Back in 2008, and then again in 2016, transit advocates in Los Angeles came together to get county residents to fork over $160 billion over 30 years in new sales taxes revenue for transportation investments. A sizeable chunk of that money goes to major transit capital projects, including new rail and bus rapid transit lines.
They successfully secured approval for these tax hikes with 2/3 voter support. But now transit ridership is plummeting in Los Angeles. It’s a nationwide phenomenon, but it’s particularly severe in L.A. While there a few ways to counter-act these trends, the most proven and sensible one is to boost transit-oriented development of all types.
Yet given recent public debate on SB 827, which would upzone residential areas within a few blocks of major transit stops, it’s clear that many of these advocates are not committed to the land use changes necessary to achieve this density. Despite SB 827’s promise to accomplish the very increase in residential density needed to support transit, they remain opposed.
So who are the culprits? Most prominently, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti (who championed the 2016 measure) still refuses to support SB 827, despite the recent amendments to address his legitimate displacement concerns. Instead, he stated concern for the area’s single-family homeowners, professing a desire to “protect” these mostly affluent residents from mid-rise apartment buildings near major transit.
And it gets worse. Move LA, the organization that has probably done the most to launch these voter sales tax measures, actually came out against the bill in a joint letter with various community groups. This opposition comes after their executive director Denny Zane already helped sink a major transit-oriented project near an Expo Line station that would have added more than 400 hundred badly needed homes in the area, including 50 affordable units. His main concern at the time was too much car traffic.
Even Sierra Club California used the fear of these land use changes in SB 827 as a reason not to support the measure. Specifically, the organization wants to see a new rail transit line in Sacramento, even though the line will be a massive money-loser without more density around the stations.
Based on these transit advocates’ arguments, it seems clear that many are only focused on one thing: building new transit lines. They don’t seem to care how cost-effective they are, and in many cases they actively don’t want to see much new development around the stations — especially not market-rate housing, and especially not in “quiet” affluent areas that are benefiting financially from these publicly funded investments.
So despite SB 827 being one of the most important pro-transit measures put forth by the legislature in recent years, some key transit advocates seem unlikely to join a coalition in support.
It’s a disheartening — though clarifying — turn of events. What it means is that the help to save transit agencies from plummeting ridership may not come from advocates for expanding new lines. It will instead come from those who favor more density of homes near transit in general, which is apparently a distinct cause for many in the “transit advocacy” community.
Some opponents of SB 827 (Wiener) — to essentially upzone residential areas adjacent to major transit stops — simply reject the idea of any new housing in their neighborhoods. Others are generally hostile to new market-rate development. But besides those non-helpful objections, the one compelling knock on the SB 827 approach is that the new residential development it would unleash could displace low-income renters.
There’s a clear moral objection to that happening. With the housing shortage and jobs boom leading to high home prices and rents everywhere, low-income residents of rent-controlled units will basically have no place affordable to go if they’re displaced. The bill shouldn’t force some of the most economically insecure and impoverished among us out of their homes.
And displacement also potentially undermines one of the key purposes of the bill: to boost transit ridership. Low-income people are more likely to use transit than higher-income people. So replacing them with market-rate renters or owners could be a loss for the nearby transit system.
That said, I do believe the concern is overstated, as low-income neighborhoods are not likely to be a prime target of developers risking capital on expensive multi-family buildings and needing a high return to justify the expense.
But still, we knew anti-displacement measures in SB 827 were coming, and yesterday Sen. Wiener introduced them. They essentially boil down to two things:
1) Explicit recognition that SB 827 does not preempt local policies preventing demolition of rent-controlled units or displacement of those tenants or requiring affordable units to be built with market-rate ones. This recognition is probably not needed legally, but it’s a handy reminder to critics that SB 827 takes nothing away from locals on the issues of affordability and displacement.
2) Making it expensive to displace residents of rent-controlled units.
This second approach is where the amendments get interesting. Basically, if any SB 827 project displaces these residents, the developer must honor a “Right to Remain Guarantee.” As Sen. Wiener explains in a blog post:
[The guarantee] must, at minimum, provide all of the following, at the developer’s expense:
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All moving expenses for a tenants moving into, and out of, an interim unit in the area while the project is being built.
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Up to 42 months of rental assistance that covers the full rent of an available, comparable unit in the area.
