not an expert in any way, but wouldn't a European system where slow traffic rides as far as possible on the right lane, and faster travel on the left lane help with congestion? All those cars driving everywhere all willy-nilly doesn't seem like an efficient use of space.
We've only about got 100 years of life left before extinction if we don't get off the subsidised crude oil gravy train. (That's not dreaming. That's the future reality. We've got no time to dawdle by continuing to accept the lies of others.)
Look, we've been through a pandemic and it has shown that many people can still work from home and a company can still thrive. Let's have every company instruct their employees to stay at home 2 to 3 days and then alternate odd and even license plates. This would cut down on traffic... But I guess this is too much like right, right?
its so crazy how we keep expanding freeways instead of building up the metro. we couldve had a sepulveda line already instead of still fighting over it
I’ve used and have experienced public transit in both LA (as well as cities around the world). I’ve seen cities both in the US and abroad where public transportation really works. That said, until LA gets serious about keeping the metro and buses SAFE and CLEAN, they’re going to have a very time wooing people out of their cars. I’ve had too many experiences around the city with people with drug/alcohol or mental illness issues (or both). Many Angelenos will continue to take a “hard pass” on public transit until the city gets serious about safety and cleanliness issues.
america has bad traffic overall anyways.spamming stop signs, not using roundabouts enough, we can't figure jack diddly darn out. politics written on roads, c'mon. i want outta this dump
I wouldn’t stop building completely. I would take a deep look where you would want flowing and where you would want stopped traffic. You need to change behaviour, and helping with another forms of (working) transport is a good start, but maybe parts of the trip may still be by car, like to a train station. Another thing to consider is the place traffic comes to halt or is crawling. That should be away from homes. Start stop traffic is very bad for pollution levels. So invest in places where public transport isn’t an option and probably never will be, but invest in the places where it is. Make it hard to drive into the city, but supply ample parking space for modal shift the last 10-20 miles. It’s al so easy to say stop completely. It isn’t what the public want, but with a bit of tinkering and good alternatives for most part can understand. Oh yes, learn from the mistakes or even criminal behaviour in the past, but don’t use it as argument to do nothing. Maybe you should take away complete roads, and built something else?
@jwt1035 Heavy rail and light rail are their own distinct modes of transit. Never have I heard of freight trains be referred to as "heavy rail". The B and D lines are heavy rail, they're faster, stop less often, fully grade separated, use longer trains, carry more people, and are electrified via third rail vs. overhead catenary :)
@@greg.anywhere I’m no expert on the subject, I guess. But in San Diego, where I live, we have Amtrak with diesel locomotives, which I believe are described as heavy rail. Freight trains operate on the same tracks. We also have special commuter trains on separate lines with overhead electrical with pantographs called The Trolley, which are described as light rail. So, I guess what I’m saying is placing a Trolley-type system where the carpool lanes are would be great. But maybe I’m not using the right terms.
Reclaim the center lanes for buses. It would be far more efficient in denying cars one traffic lane. Add a barrier, a policeman at the entries, and a platform accesible through stairwells.
This video was great. Though I would have liked it if you looked at the subject through the lens of someone driving to work each day. Hammering the point home that spending less on highways and more on public transport will also improve the traffic they waste time in everyday even if they themselves never take the bus.
They decided to build freeways in order to consume federal dollars, so they planned to build them in areas where the land was cheaper and the residents lacked political influence to prevent the construction. A strong argument can be made that the freeways should not have been built at all. Prior to them, LA was a mass transit centric city, built originally around the streetcar, evolving into private bus lines as technology evolved. The government strangled that network to death through price controls on fares and heavy taxes on the lines. Ultimately, the city seized the transit lines through bankruptcy, again enabling the city to spend federal dollars doing so, granting itself a monopoly on busing, which it then proceeded to strangle to death, leaving everyone with no choice but to drive...on the new freeways built with federal dollars. In effect, the Federal Government paid Los Angeles to kill its own mass transit system. And it continues to do so, by paying it to scrap the remaining bus lines to fund rail transit construction which will never carry as many riders as the bus lines it displaces.
@@williamhuang8309 no, the money is just regular federal taxes. Federal politicians are trying to buy urban votes by funding urban projects. That is basic politics.
if freeway expansion is known to make traffic worse, why in freaking hell does california keep spending the money on that instead of light rail or other projects?
Long legacy of car friendly policies in LA. Back in the days when Yorty and Bradley were mayors, people in LA refused to build public transit during the RTD days. Bus service stagnated.
The state is in considerable amount of debt so where did this money come from shouldn't that money be allocated to paying off the debt am I the only adult in the entire state
Excellent mini documentary. More like this please. These kinds of videos will get the much needed attention required to get anything done, or rather stop getting undone by more car centric mentality bureaucrats.
I've been living in SoCal for 5+ years and the highways here are truly a nightmare. A high percentage of the roads are in complete shambles. Public transportation is a joke.
It will benefit some people! Automobile manufacturers, insurance companies, dealerships. All their shareholders will make a profit. So, it benefits capitalists. That's capitalism for you.
