Thursday's talk with Joshua Schank: Promising with concern?

Thursday evening, I had the pleasure of listening to Joshua Schanck, Metro's first Chief Innnovation Officer, explain how he would use his new post to improve the way business is conducted at a transit agency that is currently grappling with a slump in ridership.

As the head of the "Office of Extraordinary Innovation" (created last spring), Schanck portrayed the emerging division as an "incubator" for innovation at Metro, that would solicit input from outside the transit bureaucracy. 

Through an "Unsolicited Proposal" policy, Schanck promised that the office would accept proposals from any group or individual for public transit improvement in the region. Schanck additionally hinted that a series of upcoming outreach events would allow Metro a broader conduit to solicit the public's opinion and experience.   

Moreover, the office would assist Metro in implementing new pilot projects and public-private partnerships  (P3), including an anticipatory hint that the latter would be used to help construct a "major infrastructure project." 

Schanck's emphasis on outreach is certainly a step in the right direction (as long as a NIMBY hijacking is averted): past service cuts and operational features (e.g. fabric seating) show that Metro planners and decision-makers aren't always on the same page as riders (as I have discussed before). I don't have the same enthusiasm for the public-private partnership idea, but whatever might help speed up Metro's woefully slow project construction timetables should be supported.

And yet, although Schanck's vision sounded hopeful, his talk also raised questions as to the extent to which his office could actually affect systematic change.

In the course of his talk, Schanck openly pointed to the fact that a conservative bureaucacy in Metro seeks to impede more radical change.

Afterwards, during the Q-and-A session, Schanck mentioned in one of his answers (to a question about regional agency fragmentation) that Metro's own bureaucracy is fragmented and discoordinated enough that it need to be put in shape. This hardly sounds like an entity that could affect radical change.

That fragmentation was on display when an audience member voiced a complaint about Metro's procurement policies. Schanck claimed not to know about procurement, stating something to the effect that Metro is a huge organization and it was in the hands of a different agency.

I let out a little sigh. What was I to expect? 

Autopia is deadly

The website Vox is a great resource for news junkies like myself. You can waste a whole Saturday browsing "card" sets explaining issues like the Flint Water Crisis  and the Hillary Clinton's email scandal. And the trivia you absorb not only helps for the cocktail event but can spark some profound thought.

Anyhow, the website's German Lopez wrote today about a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association inquiring why Americans, in the year 2012, had an average life expectancy 2.2 years less than that of their peers in other high-income industrial countries.

Lopez notes that the studied concluded that "guns, drugs and cars" were "three of the big drivers" for the gap.

Indeed, in the case of cars, the US' auto fatality rate per 100,000 persons was 15.60 people, more than three times the death rate in the other high-income countries studied.

 For all three factors, Lopez notes, cites weak or regressive government policies as a contributing factor. For cars, Lopez blames America's pursuit of policies that "encouraged sprawl and driving" even as European planners shifted towards a more multi-modal approach (that encouraged walking, cycling and public transportation) starting in the 1960s.

(Disclaimer: CityLab had a piece a few weeks ago specifically comparing transportation patterns in the US and Germany and the disparities are stark. I myself, having lived in a city of about 85,000 souls in Germany for a month can confirm that getting around by bus in a small city in Germany is easier than traveling by car in Los Angeles.)

Its not just the environment at stake, but lives.

Wednesday's Cityline Ride

I rode West Hollywood's "CitylineX", a complimentary shuttle that runs at peak hours to and from Hollywood/Highland station along Santa Monica Blvd (the city's main commercial drag) for the first time on Wednesday. and I had a few complaints to vent.

1. Duplication. Metros 704 and 4 local buses also head to the red line (at Santa Monica/Vermont station) with the same or better frequency. You end up paying the same 1.75 single-ride fare either way (since the fares now include bus-train transfers) so not why not just ride whichever bus comes first?

2. If you're going to compete with the 704 bus, at least be faster. Taking the Red Line and CitylineX shuttle from my work (at City Hall) to Weho's Hamburger Mary's restaurant took me about an hour and 10 minutes, only 10 minutes than it would take to ride the Metro and 704 (and walk) all the way to my apartment (about 1.6 miles further down Santa Monica). I have a feeling that this is because: a). You have to ride 6 minutes further up the line to get from Santa Monica/Vermont to Hollywood/Highland station, and b). You have to travel a mile south on one of the most congested stretches of Highland avenue to reach Santa Monica Blvd. from Hollywood/Highland, taking away from the 2.68 mile-westerly advantage of Hollywood/Highland station over Santa Monica/Vermont.

