A rant on "real-time" transit scheduling

I'm mad as hell...

at the love of my life

and I'm not going to take this anymore.

 My feelings toward...

the love of my life

__________________________

Picture this: You break your neck to take the 6:00PM bus from your work in Monterey Park to Downtown LA, to connect to a 6:20 bus that (Google Maps' transit directions say) will get you to your grandparents house right on time for a 7:05 dinner. The first bus arrives a few minutes behind schedule (given by Google Maps), but still gets you to Downtown with 5 minutes to spare. You run up the gently-sloping hill to the stop where you catch the second bus (1 minute). Then you wait 10 minutes: no bus comes.

Its 6:26 now. You take out your smartphone and ping GoogleMaps. From "your location" to my grandparents' address, the app now shows a bus that leaves at 6:38. "You couldn't have missed the 6:20!" your conscience yells. There were two other guys here who say they waited for 5 minutes before (though, did they actually keep track?). Still, its only another 10 minutes, the brain reasons: you take a deep inhale, sigh and return to playing free computer chess.

You lose yourself in plotting some crafty chess moves, eventually taking down a queen and a knight. At some point during the game, you press the home button on your phone by mistake and see that it is 6:50. Suddenly remembering that you are en route to dinner, and not a pawn in a game, you open up Google Maps again. This time, the transit directions instruct you to walk 1 mile to the south to catch a bus that will take 12 minutes longer to deliver you to your grandparents. You are stunned to see that you will not arrive until 8pm. You would miss dinner.

The new calculation throws you into a frenzy. You can order a Lyft Line or Uber Pool and maybe get to your grandparents only 30 minutes late. And yet, you are at a bus stop: what if the bus due at 6:38 miraculously appears a minute after you make your request, which you can't cancel without incurring a $5 penalty. Is a 50 percent or lower chance of saving time worth $11 extra? Your family is more forgiving of delay than, say, your boss, so you continue to wait...

After another 4 minutes, give or take, two buses show up. You board the latter one. Riding in light traffic, the bus drops you off 2 blocks from your grandparent's door at 7:30.

______________________________

I experienced this saga twice last Friday, first on the evening commute from work (as narrated) and later on a trip to the bar (the latter trip did not involve a transfer).

Although the delay was longer than usual, this was not the first time that a Google Maps transit schedule has deceived me. On most of my transit journeys in the Los Angeles region, in fact, Google's transit departure and arrival times seem to follow the official schedules, with buses arriving a few minutes before or after the time given on the application.

Even if such variability does not always cause excessive delay, it forces transit riders to leave extra time for contingencies (e.g. arriving at the bus stop 10 minutes ahead of Google's scheduled times) and diminishes their perceived agency over their trip schedule. By contrast, drivers benefit from real-time traffic information and point-to-point travel. Thus, driving (already privileged by roadway engineering, subsidized infrastructure, etc.) gains even more of an advantage over transit in Los Angeles, and transit riders ditch their straps for steering wheels once they acquire the resources.

Given that automobiles are the greatest source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the state of California, transit's inability to offer riders the accurate, real-time information offered to drivers fails not only transit enterprises, but society. 

Why does Google Maps' transit planner (the most comprehensive transit planning application in terms of regional and national coverage) fail so miserably at providing accurate schedules for LA-area agencies? Is there a structural flaw in the GTFS specification? Does blame lie with the agencies or with Google (or both?)? I am interested in learning more about this problem and engaging with potential solutions.
 

   

I'm back

Now that I've graduated from planning school, I will be writing on a more regular basis.

The last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind for me. I graduated and celebrated for a couple days before beginning a full-time job at a planning consulting firm. In the ten days I have worked there as an employee, I have already completed several major assignments. I feel somewhat accomplished for landing a salaried job, and yet it exhausts me. I don't know how people can put up with this rigid schedule for four decades or more. Maybe I'll get used to it. Or maybe, I've been hooked on the gig economy.

Receiving my master's degree felt like less of a milestone than I anticipated. I don't feel as if I have grown too terribly much over the past few years. I have learned a lot in my program but I still hold many of the same beliefs and preferences (and the same bad habits) that I had two years, or even four years ago (when I graduated from college).

