On Tuesday, downtown residents voted to tax
themselves to build a street car system. The street car will be funded
by ‘up to’ a $80 MM property tax on all building owners within 3 blocks
of the proposed track. In addition, the street car
expects to receive Federal matching funds. All in all, people voted to
tax themselves in a very, very narrow way (owners within 3 blocks, no
one else will be taxed) for a street car that could potentially benefit a
large portion of the downtown area (if not
the city).
I thought the street car campaign was waged
expertly, narrow tax range, identified goals, with a small system that
is easily fundable. In addition, the system blends in with the existing
subway system.
The success of the Street car vote made me think of
how the city has changed in recent years. I’m a fan of mid-century
design, but I am no fan of mid-century urban planning.
The
4-Level Interchange
The middle part of the 20th century was
dominated by the personal automobile. The success of the United States
after the Second World War was the major catalyst for our post war
economy. The United States remade the Capitalist
world economy into an image of its own design; for example the Bretton
Woods System of 1944 tied all international exchange rates to the US
dollar (thus saving the US untold trillions in transactional costs and
thus creating the dollar as the world’s reserve
currency), in addition (and what really set the stage for the
dominance of the car) was that purchases of oil on international markets
was done in dollars (the famous Petrodollar). When you set the rules
for international trade, how can you lose?
The post-war city was built to cater to individuals
living in distant suburbs who drive alone into the city for work. We
were permitted to do this because of cheap energy, if energy had not
been artificially cheapened by the terms of international
trade and emerging economies of scope and scale the suburb would simply
not exist.
The end of communism was the first herald of the
end of the suburb. The entry of an extra 2 billion people in the
capitalist system was bound to experience shocks. And, that it did. The
price of gas in the last 20 years has exploded:
This is due to the emerging economies competing for
energy. Obviously, if costs increase it makes driving more expensive.
Living far from work in a suburb is swiftly becoming economically
impossible.
25 years ago China, Russian, Eastern Europe, most
of South America and the Middle East were involved in the Capitalist
world system. Today, nearly every nation is Capitalist, and they are all
in competition for the same energy.
Our societal costs have been increasing rapidly,
the greatest solution to this problem is a total overhaul of the urban
core. We need more mixed-use building, better mass transportation, and
changes to local zoning codes, these are the
changes that can make a more efficient city. We are living in an age of
cheap energy, that age is coming to an end.
So what about the street car?
Well, in my personal opinion, the street car is a
blow against the use of a car in the central city. Downtown Los Angeles
was built before parking codes and zoning codes made it impossible to
start a business without a dedicated parking
lot. Most of Broadway (the street where the street car will go down)
does not have any curb side parking, which is an anomaly in most of the
post-war city. By replacing the car with a transportation system we move
closer to a unified central core. A place
where people can live, and work in the same area.
The personal car shortens distances to be travelled, but conversely, it also requires a huge amount of built space
For the sake of comparison; see the historic map of the old Pacific Electric Railway. In the era before the personal car, Los Angeles had a railway system that stretched from Woodland Hills, to Pomona, to Long Beach.
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