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Right of first refusal for housing units in the new building, and offered with a new lease at the rent previously enjoyed by the tenant in their demolished unit.
So displacement could still happen, but only at significant expense and with displaced residents being “made whole” by the process. It’s essentially a quasi-market-based approach to discouraging displacement. It will incentivize developers to seek to redevelop properties that don’t have rent-controlled units on them to avoid these costs.
In addition, a separate amendment requires a local jurisdiction to adopt a demolition process for rent-controlled units if they don’t already have one, for any SB 827 project to occur.
It remains to be seen whether anti-displacement critics of the bill will be mollified by this approach. But I do think these changes make the bill stronger, without conceding too much of the market-rate development we still need for residents of all incomes in our state.
The Trump Administration yesterday unveiled its long-heralded “infrastructure plan,” which Trump himself claimed would be a top priority in his 2016 election night speech.
While some headlines described it as a $1.5 trillion plan, it actually boils down to $200 billion in new spending, supposedly from offsetting savings elsewhere in the budget. And that $200 billion is conditioned on state and local government funding together with private investment. Think toll roads, which create a necessary revenue stream in order for the federal money to flow, as my colleague Dan Farber explained.
But even if the $200 billion didn’t have the privatization strings, it’s a drop in the bucket. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the current infrastructure backlog amounts to $4.59 trillion in needed investments by 2025, per Politico. $200 billion is therefore negligible (although arguably at least a start). But to make matters worse, his proposed federal budget seeks to gut other infrastructure spending programs on badly needed investments like new rail transit and Amtrak.
In addition, the infrastructure plan proposes putting a hard time limit on environmental reviews, ostensibly to weaken their efficacy. I’m definitely in favor of re-examining our environmental review processes, as I’m sure there are efficiencies that could be gained. But knowing the people involved in the Trump Administration and their record on the environment versus business interests, it’s hard not to be skeptical of this proposal.
Ultimately, a robust infrastructure bill without the privatization strings should have been passed during the last recession, when we needed the jobs and the construction and labor costs were much lower. Now we have a tepid proposal which mostly seeks to privatize public assets and weaken environmental laws, during a time when the economy is humming and construction costs are high.
My guess is the bill is either not going to pass Congress anywhere near its current shape, or it simply won’t be effective in spurring much infrastructure investment. Either way, the country has missed an important economic window for this needed investment, and now only has this relatively weak offering to show for it.
What value does rail transit bring to a city? The bottom line is increased capacity. You can squeeze a lot of people into multiple rail cars, all driven (or overseen) by one conductor in the lead car.
There are other benefits, too, of course, like fast electric acceleration (if it’s not diesel powered), smooth riding (if the rails are in a separate right-of-way and not stuck in street traffic), and general reliability (again, if the rail travels in a separate right-of-way and not slowed by cars). And as a uniquely permanent infrastructure investment, with tunnels and elevated tracks (sometimes) and fixed stations, it can help stimulate real estate investment to encourage thriving, walkable neighborhoods around it.
But technology may make this beloved, nineteenth century style of transit propulsion obsolete. I’m talking about electric platooning buses, which makes use of the self-driving car technology that is rapidly advancing. As the U.S. Department of Energy defined it in a recent post about platooning trucks:
Platooning involves the use of vehicle-to-vehicle communications and sensors, such as cameras and radar, to virtually connect two or more trucks together in a convoy. The virtual link enables all of the vehicles in the platoon to communicate with each other, allowing them to automatically accelerate together, brake together, and enables them to follow each other at a closer distance than is typically possible with unlinked trucks.
If we can place 8 or 10 buses in a row, have them all accelerate electrically and brake together, be separated by just a few inches, and be operated by just a single lead driver (or computer), isn’t this essentially just a long train?
The benefits would be immense:
- Massive cost savings: with electric buses, you don’t need to lay tracks or have overhead or down-below wiring to power trains. You don’t need substations along the way. The buses would be battery operated (as they already are, through companies like BYD and Proterra), so they could charge in central, convenient places. Sure, that requires charging infrastructure. But it’s much less expensive than wiring an entire route.
- Faster build times: transit agencies could build transit lines much more quickly without all the wiring infrastructure and tracks. Tunneling and overpasses still take time, but transit agencies basically just need to put down pavement and striping. Bus rapid transit lines can be built in about a fifth of the time as rail (and at a fifth of the cost), meaning a city can get a lot more transit, a lot more quickly.