3. Is West Hollywood a 9-to-5 Business District or a sleepy bedrooom community? No! Then, why does the Cityride shuttle only during the peak workday commute times? Indeed, much of West Hollywood's travel activity (even during the week) is generated by late-night entertainment venues or mid-day and evening dining activity. Remember too, that the red line will only get you to either the Valley or Downtown and, given geography, it is just as easy for residents commuting Downtown to take the 704 to the train. A 24-hour service, that captures both evening and mid-day traffic, could benefit both travelers headed from the northeast valley to dine and dance in the city and the two-way club- and dining-bound traffic between Weho, Hollywood and the eastside.


4. What about the (notoriously-congested) Sunset Strip? Santa Monica Blvd is not Weho's only big arterial. (Personally I think a "loop" along both streets) would be ideal.

5. Why not just extend the pickup trolley to Hollywood/Highland and make it all-day?

Oscars' monochromatic nature reflects Hollywood's detachment from Greater Los Angeles

The #Oscarsowhite controversy hits close to home for me.

A college roommate and friend of mine, a talented young actor of Indian ancestry, was once told that he could only get ahead in hollywood by playing either a terrorist or a nerd. When I last caught up with him, I learned that he was focused on independent production of short films (rather than landing in mainstream auditions).

Indeed, it is widely known the ethnocentrism of Hollywood not only undervalues the talent of African-American actors but virtually erases Asian-American and Hispanic-American characters from the silver screen.

Being of Asian-american background, I find this frustrating enough on a personal level.

As a resident of Los Angeles, however, I find it far more irritating that Hollywood's whiteness is so out-of-sync with the demographics of its home region.

According to data from the 2010 census, only 26.8 percent of Los Angeles County residents identified as White Non-Hispanic. Indeed, the plurality of Angelenos identified (instead) as Hispanic or Latino, Significant minorities of the population identified as either Asian or black (14.8 percent or 9.2 percent respectively).

While Hollywood has no problem searching out new talent in England or Australia, it ignores the well-spring of potential talent in (predominantly-minority) municipalities like Sylmar and Norwalk that are right in its backyard.

Racism and ignorance aside, one may ask why it matters whether Hollywood's benefits accrue evenly throughout LA, especially when other regionally-focused industries (like Silicon Valley and Wall Street) similarly benefit a narrow segment of the population of their home regions?

A simple answer can be found in the 330-million dollar a year tax credit the state of California will soon award to film projects made in the state.

The primary rationale state lawmakers gave for approving this weighty expense of public revenue (which will amount to an increase over the previous 100-million-dollar a year tax credit) was the amount of jobs the film industry supposedly creates for the state of California. If the film shooting continues to leave Southern California, the thinking goes, the economy will suffer.

Of course, an industry does not benefit a region at a meaningful level if it only allocates jobs to members of a particular ethnic grouping.

Particularly in a region where race strongly coincides with geography (and economic well-being), Hollywood's government benefactors should take a closer look at how the industry actually benefits their own constituents.

Subprime auto lending: the revenge of auto-dependence

In the past year, several commentators  (and the US government's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) have pointed to a worrisome rise in subprime auto loans, doled out to individuals with low credit scores and offering increasingly lengthy periods of repayment.

By spreading out interest payment over a longer amount of time, such loans provide an illusively small monthly payment to insolvent individuals, that obscures the high cumulative interest such individuals end up paying.

Of course, this hasn't stopped Wall Street from bundling these loans into securities. Nor has it prevented profit-hungry investors from snatching these securities up, as this Bloomberg News article from last June points out:

Of the subprime vehicle loans bundled into securities, 73 percent now exceed five years, up from 64 percent during the first three months of 2014, according to data from Citigroup Inc. Loans as long as seven years are increasingly being put into more bonds as auto-finance companies and Wall Street banks sell the securities at the fastest pace since 2007.The longer loans make it easier for consumers to afford rising new and used car prices by spreading out and lowering payments. While the securities are attracting plenty of buyers with high loss buffers and AAA ratings, some investors are beginning to question the wisdom of lending at terms that have never extended beyond five years.“Everyone has used the argument that borrowers pay car loans because they have to get to work,” said Anup Agarwal, a money manager who oversees $65 billion at Western Asset Management Co. and hasn’t bought a subprime auto bond in a year and a half. “But borrowers only pay loans if the car is working. We have not seen this cycle come through yet.”

If Agarwal hints at a potential for implosion, Raj Date, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, points to factors that make such a scenario likely:

The shift to longer-term loans makes it easy for borrowers to be duped into focusing on lower monthly payments rather than the costs over the life of the obligation, said Raj Date, former deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who now heads the Washington consulting firm Fenway Summer LLC.

