
The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, sustainable city? - cryptoz
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/metropolis/2015/04/the_third_los_angeles_can_it_truly_become_a_green_sustainable_city.html
======
maceo
As a life-long LA resident, I say don't believe the hype. The article says
that the centerpiece is the revitalization of the LA river. As far as I can
tell, this isn't happening. Some bike paths were added along the river, which
is nice, but that's far from what I'd call revitalization. The bike paths are
still poorly lit, they still smell like shit, and they're not getting much
use. There's a huge trainyard east of downtown (one of the coolest parts of
the city, imo) called Piggyback Yard, which is owned by Union Pacific, who
doesn't want to sell the land. It'd be hard for the city to do any significant
revitalization of the river without turning the Piggyback Yard into a park
that can provide flood control. Furthermore, the US Army corps of engineers
controls the LA river, so the voters have no say in what happens here.

The metro extensions have been planned for decades, and there never seems to
be much movement. Recently the blue line has been creeping steadily towards
Santa Monica but I doubt this will have much of an impact on city life even if
it does connect downtown LA to the westside beach communities. I used to
encourage everyone to try taking the train, and I used to do it myself all the
time, but I haven't hopped on the train at all in the last 12 months. The
stations are too spread out, the paths of all the lines make little sense, the
trains only come every 15-20 minutes, and a huge chunk of the city is totally
cut off from the transit lines. As much as I don't like uber/lyft, they've
made it much more enjoyable to live in LA.

Ciclavia is cool, but its just 1 day out of the year. LA is the worst city in
the country to ride a bike. They claim to have more bike lines than any other
city, but that's only on paper. Just because you paint a person riding a bike
next to the gutter of a 2 lane street doesn't make it a bike lane. Yet that is
exactly what the city has done in the name of adding bike friendly streets.

All of these projects are little more than photo-ops for city politicians.

~~~
gamblor956
The LA river revitalization project is a decades-long project that just began
4 years ago. It's already made significant progress in restoring portions of
the LA river (though no significant stretches near downtown).

The metro extensions _are almost complete_ for the Expo and Gold lines.
Initial preparations for the regional connector connecting the various lines
underneath downtown (i.e., utility removal) began 2 years ago. Construction on
the Airport Spur and a line connecting the Expo and Purple line (extension)
has already begun. This time next year, construction will have begun on the
_next_ extension of the Gold line, heading for the eastmost reaches of LA
County. (By the way...the Red and Purple lines run every 7 minutes during busy
hours, the Blue and Expo lines run every 10. Only the Gold line runs every 12
minutes or less.

Civlavia is held multiple times a year. LA does have more bike lanes than any
other city...but LA is also geographically one of the largest cities in the
world, so the _density_ of bike lanes is poor.

There is real change in LA, and they're definitely not photo ops.

------
mehrzad
As a native and lover of LA (currently in NYC), I've been enjoying all the
press we've been getting recently. But as I skim this article, I'm confused.
LA has massive urban sprawl. LA County is very, very vast in area, and many
people live 1-2 hours by car (without traffic) away from their work. How is
public transportation going to get so good that this car-dependence will go
away? I'm all for it, I hate cars. The subway system in New York is great, but
not including metro areas, LA is quite a bit larger in area.

~~~
eclipxe
It won't, ever. And that's okay. LA County won't be served by an awesome
network of public transit, but if investments continue into dense areas of LA
City you should see market forces at work -> public transit availability
driving higher density development, driving more desire for public transit.

You can't de-sprawl Southern California as a whole, but you can make the dense
urban core more palatable.

~~~
Aloha
The sprawl in the LA metro area was built on the back of the then largest
interurban system in the world, the Pacific Electric. If you take a map and
overlay it on the modern freeway system, there are large parallels. There are
also parts of LA City that have (and not even recently acquired) density
rivaling Manhattan.

The future of maintainable sprawl is workable wide ranging rail and bus
options, rail for the distance, bus for the last mile.