- Operational flexibility: the buses would be free to travel on surface streets as needed, giving transit agencies much more flexibility to move buses around as needed.
And the potential downsides? First is the technological uncertainty, as platooning is still being tested. Second, and related to the first point, is the cost and range of the battery. But as I mentioned, electric buses are already being used now, battery prices are falling dramatically, and energy density is improving. True, the buses have higher upfront costs, but they offer significant and offsetting savings on operations and maintenance. Finally, we’d need more charging infrastructure for the buses, as mentioned. Although again, that infrastructure is proven — and simpler than overhead lines or third rails.
But there’s one additional important point here: the prospect of electric platooning buses should not be used as an excuse to kill or postpone new rail transit proposals in the works today. City residents still need the infrastructure that goes with a separate right-of-way for rail, even if the technology changes. They need tunnels, grade separation, elevated lines, dedicated lanes, and overpasses and underpasses to keep rail out of street traffic. Even if platooning electric buses happen soon, that construction will still be put to good use, albeit with ripped out tracks and overhead lines.
But as transit agencies think about other types of rail upgrade projects, like converting the Orange Line bus rapid transit in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles into light rail, maybe they should take a step back and assess the state of platooning electric bus technology. That Orange Line project in particular is costly, and the dedicated right-of-way already exists to convert to electric bus. If rail construction is underway in 2020 or 2021 just as electric platooning buses are market-proven, it will be a giant waste of money.
So transit advocates should still want rail projects to move forward, and cities will still need dedicated rights-of-way, separate from car traffic. But looming around the corner may be a technology solution that could dramatically reduce costs and construction time for major transit projects. Even for those who will always love steel wheels on rail, it’s got to be hard not to see the appeal.
Los Angelist offers a nice and succinct video summary with narration of the Purple Line heavy rail extension down Wilshire Boulevard. As I wrote in the book Railtown, Wilshire Boulevard is the most densely populated corridor west of the Mississippi and should have been the first route to get rail transit in Los Angeles. So of course it’s only now under construction more than 30 years since Metro Rail began construction.
Here is the video for your viewing enjoyment, complete with a welcome shout-out to Railtown at the end (plus a rightful shaming of the Beverly Hills Union School District, which has wasted about $10 million so far on losing lawsuits against this line):
Lost riders on L.A. Metro alone, which serves L.A. County, accounted for fully 72 percent of lost transit patronage across the entire state. Those losses are even further concentrated: Remarkably, just a dozen bus and rail routes in L.A. County account for nearly 40 percent of all the vanished ridership in California.
Right now, the best explanation seems to be a staggering increase in cars on the road, owned and driven by the very people who used to ride buses, the report states. From 2000 to 2015, the population of the Southern California region grew by 2.3 million people, and the region added 2.1 million household vehicles—close to one new car for every person and a huge jump from the previous decade. In the same period, the proportion of immigrant households that own zero vehicles dropped 42 percent, and a whopping 66 percent among Mexican immigrant households specifically.
The ridership gap and vehicle usage seems to be particularly high among immigrant communities that previously were a backbone demographic for transit.
What are the solutions? One option is simply to make it more expensive to drive a car, through mileage-based fees, congestion pricing, and other taxes and fees. There’s merit to that approach, particularly if the funds generated help support transit in those corridors as an alternative.
But the other alternative is to stop forcing people to use cars as the most convenient travel option, and similarly stop subsidizing automobile infrastructure, particularly “free” mandated parking. And that all boils down to land use. People use cars to travel because their home is nowhere near convenient transit, they may have readily available free parking on-site and at their jobs (while paying for it via higher home prices and rents), and their jobs and other destinations are similarly not near transit.
So the most effective solution, as we’ve seen all over the world throughout the history of transit, is to encourage more homes and jobs near transit. It’s not really complicated: we need to build transit-oriented, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods within a convenient transit-ride of clustered job centers. Needless to say, this is exactly the goal of SB 827 (Wiener), which would lift local restrictions on growth near major transit stops.
Possibly the biggest beneficiaries in government from an SB 827 to approach to housing would be transit agencies. These agencies across the country have suffered this declining ridership over the past decade, hurting their revenues and undermining political support.
So far I haven’t heard California transit agencies clamoring to support SB 827, probably due to the complicated politics involved. But if they were honest, they would tell the public that SB 827 and similar approaches are what is truly needed to bring ridership back.