While cars are lasting longer than in the past, regulators are concerned that the value of the vehicles will fall faster than borrowers can pay off the debt.

“Because cars depreciate quickly, a borrower is typically upside down or underwater toward the end of a long loan term,” Date said. “If times are tough you might have to sell your car, but you’re still going to owe more than you can get through the sale.”

"Never worry", say investors. The ratings agencies back us up.

History is also on the side of investors. Since 2004, Standard & Poor’s has upgraded 371 classes of subprime auto deals and downgraded none, data from the company show. While delinquencies longer than 60 days have increased, net losses in the debt have dropped from a year ago, S&P said Wednesday in a report.

Even with the built-in protections, some market participants are starting to caution that buyers may be letting down their guard for the sake of higher yields.

If any of this sounds familiar, its because this is exactly the type of risk-taking (in houainf investment) that precipitated the 2008 recession.

This is not to state that auto loans represent the number one threat to the US economy. The economic slowdown in China will likely infect market performance in the near future regardless of the state of auto loan securities.

And yet, if the balloon in auto loans threatens financial stability, it does so because Americans continue to rely on the automobile even as car ownership becomes less economically sustainable for most.

Although the American job market has (by this point in time) rebounded from the last recession, wages have remained stagnant. For instance, jobs added to the economy in the first half of 2014 offered wages that were, on average, 23 percent lower than the jobs lost in 2008 and 2009.

At the same time, auto sales reached an all-time high in 2015, with more than 17.4 million vehicles sold.

The latter piece of news  may come across as a surprise to many readers (particularly those who are avid urbanists). After all, haven't per capita Vehicle Miles Traveled been on the decline since 20051? Aren't millenials, especially, driving at a later age and less frequently than previous generations?

For one thing, the past decade's decline in vehicle miles by no means implies that people are giving up driving altogether. Weary of incessant freeway gridlock (resulting from the broach of peak road capacity), people may simply be driving more locally2. Indeed, in Los Angeles, where per capita Vehicle miles have declined by nearly nine percent from 2002, more than 50 percent of personal trips currently have a range of three miles or less and 80 percent of these trips  are made by car.

As for the much-touted decline in youth driving over the past decade-and-a-half, research  from UCLA's Kelcie Ralph and the University of North Carolina's Noreen McDonald  indicates that more of the decline has stemmed from an increase in "carless" (in the phrasing of Ralph) individuals, whose lack of access to an automobile (often for economic reasons) constrains daily mobility, rather than in "multimodal" individuals, who purposefully substitute access to a car (by choice) with alternative modes such as walking and public transit. According to Ralph's study, the percentage of "drivers" among youth remained high at 79 percent.

Other data shows in the state of California alone (which is far from being a national leader in motorization), the single-occupancy automobile was the commute mode of choice for about 73 percent of the general population and 59 percent of the population under 20 (with an additional 18 percent of the under-20 population carpooling) in 20123, figures that changed little from 2007. Only slight fluctuations in the vehicle commute mode percentage occurred between these years).

Even though Americans now drive less frequently, they do not (yet) seem ready to give up driving for other modes of transportation.

Thus, Americans continue to buy cars although they can no longer afford them.

This paradox fuels risky lending practices. It also bodes ill for the environment


Footnotes:
1. http://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/A%20New%20Direction%20vUS.pdf. page 10.
2. As hinted in http://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/A%20New%20Direction%20vUS.pdf. pages 12-13.
3. "Factors influencing Vehicle Miles Traveled in California: Measurement and Analysis." http://sor.senate.ca.gov/sites/sor.senate.ca.gov/files/ctools/CCS_Report--Factors_Influencing_Vehicle_Miles_Traveled_in_California.pdf Pps. 25-26.

Happy 2016

I've been busy so this post was belated. My apologies if the language seems a little out of date. 

I celebrated the arrival of this year with 25 minutes of dreadful isolation on the roof of my apartment. 

Cascades of fireworks dazzled on the horizon, but none of my neighbors joined me on the rooftop to watch.

On the streets below, furthermore, one could hear the faintest echo (punctuated only on occasion by a rare ecstatic shout). 

Unlike on most nights at this time, barely one or two cars whizzed by on the street (during my duration on the roof).

And yet, an absence of cars did not entail the crowding of sidewalks, even on a night when everyone is relaxing or celebrating the arrival of the New Year.

Moments like these convey most directly the confinement of Los Angeles' population to cars. Two observations come to mind.