One revelation of my professional program and job networking is that people skills (and communication, more generally) matter more than technical skills for the success of one's career. I can't say I have advanced tangibly in this regard but I have become more discerning of my behavior in social settings.

Anyhow, enough of my life and on to the world. I will try to post at least once a week. Keep me to it!

A train trip across California

On Wednesday, I traveled 442 miles across the state of California, from Oakland to Van Nuys (just north of Los Angeles). Lasting 10.5 hours, the trip is the longest single train voyage I have taken in my life. Paralleling the California Coast Line, the trip provided stunning scenery as well as moments of deep reflection.

Route of train from the Bay Area to Los Angeles

First, the trip provided some amazing vantage points. Near Monterey, the track ran right alongside the Elkhorn Slough salt marsh.

Elkhorn Slough 

Further south, the train hugged the banks of the Salinas River, and later, the Pacific Coastline.

Along the Salinas River, near Bradley California

Beach near Gaviota, about 32 miles west of Santa Barbara

In San Luis Obispo county, the verdant hillside appeared particularly alluring.

The numerous beaches the train passed that lacked a trace of human activity, the hilly pastures teeming with cattle reminded me just how rugged California is beyond the primary urban cores.

Empty Beaches

Finally, the trip exposed me to the state's underbelly. The derricks of the San Ardo Oil Field (the 8th-largest in the state) had a haunting, monstrous aesthetic, a testament to our society's continued dependency on fossil fuel extraction (even in a "progressive" state).

The California Men's Colony, north of San Luis Obispo, paired authoritarian, rectangular geometry with a suprising openness to the outside world. I could see persons (prisoners?) wandering through the courtyard from the train.

San Ardo Oil Field in operation

California Men's Colony

I stepped onto the platform in Van Nuys with sensations of perplexment and awe.

16th-century Spanish conquistadores conceived of California as a physical island. I believe this metaphor to be quite fitting, when taken in the plural: not a singular island but an archipelago.

Trump the Caudillo and the Latin American-ization of US Politics

Top: Juan Peron, two-term president of Argentina     Bottom: Donald Trump


Donald Trump's authoritarian, demagogue-like tendencies frequently merit comparison to Hitler and Mussolini. On the morning after Il Orange entered the Oval Office, a search for "fascism" turned up about 285,000 listings on Google News, with the vast majority of results (on the first three pages) pertaining to the Cheato.  Unfortunately, the gross, genocidal excesses of both the fascist and Nazi regimes make these comparison a bit ineffective in my opinion (as long as he does not start a World War and commit mass murder of ethnic minorities, Trump will be "okay"). A more effective (and recent) parallel may be drawn to the Caudillos, or populist strongmen, of Latin America.

Often (but not always) emerging from the military, and including leaders as diverse as Augusto Pinochet, Juan Peron and, disputedly, Hugo Chavez, the Caudillo rises to power through brash appeal to the disaffected working classes. Once he takes control (sometimes through military coup but often through popular vote) the Caudillo dilutes or abolishes the legislative checks on his executive power (e.g. amending the constitution to run for additional terms or evicting the press from the Oval Office), without actually upending with the democratic system or its institutions of governance. When the political establishment cries foul, the Caudillo declares that he is "under attack" by the ruling (e.g. beltway) elites, thereby rallying support from disaffected segments of the lower or middle classes.

Furthermore, an essential component of a Caudillo's appeal (particularly for right-leaning ones) is the projection of masculine dominance--the image of the "macho" man who can get things done (and have his way with woman).

What is particularly striking about the comparison of Donald Trump and Latin American strongmen are the similar political contexts which have birthed them. Latin American countries are among the few in the world that share the United State's presidential form of democracy, where the executive branch is chosen independently from the legislative branch. In contrast to the form of parliamentary democracy dominant in Europe, the executive in a presidential republic does not leave office if an opposing gains control of the legislature. And yet, presidential republics naturally subject the executive's law-making authority to the legislature's approval as part of the system of checks-and-balances. Therefore, when the branches of government are divided, especially between ideologically-opposed parties, gridlock is the most likely outcome.