The “Gimme Shelter” podcast, a regular show dedicated to all things housing in California, interviewed me for a new episode releasing today on the tension between infill housing advocates and some environmental groups.
Specifically, the hosts, Los Angeles Times state policy report Liam Dillon and CalMatters Matt Levin, asked me about the 2017 UC Berkeley/Next 10 report Right Type, Right Place on infill housing, SB 827 (Wiener), CEQA, and other climate & housing topics. They cover other housing issues in the first half of the podcast (my interview starts about 29 minutes in).
Tune in here (and don’t forget to subscribe to their podcast if you haven’t already):
Housing more Californians near transit and not in sprawl areas represents one of the most crucial ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Senate Bill 827 (Wiener) would help do just that, by preventing local governments from zoning people (and homes) out of these prime transit areas. So it was surprising to see an environmental organization like Sierra Club California come out against the bill (here is a PDF of their letter).
Just how high are the environmental stakes of SB 827? Berkeley Law, together with the Terner Center and Next 10, recently analyzed the impact of putting all new residential development in California through 2030 within three miles of transit or in low-vehicle miles traveled neighborhoods (areas without rail but where residents drive at low rates) and found the following impacts:
Annual reductions of 1.79 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the business-as-usual scenario, which is the equivalent of taking 378,000 cars off the road and almost 15 percent of the emissions reductions needed to reach the state’s Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg, 2008) targets from statewide land use changes.
Significantly, the geography we examined was farther from transit than what SB 827 encompasses, which only covers up to one-half mile near major transit. So the greenhouse gas savings and air quality improvements from building new homes near transit will be significantly greater under SB 827.
So why would Sierra Club oppose what is arguably the state’s most important climate bill this term (as the New York Times couches it)? Let’s go through their arguments:
First, they argue the SB 827 will fuel neighborhood opposition to new transit. Why would neighbors want to support a new rail line, Sierra Club argues, if it will force them to allow new people in their community who will want to live near it? Perhaps the Sierra Club doesn’t realize it, but they just made an important point in favor of SB 827. The better question is: why should we build expensive new rail lines through low-density communities, when they refuse to provide the ridership necessary to support these taxpayer investments? SB 827 is actually a great way to weed out bad rail projects with weak ridership in favor of more sensible transit investments, like bus-only lanes or rail in areas that can actually support it.
Second, they argue that bus routes and service changes all the time, so frequent transit service now might be reduced, leaving SB 827-style dense development underserved by buses. But if you look at the maps of bus routes served with 15 minute peak headways, they cover major arterials that would be among the last places a transit agency would peg for service reduction, like Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. And if Sierra Club is really concerned about service reductions, why not recommend an amendment that the bus routes must have been in service at 15 minute commute headways for a minimum period of time for SB 827 to qualify? Otherwise, this seems like a weak reason to oppose the bill outright.
Third, they are worried about displacement of low-income renters near transit. As I’ve blogged before, this is a legitimate yet overblown concern. Gentrification and displacement is happening now like crazy, precisely because we’re not building enough housing overall. Furthermore, developers will build in upscale transit areas where they can get higher returns, not in low-income neighborhoods. For example, a UCLA study examining low-income neighborhoods around the Blue Line light rail from Downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach showed virtually no investment in these areas, despite some very relaxed local zoning.
But if Sierra Club is truly concerned about displacement, why not recommend policies to address it in the bill, such as requirements for inclusionary zoning or density bonuses? Instead, they offer no solutions, while failing to recognize the massive displacement already occurring due to the existing housing shortage. My question for Sierra Club: what do they propose to combat the gentrification and displacement currently happening now? And where do they want new homes to be built, if not in these prime transit areas?
Fourth, they argue for more incentives on growth instead of a state-based approach like SB 827. But incentives only go so far when you’re up against well-heeled homeowner groups who will vote out elected officials who don’t toe the exclusionary line. What incentives does Sierra Club believe might entice Westwood to upzone their single-family zoning around the Expo Line? Or Rockridge around its BART station? Let’s face it — local control in transit-rich, upscale areas mean the forces of exclusion win. Hence the critical need for approaches like SB 827.
