Getting Well // Scene on a Pier // Reading a poem feels like this

At times, reading a poem feels like this: I’m on a crowded pier and a seal slips through the water like a hallucination. After days of being sick, long days with no food or water, touching death, there is then this glimmer of wellness, when simply paying attention and having attention feels great. The wind blows, pushing the waves to a certain slant, flapping my t-shirt. Tourists flow by and talk in all kinds of languages and accents. There’s a dance party being broadcast through neon-lit headphones and people are bobbing up and down. Two fishermen get their lines caught, then one untangles the lines, and his friend gives the thumbs up to the other guy. Pairs of people sweet talk and kiss. An old couple is making out hard on a bench. The water is made of waves. I think about the enormity of the sea and the long journeys ships take to Asia. I picture my position in this crowd of people at the edge, the edge’s edge of the Pacific, and wonder what that seal thinks of all of us. A line from Hart Crane’s poem "Voyages" appears like it always does: “that vast undinal belly.” I pull out my phone and look up the meaning of undinal and think how it was the perfect word. Wouldn’t be the same if it was the vast undulatory belly or the vast wave-filled belly. There - the seal again. When a simple scene simply unfolding feels perfect, life reads as poetry instead of prose.

Marshall Rosenberg, on Driving

Some time ago I reflected on how I might apply the principles of nonviolent communication in order to communicate with motorists who frightened me. I wrote a blog post after reading a portion of his most well-known text, "Nonviolent Communication." Tonight, I was pleasantly surprised and delighted to find a short discussion of driving in one of the later chapters of the book. (He discusses driving in the excerpt, but the experience described herein has much to teach all of us who travel, whether we choose to use cars, bikes, transit services, or our feet. I know I relate strongly to it, and find its lesson hopeful). Those of us who plan and design transportation systems could provide a much better experience for everybody, I think, if we considered outsider views like this. (Tom Vanderbilt, you're my original inspiration for saying this, and I think your work is exemplary in this regard! Further, the observations below remind me of the early chapters of your book Traffic, where you describe the sociological space of the street as one in which it is often very difficult to communicate, and where we're alienated from understanding other drivers as people.) More importantly, all of us who bike and drive and walk the streets can feel much more peaceful if we take Mr. Rosenberg's advice. Without further ado, here's what Marshall has to say:

For years my work involved traveling by car across the country, and I was worn and frazzled by the violence-provoking messages racing through my brain. Everybody who wasn't driving by my standards was an archenemy, a villain. Thoughts spewed through y head: "What the hell is the matter with that guy!? Doesn't he even watch where he's driving?" In this state of mind, all I wanted was to punish the other driver, and since I couldn't do that, the anger lodged in my body and exacted its toll.

Eventually I learned to translate my judgments into feelings and needs and to give myself empathy, "Boy, I am petrified when people drive like that; I really wish they would see the danger in what they are doing!" Whew! I was amazed how less stressful a situation I could create for myself by simply becoming aware of what I was feeling and needing rather than blaming others.

Later I decided to practice empathy toward other drivers and was rewarded with a gratifying first experience. I was stuck behind a car going far below the speed limit that was slowing down at every intersection. Fuming and grumbling, "That's no way to drive, " I noticed the stress I was causing myself and shifted my thinking instead to what the driver might be feeling and needing. I sensed that the person was lost, feeling confused, and wishing for some patience from those of us following. When the road widened enough for me to pass, I saw that the driver was a woman who looked to be in her 80's who wore an expression of terror on her face. I was pleased that my attempt at empathy had kept me from honking the horn or engaging in my customary tactics of displaying displeasure toward people whose driving bothered me.

(p.174-175)
(but read the whole book!)

a poem I wrote in 2007

which is grief?

empty the emptiest room.
room enough for what began as a line and a thought
and is now forgot.

what breathed? and in breathing moved, and in moving championed?

something pre-motor forgot, and something intentional failed.

we want to say what this is about, we want to say it's about time
and take the pot off the fire.

that which we negate, we affirm, which
which?
which?
which?

this poem is about an iranian lynching.
mentioned offhand on public radio.
two boys hung from nooses let their necks release

their first love affair a public hanging
noises continued, but none were heard.

this poem is about your ex-lover
and how the emptiest room
is still filled with aromatic shards of furniture

I just endorsed this!

And you should too. Let's get SCAG to beef up its funding for bicycles and pedestrians.

From the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, a disturbing statistic about the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) for Southern California:

"In the last adopted RTP in 2008, an over $530 billion dollar plan, less than 0.5 percent of funding was dedicated towards bicycle and pedestrian projects, yet 12 percent of all trips in the region are already made walking and bicycling."

Join me in endorsing this platform which seeks to rectify the weak funding levels for biking and walking.