1. The block I live on is medium density, a mix of midrise (10-story) and lowrise apartment buildings and duplexes/triplexes. However, scanning (from my rooftop view) due north, a pitch black (mile long) expanse of spacious single-family housing separated my nook from the retail and entertainment district along Sunset Blvd. Looking to the west, a couple more blocks of apartments gave way to yet a vaster expanse of blackness (single-family homes), stretching to the faint lights of Westwood. Finally, to the east, I caught another block of apartments, the corner Ralphs, and then the design and office buildings along Robertson, a short distance away. Interspersed with all this dense development, I caught glimpses of still more patches of single-family homes! A thicker line separated my block from the towers in Wilshire. The problem with walking in Los Angeles is that despite the proliferation of density at a regional level (particularly in the central basin area), much of that density occurs in a patchwork matter, intermittant and dispersed across a wide area (and variety of uses). A person still needs a personal vehicle to access the full spectrum of places he or she needs to go.

2. Our city (and region) incentivizes driving even for short trips where walking and biking could do the job. From free parking, to wide roads (and crappy sidewalks) driving has become so convenient that we (think we) "can't" get around without our cars.

Just my observations. Nothing scientific today.

Have a good year!

On the Mobility Plan and Rush hour Bus Bunching: Equity for Bus Riders?

I was waiting for the Santa Monica Bus at rush hour last week and was struck by the magnitude of delays caused by congestion.

The buses were backed up not for 10 or even 15 minutes but half an hour or more in the eastbound direction. The bus scheduled for a certain time (say 4:45) would show up later than the scheduled arrival of the following bus (say the 5:00 bus) or of the bus after the (scheduled) following bus.

Furthermore, such onerous delays strike at the busiest point of the day for bus ridership. Not a few but a dozen individuals milled the bus stop (in a part of West Hollywood where few locals likely ride). The bus arrives packed to the brim.

Indeed, (perhaps not so) ironically, the greater number of passengers were headed in the direction with more traffic. A stream of workers and housekeepers pile on the buses for East Hollywood at the same time as the motorist bourgeois head towards the 101 for the suburbs.

The biggest problem with rush hour-induced bus delays, such as that I experienced, is that they result in a woefully reduced supply at the height of the day's demand.

Worse yet, the reduced supply is not a result of the bus company providing either an insufficient number of vehicles (this is the time when the most buses are scheduled) or inadequate seating on each bus but the result of thousands of private drivers, over whom a transit agency like Metro has no control, taking over the right-of-way.

To illustrate with an analogy, its as if a clothing store had the least inventory available on Black Friday, because it was forced to give away its wares to other stores (for them to sell at their Black Friday sales) on that day. To make things more accurate, let's pretend this clothing store is Ross (i.e. catering to a lower-income clientele) and the rapacious thieves are Banana Republic and Bloomingdale's.

As with the clothing store's clients, the customers for Metro's bus services suffer competition over limited inventory (known as "cramming") and long waits for restocking of supplies when getting home from work or school.

The immense delays bus passengers must endure at a time of day when they are most in a hurry, not surprisingly turn many away once they can afford the more convenient mode of travel (sadly, in most cases, the private automobile).

This brings me back to the LA's new Mobility Plan.

Much brouhaha has been made about all the automobile lanes that will be lost to bicyclists, who supposedly comprise only 1% of the city's commuters (and who are also hipster elitists, at that).

However, what detractors conveniently ignore is the plan's sweeping Transit Enhanced Network, which will create all-day bus lanes (the ""comprehensive streets") along 13 of the city's most highly-traveled corridors (compare the Transit Enhanced Network map with this list by LetsgoLA) and peak-hour bus lanes on many more (the "moderate plus streets", including my favorite, Beverly Blvd.!).

By allowing for a faster frequency of bus arrivals (assuming that cars respect the bus lanes!) at a time when demand is highest (and speed most desired), Metro and other bus agencies operating in the city can more adequately serve the needs of their clientele.

That's not called elitism but equity.

On a side note:  To those who cry that drivers will suffer an even more severe loss of productive time if a lane is taken out for buses, I say:

 (1) Congestion is already bad enough as it is at rush hour on streets like Santa Monica. How much  worse can it get?

(2)  Cars don't have to pull over and wait for passengers to board every few blocks the way buses do, giving them a natural advantage under the same traffic conditions.

And (3) Cars can always use Waze to meander through side streets when traffic gets bad on arterials. Buses have to stick tho their arterial routes through thick and thin (at least until that far-off point in the future when large agencies like Metro acquire and implement the technology for on-demand scheduling).