Mobility Plan 2035: Is the Road to Hell Paved with Good Intention?
By Dick Platkin*
(Published by CityWatchLA on Nov. 12, 2015)
In general, the public pays little
attention to the City of LA’s legally required General Plan, including its
mandatory and optional Elements. But the
required Circulation Element, called the Mobility Plan or MP 2035, is different,
at least among that small minority of Angelenos who care about local government. This might be why the Los Angeles
Times and KPCC
have regularly reported on the Mobility Plan.
I find this new General Plan Element
problematic, but not for the reasons presented publicly and privately by the
Element’s critics, including those who have filed a lawsuit to overturn it.
To understand why MP 2035 is
problematic, let’s take a broad look at LA’s transportation realities:
· Los
Angeles continues to have the worst traffic
congestion and the worst air
in the entire United States.
· The
city’s built environment heavily favors automobile driving through its road
system and its auto-centric buildings.
· METRO
and related bus systems are over-priced,
unreliable, and uncomfortable, with bus fares steadily
rising in conjunction with service cutbacks.
As a result, transit
ridership is flat.
· Even
though LA is an ideal urban area for bicycling because of its wide, flat roads
and balmy climate, most bicyclists are reluctant to take to the streets because
of potholes, the lack of protected bike lanes, and missing bicycle
infrastructure at public and private buildings.
· The
City of Los Angeles is subject to numerous statewide laws and regulations in California
regarding planning. In particular, the Complete
Streets Act requires each city to plan for all
transportation modes (options), not just cars. In addition, the State’s far-reaching
climate
change legislation and regulations also shape local
transportation planning.
· People’s
transportation behavior invariably reflects a city’s built
environment. It not only shapes everyone’s realistic
transportation options, but it forms our personal habits. As a result, most Angelenos rely on private
cars for the bulk of their local trips.
The exceptions are the transit dependent (disabled, elderly, students,
and poor), as well as the early adapters, those who have consciously moved to
Downtown LA or the Wilshire Corridor to use subways, busses, and their feet.
Debate over the Mobility Plan: I have followed the debate over
the Mobility Plan closely, and I have yet to hear what the
critics propose as an alternative plan, other than an implicit call for more-of-the-same. Since more-of-the-same was
considered in the Mobility Element’s EIR as Alternatives
1 and possibly 2, we can predict their consequences. They would perpetuate a city in which the existing
street system and auto-centric buildings promote endless automobile driving, reinforced
by beat-up sidewalks, expensive and reduced bus service, and few truly safe
bike lanes. As a consequence, Angelenos would
continue to suffer from toxic air, industrial strength traffic congestion, and high accident
rates, especially for pedestrians.
If we look at other
criticism’s of the Mobility Element, nearly all of them deal with complaints
about bureaucratic procedure, not substance based on the
most basic transportation question of all:
Is the purpose of LA’s
transportation system to move cars or to move people?
Other complaints are
peripheral, such as objections to the addition of a bicycle lane to specific
streets, such as 6th Street in the Miracle Mile, Westwood Boulevard
in West LA, or Central Avenue in South LA.
And, other complaints are
just plain mindless, such as the charge that an elitist
minority of bicycle riders have imposed their youthful lifestyle of the
rest of Angelenos, whose choice to drive their car is, by now, a life-ling
habit. Really? In reality the car still reins supreme in Los
Angeles, whether one looks at streets or buildings. In fact, City Hall only has a few employees
who deal with bicycle lanes and bicycle infrastructure. This for a simple reason. The City budget ignores bicycling, while the
lion’s share of public resources are devoted to maintaining 6,500 miles
of roadway, with the goal moving cars as fast as possible. Despite all the hoopla, Los Angeles only has
about 500 miles of
bike lanes, most of which are just a line painted on the
street, not the protected lanes that are already common in New York and other bicycle-friendly
cities.