Wilshire BRT Scorecard

The past week has seen a flurry of activity around the Wilshire BRT. LA Streetsblog has done a great job of covering it all as it has unfolded. The Condo Canyon private traffic study rapidly upgraded, with the help of some key political players, from a shady contract study to a directive that Metro staff rethink that section of Wilshire. Richard Katz, Zev Yaroslavsky, and Paul Koretz all made statements to the press that the Condo Canyon section should come out. Almost immediately, Metro asked the FTA to approve a project revision, and within days the FTA said yes. I personally found this very disheartening; I had scrambled to put together a letter to the FTA which was signed by a practically unprecedented range of transportation activists. Before we could even send the letter, the FTA had granted Metro's request to change the project. You can still read the letter, which is in .pdf form at this Streetsblog article, which is a pretty good overview of the whole drama.

Things were looking down for the BRT, when Bruins for Transit took to the streets and collected 135 petitions supporting the original BRT project. They got signatures, email addresses, and zip codes from bus riders living in every single one of the five county supervisorial districts. Via twitter, facebook, this blog, and the LA Subway Blog, at least 47 emails have been sent to Metro Board members in support of the original project. The Bus Rider's Union got moving; theywill be coming out in force on Thursday to keep the bus-only lanes intact.

Today started with some bad news: the Brentwood "Community Council" saw that loud rich neighborhoods can get out of bus-only lanes and went ahead and made their own request to be excluded from the project. Hmm, see where this is going?

The Brentwood Community Council should check their math, though. Or maybe just their notion of fairness. They complain that the BRT will "take away 1/3 of the roadway from cars." Well, they should remember that 80,000 motorists use Wilshire everyday, and so do over 80,000 bus riders. So if we're going to divvy up the roadway fairly, buses should really get half. This project gives buses less than that, at only 1/3 through this section. And just to be nice, it still lets turning cars use the bus only lanes. Oh, and the bus-only lanes only last for peak hours, 7-9 AM and 4-7 PM. So we're actually only dedicating (1/3)*(5/24) = 7% of the space to buses. On a corridor where bus riders are half of the travelers.

On the other hand, today ended with some good news: the Bicycle Advisory Committee of the City of LA moved to support the original project.

To summarize, the scorecard on the Wilshire BRT is now:

Team Keep the BRT Whole: 47 emails, 135 street petitions, and one Citizen's Advisory Committee

Team Destroy the BRT One Rich Neighborhood at a Time: 2 Neighborhood Councils, 1 Rabbi, 1 County Supervisor (Yaroslavsky), 1 City Councilmember (Koretz) 1 Other Metro Board Member (Richard Katz), 1 FTA Regional Rep Leslie Rogers

Team Undecided: 1 Mayor, 4 County Supervisors,  1 Metro CEO, 4 Metro Board Representatives from Duarte, Glendale, Santa Monica, and Lakewood, 14 City Council Members

We only have until Thursday morning so the time to start your pro-BRT engine is now. Send a letter if you haven't yet. If you already sent a letter, call your county supervisor and pressure them to take a stand on this. (Let us know how your phone calls go in the comments :)

Ready, set gooooo!

Letter writing tools:
http://www.lasubwayblog.com/2010/12/email-metro-board-of-directors-to.html (QUICK AND EASY)
http://meekadjustments.blogspot.com/2010/12/write-mayor-v-and-your-county.html

Write Mayor V and your County Supervisor to Protect the Wilshire BRT Project!

Ahh, bus-only lanes. In a city where the vast majority of the public transportation network runs on buses, they are one of the easiest and cheapest ways to improve public transit. With bus-only lanes, transit doesn't have to compete with peak-hour congestion. Time tables are actually reliable, and travel times are a lot shorter. This all seems downright fair, considering that during rush hour, buses are packed with upwards of 50 people, while cars usually contain... one person.  Our streets should move people, not just cars, is my view, and bus-only lanes get us closer to that. Oh, and bus-only lanes may not be as sexy as subways, but they sure are cost-effective: a bus-only lane can achieve rail-like speeds for about 1/300th of the cost. In this era of budget crises, that sounds like a win to me.

Lucky for us. Bus-only lanes are coming to Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles! And are set to open by 2013! But there's one catch. If your neighborhood is rich and noisy enough, it can throw a wrench in the whole bus-only lane idea. Back when the bus-only lane project was being developed, Beverly Hills refused to participate. So Metro wrote up a proposal that excluded their city. This proposal was successful and won a whole bunch of federal money. Now, the wealthy neighborhood just West of the Country Club, an area known as Condo Canyon because of its many high-rise buildings, is refusing to do its part to move buses faster. This might jeopardize said federal money, and it will definitely slow down the buses. What's saddest about this whole scenario is that Supervisor Yaroslavsky is actually siding with this small group of noisy NIMBYs, instead of protecting the project for the rest of his constituents. It's clumsy politics at best, and clientelism at worst. Who knows if we'll ever be able to build out a true network of bus-only lanes in Los Angeles if our politicians continue to cave like this.