~~~
waterlesscloud
There was an interesting study recently showing that population density in LA
is still greatest along the long-vanished streetcar lines.

It's also worth noting the streetcar lines were built specifically to serve
land development goals, so they drove the development in the first place, not
the other way around. In a way, streetcars _caused_ the sprawl of Los Angeles.

[http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/09/23/long-dead-
stree...](http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/09/23/long-dead-streetcars-
still-shape-l-a-neighborhoods/chronicles/who-we-were/)

------
istvan__
I just would like to contribute one picture of this threa. It is from
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Pacific-E...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Pacific-
Electric-Red-Cars-Awaiting-Destruction.gif)

More here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

I don't think that the politicians in charge changed that much since the 60s
to let a green LA happen.

~~~
anthonyarroyo
A wikipedia page whose neutrality is disputed?

~~~
istvan__
Yes, so any time you go there you can follow what is happening, eventually
there will a consensus what happened according to Wikipedia and end of story.
What do you think what is the real story of those pictures with the trams?

------
shoo
The LA `pLAn` mentions steps to reduce the urban heat island effect. One way
to reduce heat in cities is to increase tree canopy cover.

Here is recent lesson from the city of Melbourne, Australia, regarding drought
and tree cover:

* the city experienced a drought from 1999 - 2007 [1] * as a short-term measure to conserve water, a decision was made to stop watering the city's trees [2] * consequently, ~40% of the city's trees are dead, or are in decline. The council now expects that 27% of the trees will die in the next 10 years, and 44% of the trees will die in the next 20 years.

Melbourne city now is aiming to improve tree canopy cover from 22% to 40% by
2040 [3], as a means to reduce the city's temperature by 4 degrees C. There is
also work to capture storm water run-off from the city to use for irrigation.

Note that this is only talking about Melbourne's city centre (0.12m
residential population of 4.2m total) [4].

As an aside, outside of cities, there is a recent Nature Geoscience paper that
links lethal tree water stress thresholds to long-term climate models, and
forecasts tree deaths due to drought in the southwestern United States by
~2050, assuming the world follows a high-emissions business-as-usual scenario
(RCP 8.5, i.e. uncontrolled emissions, which tracks reality to date) [5].

[1]
[https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/AdaptingClim...](https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/AdaptingClimateChange/Pages/Drought.aspx)
[2] [http://citiscope.org/story/2015/can-melbourne-lower-its-
temp...](http://citiscope.org/story/2015/can-melbourne-lower-its-
temperature-4-degrees) [3]
[https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/...](https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/Pages/About.aspx)
[4]
[https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutMelbourne/Statistics/P...](https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutMelbourne/Statistics/Pages/MelbourneSnapshot.aspx)
[5]
[http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo24...](http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2400.html)

~~~
6t6t6
The streets of most cities in South Europe are covered by deciduous trees.
IMHO, it is the best way to make the cities walkable in summer while not
preventing the sun to warm the streets in winter. Also, cities with trees on
the streets are beautiful.

Of course, that mean that the council has to spend money taking care of that
trees.

------
sologoub
Much of the rail expansion is rather disappointing. For example in expo phase
2, closer you get to ocean the better spaced the stations are (closer
together), but between Bundy and sepulveda, there are no stations and little
sane way to go in between, yet Bundy station is less than a mile away from
26th st station.

To add insult to injury, I recently followed the much touted bike path that is
supposed to connect to existing SM bike paths at 17th street, but the damned
thing ends at Cloverfield with no way that I can tell of safely getting to
17th street or anywhere near a designated bike lane. And no, I do not consider
it safe to try and ride on Olympic blvd without a protected lane...

------
bpyne
A question for the LA natives on here.

Last year at this time, I had the chance to visit LA for my first time. I
stayed in a B&B in Los Feliz and spent a few days walking around it and Silver
Lake. My first day I asked the B&B owner about walking to the reservoir
because I read online that it's a gathering point for people in the area. The
owner told me he had never walked there and recommended that I drive. At most,
it was a 2-3 mile walk. Do people in LA really consider it incomprehensible to
walk that distance?