Amazing that in this day and age we can just bulldoze communities for a highway project with little recourse but god forbid instead of a highway it's a high speed rail or subway line... then we can't build a foot without someone trying to derail the project.
"Racist planning patterns"? I hate car-centric environment also, but I think the planning had affected socio-economically challenged people, regardless of their race. Is there any proof that the planning targeted specifically black and latino neighborhoods because they were populated by those races specifically?
it disproportionately effects those communities as the video pointed out. Like they mentioned Sugar Hill. If there were no examples of racism then yes I agree, it would be classist. Unfortunately this country has a history of trying its hardest to keep minority groups as far down as possible. Even past Jim Crow. Ultimately, people are effected, and you should be worried nonetheless.
@@yourex-wife4259 I'm still concerned because I was of those affected, however the white people next to me were in the same situation so calling it "racist" is leaning towards propaganda.
They totally targetted people based on race. Look up redlining. Heck, even _today_ , you'll find lots of people screaming about how they want their suburbs to remain single family home-only because they don't want ThE WrOnG pEoPlE to move in.
There's a lot beautiful historic neighborhoods in L.A. and lot that resemble 3rd world countries... I'm fine with tearing into shitty neighborhoods to improve transit .. and I'm not joking there.. as an avid cyclist for 20 years all over L.A. there are streets you end up on that seem like they could be a shitty neighborhood in Tijuana.... Thousands apon thousands arrive illegally every year ... So they can't immediately rent an apartment in Brentwood.... They still come... In addition to NGO's putting illegals in hotels apon crossing the border and paying for either a flight or bus ticket to their destination of choice in the country now we have to worry about beautifing the neighbords they're moving too in addition to feeding, clothing, and educating their children... Which includes a free school lunch and iPad of course... They can get a state issued driver's license too... Wonder why the Biden Admin now has to keep repeating that the border is not open and smugglers are throwing toddlers over the border fence. Stay tuned, these neighborhoods will start resembling Brazilian favelas soon. .. But those freeways tho! It's L.A... when it comes to global Cities we're one of the youngest... Neighborhoods will change, shit will get bull dozed and torn down... Save the nice stuff and develop the blight... If you can't live here in a neighborhood of your choice... Don't come.... All vehicle will be electric by 2040 anyway... No one will own a car it will just be fleets of self driving Ubers/taxis... Etc etc... Transit will be so efficient we'll be able to start claiming neighborhoods back... Till then f it!
Los Angeles county should be investing that freeway money ($21.3 billion) into heavy rail. Light rail and bus rapid transit are not as effective as the Metro red and purple lines. Shoutout to Westlake/MacArthur park station for having Manhattan inspired architecture.
Until you talk about how unchecked immigration policies and just poor liberal progressive policies have destroyed the los angeles area, i am not interested in your theory that minority communities were harmed solely because of freeway constructions. The people were compensated for moving and they agreed to take the money.
So what is the real answer here? For everyone to get rid of their vehicles and just rely on all public transportation, bicycles and walking everywhere?
The solution is obvious. Build alternative modes of transportation. More and more people will use them. The freeways get less used and you can build lanes back and replace them with more useful infrastructure.
I don’t think you understand how large and spread out the LA area is. Those highways are for getting you from one place to another in the city quickly. Even with the congestion they’re still much quicker than trying to get from place to place on city streets.
And the freeways they did build don’t always make much sense. In Boyle Heights, why didn’t they just make the freeways all go through a 6-way interchange? Might’ve saved more space, and probably would’ve provided more flexibility. If you’re going east on the 101 and need to go north on the 5, or from north of the 5 to go east on the 60, and miss the previous freeway interchanges, you need to take a massive detour. I know LA is littered with freeways, but I’d imagine a lot of tourists also use the freeways, and might not know how to navigate them.
For those unfamiliar with why givernment does this. They have to justify their existence or they get no funding next year. Apply to all givernment agencies. Cops. DMV. Courts. Prisons. Fish and Game. CalFire. Dog catcher. Teachers and schools.
Pfft teacher, asking for money, education, who cares about them it's not like the american education system is working anyway. Give them some crystal healing and prayers.
I must echo that while yes the freeways do go through predominantly poorer neighborhoods, only highlighting them while also showing how the freeway runs through a whole plethora of other neighborhoods not mentioning a word is a bit dodgy. I get the sentiment but maybe it has more to do with land value than just racism.
Well if you think about it the fact that the land value is lower in these neighborhoods is due to racism, even more when they destroy raising immigrant neighbourhoods
If LA would have just invested in light rail systems 50 years ago instead of freeways, imagine how much better of a place it would be to live now... instead of a concrete jungle made for cars rather than human beings.
Except that if you know anything about the history of Los Angeles, you’d know that the same forces that kept freeways running through their neighborhoods also were against any type of light rail. The prevailing thought at the time is it would make it easy for hoodlums and the like to have easy access to upscale neighborhoods.
Pisses me off that no matter how many studies show the negativities of these freeways. These people are always get approved of construction way easier than a group wanting to build public transportation or other modes of transportation for people. They always have the money to build these freeways but they never have the money for actual beneficial amenities for the people.😡