Lucky for us. A coalition of transportation activists is roaring back to oppose this exemption. LACBC posted this earlier today, and Bruins for Transit was on the streets tonight talking to 720 riders. As a co-founder of the UCLA Bicycle Coalition and a car-free commuter, I'm posting here to ask you to do your part to protect this important demonstration project. If you can, attend the Metro Board meeting on Dec. 9.

Whether or not you can attend the meeting, definitely send an email to your representative asking them to insist on a complete project and reject Yaroslavsky's NIMBY handout. Here are the steps to doing so:

1. Open a new email with a hard-hitting subject: Preserve the Wilshire Bus-Only Lanes! Protect Regional Car-Free Mobility!
2. If you live in the City of LA, put Mayor V in the to: mayor@lacity.org.
3. Go to this website and figure out what County Supervisorial District you live in (unless you're some kind of political savant / activist who already knows). http://www.lavote.net/onlinedistrictmapapp/
4. Paste the appropriate supervisor email

District 1, Gloria Molina, molina@bos.lacounty.gov
District 2, Mark Ridley-Thomas, markridley-thomas@bos.lacounty.gov
District 3, Zev Yaroslavsky, zev@bos.lacounty.gov
District 4, Don Knabe - he doesn't have an email posted on his website, which is strange and opaque, but umm, you can email his chief of staff at cpedersen@lacbos.org, or make your case here http://knabe.com/ask-don/ . That link also has a number you can call.
District 5, Michael Antonovich, fifthdistrict@lacbos.org

4. Copy the text below into the body, adding your name and zip code and any personalized comments you want to make.
5. cc: WilshireBRT@gmail.com so that we can let you know how your politician voted.
6. Tweet it, blog it, facebook it, pass it on to someone at your office or someone in the street. Let's rally.

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa (if applicable) and [your supervisor here],

As a resident of County Supervisorial District [x] [and a citizen of the city of Los Angeles], I write to urge you to approve the Wilshire Bus Rapid Transit Lane (BRT) on Dec. 9th. Creating a bus-only lane between Centinela Ave. and MacArthur Park during peak hours can save up to 17 minutes one-way, or over half an hour round-trip.

The Wilshire BRT project will provide LA residents with a travel alternative more comparable with the car and attract more riders, improving air quality for the region. On weekdays, approximately 80,000 people board the bus along Wilshire, whereas an average of 80,000 cars drive along Wilshire. As the region grows, we need to find solutions like the Wilshire BRT that move people, not cars.

While we look forward to the Westside Subway Extension, we hope to see near-term projects like the Wilshire BRT that will open in 2 years, as we await the subway opening in 25 years. Improving bus service and reliability will also be important for future subway riders who also need to make bus transfers to reach their destinations.

More specifically, I am writing to ask you to protect your constituents and reject the recent proposal by Supervisor Yaroslavsky to exclude a select neighborhood in his district from participating in the project. Removing the bus-only lanes between Comstock Ave. and Veteran Ave in Westwood not only risks federal funding, it threatens the integrity of the project altogether. Buses will not achieve the fast times that have been promised if this exemption is allowed to go forward. We must not compromise the success of the project simply because a wealthy neighborhood dislikes it. Help us move toward a future where Los Angeles's streets move people, not just cars. Do not allow any more holes to be poked in this crucial demonstration project.

The Wilshire BRT will not only bring tremendous benefits to the commutes of the thousands of people that ride the 720 [with me - if applicable] every day, it will also improve the air quality of the region by providing an alternative transportation choice. It will also improve riding conditions for bicyclists, who will be allowed to share the repaved and widened curb lane.

Please approve the Wilshire BRT, and adopt Alternative A, Truncated Project Without Jut-Out Removal as the Preferred Alternative, which includes the Westwood portion of Comstock to Veteran Ave.
The vote on Dec. 9 is about more than just the Wilshire bus-only lanes. It's about fairness, and it's about priorities. Should a wealthy neighborhood that benefits from the regional economy not have to contribute to regional mobility? Should our streets prioritize cars at the expense of public transportation's speed and quality? I'll be watching this vote closely, and I hope you take the stance that moves us forward into a cleaner, greener, and more mobile future.

[your name here]

[your address or zip code]

Google Biking Directions is Very Responsive

With this kind of rapid response to user suggestions I bet Google's "Bike There" routes end up being pretty good in most cities. Google impresses me. I sent them a suggestion and they got back to me within the week saying they would check it out. They then updated Google Maps the next week and sent me the following email. (This was in June 2010, by the way).