Lurking behind many of the
procedural and anecdotal charges about the Mobility Element is the belief, I
think, that the bicycle, pedestrian, and transit advocates who strongly support
the Element are unwitting proxies for developers. Since the Element endorses Transit Oriented
Development (TOD) and since these advocates of alternative transportation modes
support the Mobility Element, they are, whether they know it or not, the
cheerleaders for real estate speculation.
This suspicion, however, is
baseless for several reasons. First, for
the past 20 years adopted public policy in Los Angeles called for Transit
Oriented Development (TOD). When it has
appeared, however, it is not because of a few pages in the General Plan Framework’s
Transportation
Chapter, but because a real estate speculator saw a
financial opportunity. Second, when
their projects needed discretionary zoning approvals, they were granted
reflexively at a “business-friendly” City Hall, not because the Framework had a
TOD policy.
The Mobility Element’s Real Problems:
If the objections to the new Mobility
Plan are largely based on anecdote and procedure, rather than substance, what,
then, is so problematic about this Plan, which otherwise seems to be so
well-intentioned and consistent with the principles of sustainable city
planning?
The answer is that in Los
Angeles the General Plan is nothing more than a legal requirement imposed by
the State of California and repeated in
the City Charter. It is
not taken seriously by any branch of City government, whether the Executive or
Legislative, as evidenced by the following:
· The
General Plan is not kept up
to date. As one looks through its seven required
elements, as well as optional elements, such as the General Plan Framework, they
have different base years and different horizon years. To their credit, though, they often have
overlapping policies. This means that the
very policies that irked the Mobility Plan’s critics, such as Transit
Oriented Districts, as expanded in the Framework’s Transportation
Improvement and Mitigation Program (TIMP), have been on the books
for years in other General Plan Elements.
These precursors of the Mobility Element have quietly gathered dust, to
the point that both professional planners and neighborhood planning activists
pay no heed to them.
·
The
City of Los Angeles’s budgeting
process is entirely separate from the planning
process. The vast array of policies and
programs presented in the General Plan’s elements, including the new Mobility
Element, are totally ignored when the City Administrative Office, the Mayor’s
Office, and the City Council divide up the pie.
·
Likewise
the City’s legislative process is totally disconnected from the General Plan,
other than tacking on voluminous
ordinances to up-zone and up-plan swaths of LA through Community
Plans Updates.
·
The
land use approval process in Los Angeles also proceeds on a parallel track,
independent of adopted General Plan policies.
Nearly every application for an entitlement is “Approved with
conditions.” While these approvals
require a finding of consistency with the General Plan, this finding is nothing
more than boilerplate language habitually copied from one approval to another.
·
Despite
the State of California’s general plan guidelines,
elaborate monitoring programs detailed in the General Plan
Framework and its EIR,
and several law suits, the City has no way to determine if any Mobility Element
programs will have been implemented or if any of its policy goals will have
been achieved. This is because the
monitoring program does not exist.
What these gross deficiencies
mean is that the new Mobility Element is a stand-alone shelf document. Its only implementing ordinance addresses street
standards. It has
no attached budget allocations or departmental work programs, and there is no
systematic way to know if any of it programs are implemented or the Mobility Element’s
goals have been achieved. Will it make
walking, biking, and driving safer? Will
people switch transportation modes when they are offered better options? Will congestion go up or down in different neighborhoods?
Will emergency vehicles be hemmed in by worsening traffic jams? Will air quality improve? Other
than by anecdote, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, these will be, “Unknown unknowns.”
Both the gloom and doom
predicted by the Element’s critics, as well as the important safety features,
enhanced transportation options, and sustainable behavior foreseen by the
Element’s supporters will remain speculation.
Like budget allocations, implementing ordinances, and work programs, the
data and supporting analysis will not be there.
This is the real problem
facing the Mobility Element and the other General Plan elements in Los Angeles. They are totally oblique to a planning
process that is entirely driven by market forces and delivered to City Hall by
well-paid and, in turn, generous land use attorneys, lobbyists, and expediters.
*Dick Platkin reports on city
planning and related issues for City Watch.
He welcomes questions, corrections, and comments at rhplatkin@gmail.com.
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