Since the president's derives his legitimacy independently from the legislature, arbitrary executive authority provides a convenient tool to break inaction, one that--unfortunately--subverts the legislative checks crucial to democracy's survival.


For a long time the American President did not need to override Congress because members of both parties could compromise to enact legislation with a broad centrist appeal. The ideological polarization of recent decades has changed this. Presidents Bush and Obama both came to rely on executive mandate. God only knows how Trump might wield his power on immigration policy or trade.

In Latin American countries, by contrast, the legacies of a colonial caste system have long produced sharp division between white criollo landowners and a mixed-race and indigenous laboring class. Thus presidential democracy has been tested from an early age by a combination of class- and race-based polarization (often augmented by geography), which has only afflicted the US political system for the last 50 years.

(Of course, the US political system largely muted racial divisions for much of its history by actively excluding the colored working classes from political participation. My argument is that such polarization did not previously manifest itself in politics, not that it did not previously exist).  

With sharp polarization, partisans on one side will believe the worst of the opposing party (even ludicrous mistruths). When their party secures the presidency, they will support any executive initiative to overcome opposition in the legislature (especially by a minority party). If their party controls the legislature (but not the presidency) they will demand obstruction of governance, to the point of a breakdown (or unilateral action).

Such contempt for minority rights (or, alternatively phrased, support for authoritarianism) is especially evident among classes that feel like their position of privilege is threatened.

Will Trump use the slightest threat to declare a state of emergency (with the military by his side)? Will he simply work to perpetuate GOP rule by appointing justices who strike down the remainder of our voting rights protections? Or will he alter libel laws so that he can stifle critical media coverage with lawsuits?

The future is uncertain, terrifyingly so.

Our country is not exceptional (i.e. destined to be a liberally democratic). The historical moment is not normal.

For the next four years, we must never let down our guard.

We must always resist.

2016: What were you and where am I?

As the New Year approaches, I am at a bit of a loss for words.

Partly, I have been experiencing a bit of burnout the past few weeks after a 10-week quarter in which I wrote more than 50 pages worth of analytical material on planning history and theory and transportation policy.  

Even more broadly, 2016 has been an exceptionally surreal year, punctuated by unexpected and cataclysmic events that have been difficult to explain or to minimize out of my daily routine of existence.

The election of Donald Trump, the "Brexit" referendum results, the sabotage of the American election by Russian spies. Just like the string of celebrity deaths in the past week, these events numb one with shock (Listening to Obama's and Hillary's speeches in the back of an Uber on the morning of November 9th came the closest I have felt to living a hallucination).

But since my future career (as a Transportation planning and policy student) entails working with or on behalf of local governments the great "political" events or very much personal. If the Trump administration cuts off federal support for public transportation (and redirects such funding towards private toll roads) or strangles LA's wholesale sector by imposing tariffs, then not only will my job opportunities but the ideals I aspire towards in my career suffer a set back.  

Once upon a time, I shunned "Identity Politics" and though that racism did not affect me. I have evolved  a great deal since then, but until this November I did not feel as if my personal existence, as an American with Chinese ancestry, was threatened. Watching a middle-aged white male yell at an Asian undergrad to "go back to your own country," in the middle of my campus's Court of Sciences, shattered my blissful contentedness.

Sharing an Uber (back in March, believe it or not!) with a young man who complained about "Islam" and "cuck-servatism". Consoling a teary-eyed stranger in an Uber on election night.                          

Even watching the cities I had visited in Europe a few years back suffer both jihadi terrorist attacks and far right political rallies sent shivers up me.

For all the catastrophes that have shaped the world around me, however, I have been fortunate to have made good friends a part of my return to school. I have also managed to reconnect with a number of people from my undergrad days and earlier (particularly through the Olive Tree Initiative). It is in times like these that these personal connections matter most.

This is also the year that I first felt "old" in more than a relative sense. A few crazy nights back in February (which resulted in me getting a fever) revealed a liver that lacked its youthful pep. Having lost my uncle and a close friend in the previous year, I have given a lot more thought to my mortality. I officially reached a quarter century in age.

Time does not stand still but it does not necessarily progress or retreat.

That is my story of 2016.