Hi Herbie,

Google Maps has been updated to correct the problem you reported. You can see the update here, and if you still see a problem, please tell us more about the issue:  Link to view and/or reopen issue

Report history
Problem ID: A1CC-89C3-E0EF-7B06

Your report:The directions suggest a route that is much more unsuitable for biking than an alternative route just near the one google suggests. I am not sure if this is out of the scope of your capabilities, but average daily traffic on Olympic (the road suggested) is much, much more than ADT on 9th, which is just North of Olympic. If I were giving bicycling directions I would suggest 9th.

--
Thanks for your help,
The Google Maps team 

Do folks out there know of other crowdsourced bike route databases? I'm intrigued by the idea, since lots of bicyclists I know choose their routes based on word-of-mouth. The complexity of the route data seems to resist an internet platform: for example, I'll get word that a certain street is good to ride on, except during rush hour; or vice versa - some streets aren't bad to ride on during rush hour because they are so congested; or I'll get word that I should avoid a street at night, etc. Nonetheless, I think crowdsourcing has been both effective and self-reinforcing in Google's case. I've noticed an uptick on Carmelita Ave. (near UCLA, parallel to the much crappier Santa Monica Blvd through Beverly Hills) in particular, and at least one rider told me she learned about the street through Google biking directions. But Google's routes are not openly crowdsourced, they're controlled internally. When I have time I want to learn more about true and open crowdsourced bike route programs and how they perform. Thoughts?

Also, how do folks out there think Google's "Bike There" option is performing in LA? What are places where Google really gets it right? Or wrong?

Hmm... and: Can we tell what Google's routing criteria are based on the routes it suggests? If they have some magic routing algorithm for bicycling I most definitely want to see it. My guess is that it (1) routes on city-designated bike lanes, paths, and routes, whenever possible, and has some tolerance for routing out-of-the-way (i.e. away from the shortest distance path) to get on them. It has some trade off between hilliness and directness built in. It knows major boulevards and avoids them. What else?

LA Bike Plan: Pretty Unambitious Compared to Tacoma, WA and Des Moines, Iowa

Oh, the rewards of reading all the way to the end of reports without disregarding their appendices and addendums. I just found this fascinating figure in Alta Planning+Design's "Seamless Travel" study. (If you're wondering, the study concerns extensive bike survey and count data collected in San Diego County, and efforts to model bicycling and walking demand based on the data). Anyway, the figure:

(You have to click to enlarge because I couldn't get a large version to display properly with the way the blog is formatted. Source is here, final report, p. AD-1).

It's painful to hear the depressing story this figure tells about where Los Angeles is and where it is going. First of all we are second to Des Moines, Iowa (?) in our ratio of bikeways to roads. And - wow - our ratio is three times smaller than San Diego's, and San Diego is not what I would consider a bike-topia.  Worst of all, of the six cities in the figure, Los Angeles has the lowest aspirations of any of them. Our planned bikeway mileage is only 9% of our total roadway mileage.

I'm not sure where the 655 mile number comes from, though I'm sure Joe Linton could answer that question immediately. As most people know, Alta Planning+Design wrote the first drafts of the LA Bike Plan, so it's possible the researchers who wrote this study just called up the Alta staff in the LA Office and asked them for a number.

In any case, the LA Planning Department has now taken over the Bike Plan and they are now touting a new number: 1,633. This number is HUGE on the cover of the Bike Plan, and the implicit message is that 1,633 is a great aspiration, one that sums up the plan's commitment to making Los Angeles a more bikeable city. Now even if we put aside the many ways in which this number inflates the Bike Plan's actual commitments, i.e. the long story regarding how many of the miles are "proposed/infeasible/whatever" and may or may not require an EIR, even if we put all that aside, this six-city comparison illustrates that the 1,633 isn't all that ambitious. If we were to update this figure to replace 655 with 1,633, we'd get a 23% roadway coverage goal, which is still lower than Portland's. But that would be inaccurate and misleading since the 1,633 includes bike paths and routes, and those aren't included in this comparison. The true coverage calculation should only include bike lanes and bike boulevards. I'll exclude the "potential/infeasible/future study" bike lanes since the plan offers up excuse after excuse not to do them. This gives 66 miles of planned bike lanes and 642 miles of bike boulevards (specious! but I'll go with it). This total 708 miles of planned on-street bikeway network corresponds to a proposed completion factor of just under 10%. Even if we include the "speculative" bike lanes we only get a coverage of 16.8%.

Let me say that plainly. Even if the new Bike Plan is passed and we consider all the Bike Boulevards and Bike Lanes as legitimate planned mileage (which no one who has been watching the planning process closely would ever do), LA has set lower bikeway mileage goals than Des Moines, Iowa or Tacoma, Washington.

Now, to be fair, I have no idea what the Bike Plans in any of these other cities look like. For all I know their Bike Plans are also filled with speculative and "infeasible" mileage. We also don't know how LA would compare in a longer list of cities.