Finally, Sierra Club complains that some of these new buildings near transit won’t need to undertake environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, based on last year’s SB 35. This is a bit of a convoluted argument. SB 35 only applies to jurisdictions behind on affordable housing production. The projects that are then eligible for SB 35 CEQA streamlining must otherwise meet strict requirements and be compliant with local zoning, including providing a significant amount of affordable housing on-site (addressing the displacement concerns Sierra Club raised earlier). So the universe of projects that escapes CEQA review under SB 35 is already pretty minimal.
But more importantly, if you follow this line of argument, now that SB 35 is in effect, Sierra Club is basically saying they won’t favor any zoning changes to allow new housing in communities that are behind on producing affordable units because it might mean CEQA doesn’t apply to projects consistent with that zoning. I don’t think that’s a position Sierra Club really wants to take.
Overall, Sierra Club California appears to be at a reputational crossroads here on smart growth. Their image on this issue took a big hit when wealthy property owners used the San Francisco chapter to oppose new housing in the city, precisely the low-carbon area where new housing should go. So is Sierra Club an organization of wealthy homeowners who want to keep newcomers out of their upscale, transit-rich areas? Or are they actually committed to fighting climate change by providing enough housing for Californians in low-carbon, infill areas? Because their opposition to SB 827 unfortunately indicates more of the former than the latter.
If passed as is, SB 827 (Wiener) could have a big impact on neighborhoods adjacent to rail and major bus transit in California by requiring local governments to relax development restrictions there. But simply stating “one-quarter mile” or “one-fourth mile” radius from these stops is not that helpful for most people to visualize where the affected neighborhoods are located, particularly when the bill currently includes some areas with “transit corridors” — and not just transit stops.
Fortunately, a tech-savvy (former Redfin CTO) SB 827 fan with time on his hands developed a very useful interactive map. If you live in California (or interested in what happens here), you can now click on Sasha Aickin‘s map and see how any particular city or county might be affected by the bill.
But perhaps more importantly, regardless of what happens with SB 827 during this legislative process, the map shows the battleground in California where we desperately need more housing to be built. All of the highlighted areas are prime transit-oriented spots, where residents can easily bike or walk to access transit. Study after study shows that development in these areas is what makes or breaks transit ridership.
And for a place like California, with its longstanding housing shortage, it also shows where badly needed new residential development would be most appropriate from an environmental perspective.
Happy viewing!
Scott Wiener’s revolutionary SB 827 proposal to ease local restrictions on transit-oriented development is part of a growing legislative trend to tie development incentives to proximity to major transit stops. These stops are defined to include those with frequent bus service. As a result, some pro-growth advocates worry that NIMBYs will respond by lobbying their transit agencies to decrease bus service in their neighborhoods so developers can’t access these benefits and build more in their area.
But what about the opposite problem, where developers lobby transit agencies to increase bus service, merely to get some of the permit streamlining and density boosts that would follow? The danger is that transit agencies would comply, perhaps as a favor to a politically connected developer, but the project at issue wouldn’t actually be transit-oriented or otherwise justify the increased transit service.
And a worse situation might involve the transit agency increasing bus service only temporarily to qualify the project for the land use and permitting benefits, and then later reduce the service. The consequence could be a type of “density sprawl” with projects that wouldn’t serve transit (or have transit serve them) and instead increase overall driving miles and pollution.
To be clear, we want to encourage development near major bus stops. And this policy trend of tying incentives to transit proximity started before SB 827. For example, SB 375 (Steinberg, 2008) provides permitting relief through streamlining provisions under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for projects within 1/2 mile of a major transit stop, including frequent bus stops. Similarly, SB 743 (Steinberg, 2013), also relaxes CEQA’s transportation impact analysis for projects in these areas.
But both possibilities of manipulating bus service either to 1) avoid new development in the right transit-oriented areas or 2) facilitate car-oriented projects in less transit-friendly areas would be bad.
What’s the solution? Transit agencies will need to develop strong and transparent standards governing their decisions about when to expand or retract major bus service (defined as 15 minute peak headways during commute times). Follow-up state legislation could potentially accomplish this outcome by mandating such standards on local transit agencies (something these transit agencies would probably hate). Or transit agencies that don’t already have such policies on the books could adopt such standards on their own, perhaps using some best practice examples from around the state and country.
Right now, I don’t think this kind of transit service manipulation is a serious problem, although I’ve started to hear some anecdotes from local transit agencies. But if SB 827 passes in anything like its current form, it may become an issue that policy makers at either the local or state levels will need to address.