Los Angeles: The Beautiful and the Ugly

It dawned on me this past May as I rode phase 2 of the Expo Line for the first time, over the bridge above Sepulveda Blvd. It was the very thought that would come to me frequently as I drove north on the 405 from the airport to UCLA, or that one time when I stood  on top of the Baldwin Hills Overlook....  I would peer out the side window, or over the dashboard, and catch sight of the Wilshire Corridor's skyscrapers arrayed against the parched Santa Monica Mountains, perhaps (at the overlook) also peering over boxy retail and commercial buildings and single-family homes in the foreground. The interjection of untamed nature among thick swathes of (bland) modernist development, and the erection of a concrete human presence in semi-arid steppeland have both exasperated and intrigued me...

Mid-century modernism ringed by sun-baked mountains and irrigated greenery

What these experiences have reminded me is that Los Angeles is simultaneously "beautiful", embodying many of the good qualities of cities, and "ugly", embodying many of the bad. As has been true from time immemorial (e.g. sunshine and noir), the city's positives and negatives interact more through means of paradox than juxtaposition.

Take for instance, the pristine nature, such as that I observed in the mountain views. Few other American cities (in fact, Portland, is the only other city that immediately comes to mind) have such expansive tracts of wilderness as the Santa Monica Mountains, Griffth Park and Runyon Canyon in such close proximity to the urban core. Mountain Lions and Coyotes scamper across the region's busy freeways, and hide behind apartment buildings in dense neighborhoods like Westlake. And yet, Los Angeles is notorious for its paucity of traditional urban "green space." Not only does LA have the fewest parks per square mile of any major American city, but (outside of Downtown), the parks it has do not provide the sort of social gathering space found in European or Eastern cities.

As if to compound the problems of deficient open space, Los Angeles is dense. The metropolitan area as a whole is the densest in the country, while, as of the year 20101, the city's planning sub-areas ranged in population density (measured in persons per square mile) from a figure just above Portland's (for West Los Angeles) to a figure almost equal to San Francisco's (South Los Angeles). With people of every race, color and creed jammed together into duplexes and townhouses from Encino to San Pedro, the region should be an urbanist's dream.

Nature, Los Angeles-style

Unfortunately, Greater Los Angeles' density is (for the most part) haphazardly dispersed rather than centrally-concentrated, justifying the region's reputation for "sprawl".  20-mile to 30-mile long swaths of the San Fernando, San Bernadino and San Gabriel Valleys are blanketed by a morass of dingbats and pre-fabricated apartment buildings: with millions commuting between each of these valleys and the coastal business centers or office parks further inland (along geographically-constricted corridors), the end result is notorious congestion. The prevalence of car-centered strip mall commercial corridors in "urban" Koreatown as much as in "suburban" Covina adds to the all-around blight and congestion.  You can get the two-story suburban house with a backyard and (maybe) a pool, or the compact two-bedroom apartment: but the former does not offer tranquil seclusion and the latter lacks vibrant architecture or public space. Instead, urban life manifests in jam-packed highways...and smog.  

And then there's walking. An 80s-pop song reminds New Yorkers that "Nobody walks in LA" but this is far from the truth. Indeed, perhaps no other city in America ritualizes walking as much as LA does. From 7am to 8am and 5pm to 7pm each weekday, an army of joggers and dogwalkers fans out across the sidewalks of every single-family residential zoned neighborhood in the region. Like clockwork, the pedestrian legion dissipates at the end of the timeframe almost as quickly as it appears (though activity is somewhat more constant at some of the Regional Parks, e.g. Runyon Canyon). Outside of some isolated tourist hotspots (e.g. Hollywood, downtown Beverly Hills), nobody walks in LA to get places but everybody does their daily "walk" for a healthy heart and lower cholesteral.

To be more accurate, the above applies to middle and upper-class Angelenos (the cohort which I live among). The places in LA that boast the most throngs of pedestrians are the lower-income, predominantly Latino and Asian neighborhoods that ring Downtown. Stand for a few minutes at the corner of Western Avenue and 6th Street in Koreatown or Alvarado and 7th Street in Westlake and you can easily fool yourself into thinking you are in Manhattan (for the former) or Mexico City (for the latter). Supporting the pedestrian throngs are a cohort of street vendors, one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere (who are kept a safe distance from bourgeois districts, due to city ordinances that officially "outlaw" such activity). Los Angeles is one of the few major cities in the world in which the liveliest neighborhoods tend to be the most impoverished.