Anyway, I think this is a thought provoking figure. I would like to see a more extensive version of this figure, comparing roadway coverage in lots of cities. How do San Francisco, Boulder, New York, or Chicago measure up in terms of proposed completion factor? This is a nice metric.

I hypothesize that the year in which the city's Bike Plan was updated would be a significant factor determining the size of a city's ratio of proposed bikeways to roads. Bike Plans seem to have gotten more and more ambitious in recent history.

Still, perhaps all the back-and-forth over the categories of bike lane mileage has obscured the larger point that relative to other cities, this plan designates a very low percentage of the roads in Los Angeles as planned bikeways.

LA Bike Plan: Hearing before the Planning Commission

[wow, I haven't posted here in a long time. There is so much to say about Canada and school and my new home in Angelino Heights but I've just been too sleep-deprived to say it. I'm passing on some comments I'll be making to the city, which I already made the effort to type up, in this post.]

The LA Bike Plan goes up before the Planning Commission tomorrow, and I'm writing to post what I plan on saying to the Commissioners. Some people want to fail the plan. I am not really on board with this. I got into a long back-and-forth with Joe Linton over the details, but what it really comes down to is my lack of faith in the power of Plans to solve bicyclists' problems. Like Joe himself said on Streetsblog today, I believe that most of what gets done or not done is a matter of politics and organizing, not plans. Plans aren't laws. They aren't enforceable. If cities want to totally ignore them, as far as I understand, they can. The accountability processes for planning are thus indirect and weak. If you don't like the content of a given plan or its execution, your recourse is to complain to elected officials who are actually accountable to the public. Otherwise, cities can disregard plans all they want.

I say this because a lot of the criticism of the LA Bike Plan has been about how it is "The Plan with no Teeth" and how there are a lot of lines on it but nobody believes they will actually become real bike facilities. Based on what I said above, I don't think that is surprising. No plan really has teeth. As a consequence I've shifted my thinking away from the notion that this Plan should address all the problems that bicyclists can face in LA. After three years of adding routes and tweaking policies and increasing the specificity of the plan, I now want to pass it and get on with the business of building quality bike infrastructure. We can use the specifics in the Plan to hold agencies accountable, and if that is not strong enough, we can use laws and elections, which are stronger than plans. I think this planning process has been a drain on advocates' energy and time and I want it to end. I think our time would be better spent using the political process, elections, and laws.

All that said, I am nonetheless joining forces with other advocates in demanding some answers and revisions to the Plan. For what I hope is the last time. I want to share these here.

------What I plan on saying tomorrow. Hope it will fit in the time limit!---------------

Hello. I’m Herbie, I’m an LACBC member. I live in Angelino Heights. I co-founded the UCLA Bike Coalition which submitted extensive comments on this Bike Plan almost a year ago. I’ve come here to ask some questions that get at the underlying problems that have plagued this plan.

I am saddened that I have to ask these questions because there is a lot in this plan that is good. The web of bikeways criss-crossing the city on the maps - that is good. The idea of bicycle-friendly streets with very little car traffic that novices can feel safe on - that is good. So many of the policies are good, and there are pages and pages of them. I especially support revising the mitigation requirements for development so that trip mitigation funds can fund bikeways instead of road widening (p. 81 of ch. 4). [editor’s note: It’s a reform I’ve called for ever since I heard about how much mitigation money NBC Universal would have to shell out to widen freeways and arterials. It’s nonsense to use “trip generation” formulas that assume a certain percentage of people will drive with no recognition of how infrastructure influences those decisions. People and development don't create the need for road widening. Departments of Transportation do.]


But there are disturbing questions that remain and that undercut bicyclists’ faith in this plan. I come here to ask these questions in earnest and I hope that Planning will answer them immediately at this hearing.


(1) Why is it so important to segregate the bike lane mileage into categories? What is at stake in making this distinction? Clearly, someone in the city cares about this, but who, and why? The Plan has preserved these categories after two years of bicyclists rejecting them. In each revision, the categories are tweaked to hide them further away in ever more opaque language. Planning needs to explain why preserving these categories is more important than responding to bicyclists’ repeated feedback.


(2) Another question for Claire. Can you clarify whether the Plan recommends EIRs for all of the “potential”/”infeasible” lanes? The language in the plan is unclear. The Plan’s MND says that “bicycle lanes currently identified as potential will require additional analysis (particularly impacts on traffic) pursuant to CEQA” (24). Since many people in this room suspect that Alta’s initial analysis showed that many of the lanes in those categories could actually be done Today without any CEQA review, bicyclists will not accept those lanes being written off as second-rate “potential” lanes. The truth is that these lanes could be striped today with no studies, so why is the Plan giving the impression that they somehow need to be studied? They were already studied in the beginning of this process by Alta and they were found to be immediately possible.