~~~
maceo
Yea, 2-3 miles is a very long walk in LA. Walking from los feliz to the
reservoir would be especially tedious since the most direct paths are on
boring residential streets. No one would ever do that walk unless they 1) dont
have a car 2) are looking to get exercise.

~~~
bpyne
For me, the residential streets were even pretty cool. There was some great
graffiti art, lots of Mexican food available, etc. I found a good comic
bookstore to get something for my daughter. Overall, it's a pretty nice walk.

~~~
smelendez
I've had similar experiences in other U.S. car-oriented cities, too. I have a
driver's license, but I've lived in big cities and literally haven't driven in
years and always walk or take transit anywhere I visit.

I think people with cars in those cities often just don't know what routes are
walkable and which aren't and assume the worst. People do the same with "the
bus," I've found--I've been to many places where people who don't take public
transit and don't even know how much it costs or where the routes go assume
that it's dirty, unreliable, filled with criminals, etc.

But I'm probably doing the same with renting a car when I travel--
overemphasizing the expenses and inconveniences and discomforts involved.

One problem I have had walking in various car-oriented cities is poor-to-
nonexistent signage for pedestrians. A busy, curvy street might suddenly go
from having sidewalks on one side to sidewalks only on one with no prior
notice pretty far from the last crosswalk, forcing you to backtrack half a
long block, walk on the shoulder of the road or jaywalk-sprint through
traffic. Or a complicated highway interchange running through the middle of a
city might be easily circumvented on foot, but there's no signs telling you
how to do it, leading to a lot of backtracking and meandering through no-
man's-land.

I think the transportation planners unfortunately fall into the car-only group
in a lot of cities, so they don't notice the need for pedestrian signs, or to
adjust traffic lights so they're more visible to pedestrians, or trim foliage
encroaching on sidewalks.

------
nathanaldensr
I think Los Angeles--and much of southern California--need to worry about
preserving their water supply--especially the deep aquifers that take millenia
to recharge--before worrying about anything else. They need to fix this
problem now, because if they don't, southern California will become a
wasteland. The rate those aquifers are being depleted by farms in the San
Joaquin Valley is astounding; measurements have been taken showing subsidence
of an inch a month in some places. It may already be too late for southern
California, in all honesty. If I were living there, I would be finding a way
to move out as soon as possible. Yes, the water crisis out there really is
that bad.

Sorry I don't have any links handy, but my opinions are the result of spending
two days a couple of weeks ago researching California's and India's water
problems. I highly recommend doing some reading and watching some YouTube
videos to educate yourselves on these issues.

~~~
cpprototypes
The rest of the nation's attitude to California's water problem is very short
sighted. I don't think most people realize how much food is produced in
California. If California agriculture goes down, the result will be high food
price increases everywhere. Many just have a cavalier attitude of "the market
will adjust". There are big issues with just assuming "the market will adjust"

1) There is a big lag time for some crops to grow. Something like corn is no
problem. But apples or anything else grown from a tree? Or any other crop that
requires years of growing before it's productive? It will be many years until
the California output could be matched.

2) Other places like the Midwest have potential water issues too. For example,
look at the history of the Ogallala Aquifer. If a greater strain is put on the
aquifer, it's possible they will also have the same water shortages that
California has now.

The California water crisis is a national issue, but the rest of the nation
would rather just laugh at us. The western states should be discussing serious
proposals to build more aqueducts or pipelines to divert water from water-rich
states to California. Maybe the Federal government could help with financing
desalination plants. But this kind of cooperation isn't happening. I'm worried
that what will happen is everyone will continue to just laugh at us until they
go to the grocery store one day. Then they will care, but by then it will be
much too late.

~~~
sigzero
No, we are not laughing. We are screaming because nothing was done sooner.

~~~
avn2109
I am neither laughing nor screaming, but rather praying for nuclear desal.