That being said, the gentrification of Downtown's Historic Core changes the picture a little, though I see that area as more of a hipster Hollywood (predominantly a nightlife destination) than a genuinely walkable neighborhood. Spring Street now even has a dog park...

A lack of public space and human interaction, as well as a vast physical geography, cause (middle- to upper-class) Los Angeles residents to suffer from personal isolation to an extent unknown in any other world city. If you have your circle of friends from college, you'll make the weekly drive to cling together. If not, then good luck (You're as likely to run into a tourist from Shanghai or Dusseldorf as you are a resident from the neighboring apartment block, when frequenting the Grove). Visitors from the East Coast and Europe are always impressed by the outward "friendliness" of our residents--especially those who work in restaurants or coffee shops. Little do they remember that many of us are professional actors, who do their best to conceal how much all of us suffer.  

And finally, there's the human diversity. I once encountered a statistic stating that the students of the Los Angeles Unified School District speak 120-something languages at home. From personal experience, I can attest that the LA area is one of the few in the country (if not the world) which boasts eateries featuring almost every cuisine imaginable (see my new food blog for more on this). And yet, thanks to the lack of public space and communal interaction, Los Angeles' diversity results more in atomization than cross-pollination. Jane Jacobs famously remarked on a Los Angeles resident who had "never laid eyes on a Mexican"2, despite its significant Mexican population. I myself never ate at a taco at one of the city's iconic loncheras until I started venturing to the Eastside as a Lyft driver after college. As food critic Jonathan Gold once said, in Los Angeles the (different) ethnic groups "cook for themselves" and not for one another or the city as a whole. Such an attitude contributes to the city in raw variety and authenticity, but deprives the city of social cohesion, personal enrichment (for its individual citizens) and a unique sense of place.

 Having recently left the city for a week-long vacation, I understand how much I love LA. The vast expanse of urbanity, the variety of people and places, the mountain vistas and ocean sunsets, the taco trucks and loncheras... Each of these qualities is intertwined with such social ills as sprawl, traffic, or conflict. It is true that Los Angeles has long-lacked in quality long-term city planning, though maybe Los Angeles is too complex or too "real". to reduce to a perfected form. Regardless of whether I can live to see that ideal implemented, I can ponder a better future while cherishing the present.


1. Based on calculations I made as part of a project for work, in June.  
2. Jacobs, Jane. The Life and Death of Great American Cities, pg. 72. 

An Angeleno visits the Twin Cities

Both in my work and private life (i.e. on this blog), I have spent much of the past two years critiquing transportation and land use planning here in Los Angeles.  A recent visit to the Twin Cities metropolis, a region  that is seen as a national model for multi-modal transportation planning (as well as in affordable housing and economic development) gave me the opportunity to assess Los Angeles' shortcomings with a more rounded perspective. I arrived at the following observations.

1. As in Los Angeles, the Twin Cities' gestating Metro system anchors on the city of Minneapolis' downtown core (the system's planned expansion aims to keep things this way). Besides the fact that such a system marginalizes the downtown of the region's second anchor city, St. Paul (served by a single line leading to Downtown Minneapolis), it also ignores the importance of the numerous urban commercial, retail and entertainment centers outside of either city's downtown, like Minneapolis's Uptown District and St. Paul's Grand Avenue. Indeed, I noticed that much like Downtown Los Angeles of the 1980s and 1990s, Downtown Minneapolis serves primarily as a weekday employment center: outside of narrow corridors along the Nicollet Mall, First Avenue and Washington Avenue, almost all restaurants and shops closed all-day on Saturdays and Sundays and at 6 pm on weekdays. By contrast, when I visited Uptown and Grand Avenue, at 8 pm on a Monday and on a Saturday morning respectively, I encountered a healthy mix of shops, restaurants and bars open to business (and serving patrons), in settings that were just as walkable and compact. Luckily, Downtown Los Angeles is no longer so fixated around the workweek (except in the vicinity of the Civic Center). And, yet, a general problem for downtown-centric transportation planning still applies: by focusing on only one of several regional "centers", each of which may serve as important (or specialized) of a use as the other, a transit system will only capture a segment of one flow of regional commuter traffic.    