(3) Finally, where are the technical analysis documents from Alta? Bicyclists have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for these documents and we have not been shown them. It is unacceptable for an agency that serves the public interest to withhold information from the public. These technical analyses are neither confidential nor sensitive; they simply describe the car traffic volume and road widths on a given street and then calculate the feasibility of putting bike lanes on that street. This document is sitting in one of your (Planning’s) desks right now and you need to come forward with it. Withholding a technical document from the public is a scandal when your agency exists to serve the public good. 


If these three questions can be answered, and if bicyclists’ concerns about incorporating equity measures and adequately defining bicycle boulevards can be met, then I can wholeheartedly support this plan. 


I hope Claire (Bowin) and Jane (Choi) answer these questions immediately so that all of us can celebrate the really good parts of the plan, which are the many miles of planned bikeways, the pro-bike policies and the detailed five-year implementation schedule. Planning has worked with advocates on many of these items. I want to see that work move forward.

I think I speak for many bicyclists when I say that we are looking forward to keeping the city on track with that implementation schedule and seeing a really different biking environment in Los Angeles within the next five years.

Tattoos on the Heart: Stories of Hope and Compassion, by Gregory Boyle

I should mention, first, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't live in Los Angeles or follow closely the arena of gang prevention, that Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, the most well-known gang prevention program in the gang capital of the United States, Los Angeles. The organization's slogan is "Nothing stops a bullet like a job," and Father Boyle (or "G" as he is known) has made it his vocation to hire convicted felons straight out of jail and employ them in various Homeboy enterprises. They run a bakery, a screen-printing factory, they wash cars, they sell merchandise.


Tattoos on the Heart compiles the many extraordinary stories Father Boyle tells in casual sermon format, the stories that both sprinkle and structure his public speaking. He recently received an honorary degree at Occidental College's graduation, and his central message when he spoke was that we must create kinship. He said, "We are sent to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it." That actually followed a joke that went like:

The homies, they teach me things. For example, they're teaching me how to text. I was driving a homie home, and he got a text on his phone. "What does it say?" I asked him. He said, its Louie. He says they've got him locked up in County holding facilities. He says they're charging him with being the ugliest vato in the universe. He says, "You need to come down here and show them they've got the wrong guy!"

Father Greg let everybody at the Oxy commencement laugh. Then he said that right after this went down he appreciated that these two guys used to be members of rival gangs. They used to shoot bullets at each other. Now they shoot texts at each other. He ended by repeating what he had opened with. We are sent to create a community of kinship, such that God might recognize it.

I don't know who God is, but this statement really stayed with me. It put all the infighting and disagreements in the bike advocacy community in LA in perspective. If rival gangs can get together and bake bread and hold down jobs, and even rib each other via text, surely LA's bike activists can put any hurts behind and aim for a higher purpose.

This is one of the only books I read during my first year of graduate school. I found time to read it because it forced me to - I couldn't put it down. Like an episode of This American Life, the book wanders all over the globe, from wacky circumstances to the improbable and seemingly miraculous. Fr. Boyle connects it all, somehow, makes it all attest to the immense possibility in this world, to our essential connectedness, our ineffable grace, our clumsy humanity... to deeper lessons than I can pretend to regurgitate in this review. I will need to revisit this book many times.

All of us, especially those of us who are trying to fire up social movements or make change, need spiritual leaders. I trust Father Boyle (a fact all the more amazing because of my distrust of religious institutions, especially patriarchal, homophobic ones). I trust him because of his overflowing armful of stories and the way his narration focuses on the actions of all the people around him, in all their shapes and sizes and backgrounds and quirks and graces and flaws. We must understand this kind of principled humility if we are to do any worthwhile work in this world.

Addendum: Homeboy has been hit hard by the recession. They really need your money, I mean, they really need it or they can't hire any more homies! They just laid off almost all of their staff, leaving only their core outlets, like the bakery and the printshop. Learn more about them and donate here.
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Confusing Survey Question

What would you answer if confronted with this question, as I was today in the 2010 UCLA Graduate and Professional Student Survey:

Which of the following housing situations best describes your CURRENT residence?

• on-campus
• University owned student housing (e.g. Weyburn Terrace)
• Off-Campus, University owned student housing (e.g. University Apartments South)
• Off-Campus, non-University owned housing - within walking or biking distance
• Off-Campus, non-University owned housing - within driving distance

This question both dumb-founded and offended me, sufficiently so that I wrote the Student Affairs Information and Research Office an email:

I took the UCLA Student Affairs Graduate and Professional Student Survey today, and as a bicyclist and an urban planner in-training, I was concerned by the phrasing of question 30.

I find the distinction between "walking or biking distance" and "driving distance" a problematic one. I personally did not know which of these to choose. I live 12 miles away, which many people would consider NOT a bikable distance in Los Angeles. However, in Portland it's a bikable distance to many, and in Copenhagen plenty of people bike that far to work and school. I bike it, too, and of course I consider my home within biking distance of UCLA, but does that mean I should select "within biking distance"? Or would that be incorrectly interpreted by people who compile the survey?

Lumping walking and biking distance together as one thing is additionally confusing, because obviously much further distances can be covered much faster on a bike.

Finally, your categorization excludes the possibility that someone could live outside of "walking or biking distance" but still take transit. It's insulting to the thousands of UCLA graduate students that take transit daily from many far-flung areas of LA County to tell them that they live "within driving distance."

I hope in future surveys you can reconsider how you phrase this question. Depending on what you are using the survey results for, it might serve you to ask about travel time instead of mode.

Thank you for your consideration.

Kristen "Herbie" Huff
M.A. Candidate, Urban Planning 2011
UCLA School of Public Affairs

 After I sent this email, I realized that one of the prizes for taking the survey is a Parking Permit! Of course, as anyone who reads this blog knows, I disapproved of that, so I had to add this PS.

P.S. I should probably add that I don't think a parking permit is a good prize to incentivize people to take the survey, as the entire UCLA community is struggling with how to accommodate the immense costs associated with car traffic and parking, and UCLA Transportation Services is actively encouraging people to avail themselves of other options to get to campus, and parking lots are expensive to build and maintain; and air pollution and traffic fatalities afflict us all, and driving makes us fat and unhappy...

I mean this critique in the friendliest, most constructive way, but I still had to call you all on that. Plain cash will do better, I think.

I should have written that they could also give away bikes!

Transit riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians4LYFE out there, what would you have answered if confronted with such a question?

Free Parking, like Freedom, Isn't Really Free

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The benefits of market-priced parking are not intuitive. Sigh... (click this link, for example, and read all the ranting comments). As Streetsblog LA notes, the press has been all over State Senator Lowenthal for proposing reforms to the way we currently provide parking.

Streetsblog encourages us to respond and back Senator Lowenthal up. In an attempt to do that, here's a quick and dirty guide to why YOU should support market-priced parking. I promise to link this post in comments on all the misleading media articles. Streetsblog, you challenged; I responded!

THE HIGH COST OF FREE PARKING; QUICK AND DIRTY VERSION

Let's think about it this way: would we all be better off if most food was free? No, we'd waste a lot of time waiting in lines, and once we got the food, we'd eat too much. That's a pretty good analogy for what we do with parking now.

Here's an example that shows how providing ample free parking hurts us in unexpected ways. The City of LA requires new housing developments to provide a certain number of parking spaces - more than one parking space per unit of housing. That means that when I rent my apartment, the price includes the extra cost that was added because the developer had to dig underground and build an underground parking complex. My rent pays for parking; as a tenant, I pay for it whether I want it or not. If we removed minimum parking requirements like this (which is exactly what Lowenthal's bill encourages cities to do), then developers could provide the amount of parking they think the market wants. They could provide the amount of parking they think they can sell. This creates possibilities. You could rent an apartment with parking as usual. Or you could pay less and not have a reserved parking spot in your building. You could choose how much you are willing to pay for housing independently of how much you are willing to pay for parking.

Want to know a developer who has long lobbied for the removal of minimum parking requirements? Habitat for Humanity. This is because the kind of low-income housing that Habitat builds is simply incompatible with high occupancy, expensive underground parking lots. Habitat's tenants don't need that kind of capacity, and more importantly they can't pay for it. But cities require Habitat to build it. This basically kills a lot of low-income housing projects.

As Donald Shoup always says, parking isn't free. We all pay for it, but the costs are hidden. We pay for that land through higher costs that get bundled into housing, food, and basically everything we buy. The key insight of capitalist markets is that we can provide efficient amounts of a good by allowing supply and demand to reach equilibrium. This equilibrium tells us how much of something people want and how much they are willing to pay for it. It is very difficult for some central agency (like a city government) to replicate this process. Because city governments don't have good tools for estimating how much parking to provide, they basically always overprovide it. Thus, we see Walmarts swimming in seas of parking that will only be full on Black Friday.

Next time you park in a free parking lot, in, say your apartment complex or at a grocery store or a movie theatre, check out how many of the spaces are full. I bet most of them are empty (like the Food-for-Less parking lot shown above, captured in a moment in time courtesy of Google maps). That's because most of these lots are required by city zoning laws, and city planners overestimated. We should allocate parking like we do any other important good: with a market. (Which is not to skate over the fact that markets have failures, but that's another post, and I think a market in parking would work just as well as the markets we have for housing and land).

On a fairness tip, as somebody who rarely parks, I don't really want my tax (and food, and housing, and etc) dollars going towards other people's parking.