2. By running light-rail lines on at-grade (streetcar-esque) alignments through a heavily-trafficked downtown core, a transit operator limits the line's convenience. In Downtown Minneapolis, it takes at least 7 minutes (according to the schedule: It felt even longer each time I rode) for the Green or Blue Lines to travel the 1.5 mile distance from Target Field to the US Bank Center station, almost as much as the amount of time it takes the Blue Line to traverse the ensuing 3.4 miles from US Bank Center station to 38th Street station. At-grade, street-level track layouts have a similarly-retarding effect on the Expo Line's journey along Flower between Pico and Jefferson and on the Gold Line's crawl along Marmion Way in Highland Park. My experiences in Minneapolis reaffirmed my belief that tunneling or bridging expenses are justified for transit line segments through dense or heavily-trafficked areas, where such improvements result in commute time savings (which translate, in turn, to increased ridership) and fatality reductions.

3. Minneapolis's Blue Line also slows dramatically just south of the International Airport, in the stretch between the Terminal 2 and Mall of America stations. In the span of only half a mile, the Blue Line makes 3 stops (American Boulevard, Bloomington Central and 28th Avenue) as it winds through an agglomeration of parking lots and suburban office parks, before terminating inside the Mall of America. That's right: three stops within the classic half-mile walk circle! Since I traveled on a Saturday, the entire district (and each of the three stations) was deserted, but I am sure that even during the week, the copious free parking and lack of pedestrian infrastructure ensure that the vast majority of the persons employed in the district drive to work. Of course, the lack of walkability might be cited in support of placing the three stations (each in proximity to a major hotel or corporate complex) so close together but this begs the question: why build stations to serve an auto-centric, weekday-exclusive business center in the first place (retarding the Blue Line's speed on this stretch)?

 As with Los Angeles' prioritization of the Foothill Gold Line extension over the Crenshaw Line or Purple Line to Westwood, the answer probably lies in politics (i.e. appeasing suburban constituencies), not revenue or ridership.

4. Minneapolis's Grand Rounds Scenic Byway bicycle "highway" is truly impressive, both in its scope and scenery. However, I would hesitate to assert (as the folks at WalkScore do) that Minneapolis is America's most bike-friendly city, based on its bike paths, since the bike lane network seemed lacking. Compared to Portland, bike lanes in Minneapolis were thinly distributed (as far as a mile apart outside Downtown). Many important bike connections (e.g. along Riverside Avenue between the Franklin Bridge and the University of Minnesota's West Bank Campus) teetered rather precariously (none were protected) on the edge of 4- to 6-lane speedways, which teemed with sedans dashing to enter the Interstate. Much like Los Angeles, Minneapolis gave way too much street space too cars back in the 1950s and 1960s and still acts too timidly in reclaiming space for bikes. While the Grand Rounds bike path system is great for joyriding, it fails to provide mobility since it runs mostly through residential areas on the edge of the city, with few urban amenities nearby (Portions of the Chain of Lakes and Mississippi River segments get pretty close to Uptown and Downtown, but lie in parkland areas separated by a few blocks from the main commercial strips). In terms of bicycle planning, Minneapolis is no model for Los Angeles.

5. My line of reasoning in point 4 leads to my final conclusion: That Minneapolis-St. Paul felt (*gasp), on the whole. less walkable than LA. Not only did the region's arterials and local streets devote disproportionate space to cars (like ours) but many signaled intersections in outlying neighborhoods, partuicularly at intersections between arterial and local streets, lacked demarcated crosswalks. The absence of this feature, which I have come to take for granted in my hometown, made it difficult to get right-turing cars to slow down and enabled cars in the through lanes (without a visible reference) to block the pedestrian crossing space. In addition, Minneapolis's Skyway system seems to deplete much of Downtown Minneapolis of street-level retail and dining amenities, making it more difficult to sightsee the city's urban core on foot. Minneapolis's city leaders should take some advice from this urbanist.

The moral of the trip? Maybe LA is not so doomed after all.