A good transportation system should provide choice. We should be able to comfortably use any number of modes (driving, walking, biking, transit) at a variety of prices for a variety of services (pay more to go faster and more comfortably, or choose to economize). One way to achieve more balance in our transportation system is to get the prices right. Right now, we provide (very expensive) roads for free and (very expensive) parking spaces for free. As a result, we get a lot of driving. People are only responding rationally to the fact that it is cheap and convenient to drive. Those of us who want to encourage biking and walking must realize that when we price driving according to its true cost, not only in terms of road and parking usage but also in terms of social costs like air pollution and congestion, we give people incentives to switch modes. Parking reform is good for bikers; it's good for the air; it's good for the environment; it reduces congestion!

But if none of that convinces you, parking reform is also good for the people who park. Sick of situations where you have to drive around and around the block, looking for a space? Well, all those spaces are filled because they are free. (Remember the restaurant example earlier? When you cruise around, you're waiting in the analogous line). When we correctly price parking, there are always a few spaces open, so you never have to struggle to find a spot. The right price is the one that keeps a few spaces open while using most of the parking capacity. No more, no less.

(Credit to Donald Shoup for ALL of the ideas herein).

Now get out there and support parking reform!

A Mixed-Media Multiple-Scope Retrospective (1/3)

In the nostalgic spirit that seems to envelop everybody at the turn of a new year, and a new decade, I've embarked on three parallel retrospectives, each looking back at a successively longer period. I have a sudden intense need to recover lost memories, probably prompted by seeing some old, old friends and a strange (and completely inexplicable in this forum) voyeuristic obsession with high school love.

The retrospective work that is satisfying this need is:

(1) a data-centric retrospective of my fall quarter bicycle riding

(2) a selection of representative quotes from a year's worth of morning pages

(3) a CD-length mix of the decade's best songs

I wanted to post them all tonight, before winter vacation ends, but (2) entails reading over 1,000 handwritten pages and is taking way too long. So I'll start with (1) tonight, (3) tomorrow, and hopefully (2) within the next few days. By the way, the picture is of me (pretending to play the bass) about a decade ago, in early 2001.

P.P.S. Before I start, did you know that the decade's "top" song according to pop radio charts was... Usher's "Yeah"? If you listen to pop radio, that is probabilistically the song you spent the most time listening to this decade. I was about to muse on how we all feel about having spent possibly hours of our lives hearing Li'l John say, "...OhKay!" but then I realized that anyone who listens to pop radio has found a way to accept - no, enjoy relentless repetition, and so would probably be unmoved by such a contemplation.

----------

Speaking of enjoying relentless repetition...

In the fall quarter of 2009 I bicycled 825 miles, approximately the distance from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is actually much less than the total I expected! My weekly average was 68.8 miles. Usually I biked to campus and back (24 miles round trip) on Monday and Wednesday, and on Tuesdays I bussed to campus and biked back. I did lots of little one miles rides down into Westwood Village and then back up to the School of Public Affairs at the northeast tip of UCLA campus. The last two weeks I did very little biking due to being sleep deprived and stressed (10 and 32 weekly miles, respectively). My highest mileage actually took place the first week, when I was biking all over town for the first-ever Los Angeles Bike Count and was totally enthusiastic about biking to campus under any conditions.

I only rode through Tuesday morning rush-hour once, and took the bus every other time. The day I tried it, I breathed a lot of cold exhaust and was surprised to find that I traveled basically the same speed as the cars on Olympic, at least through the congested sections in Beverly Hills. But I got honked at. Rush hour (and opening the accursed peak-hour lanes on Olympic) reliably makes motorists act a little more crazy, and I chose not to deal with it.

My daily high was 32 miles, which I did on 9/30. On 10/28 and 11/10 I rode 30 miles.

Had I driven 825 miles in my Toyota Corolla, it would have cost me $75 to burn about 25 gallons of gas. I also would have paid about $300 to park on campus. (And I wouldn't have had the bicycle on campus to give me the flexibility to ride into Westwood and back). This savings more than paid for the new back light I bought (about $20) and my occasional bus rides (about $12 for the quarter). Though to be honest, I probably did burn a substantial portion of the saved money on food. I've never been as constantly hungry as I was this quarter. When I was a DIII athlete I had access to a no-limits buffet style dining hall. It's substantially harder to feed high-intensity athletic activity when you actually buy the food yourself.

Of course, by not burning those 25 gallons of gas, I reduced our foreign oil import just a tiny bit, and I prevented about 488 pounds of CO2 from being emitted.

I suspect that if I had had my car handy (my commitment to biking allowed me to park it in a garage about 8 miles from my house, and keep the spot at my apartment complex open for visitors), I would have driven more miles, so this estimate is conservative.

Folks at Helen's cycles in Westwood were invaluably helpful, mostly providing me with bike-centric study breaks and regularly well-inflated tires. I learned to bring a change of shirt to wear to class.

These 825 miles were basically incident free, except for a couple unpleasant interactions with motorists. I learned to signal much earlier when moving to the left to go around a parked car on Olympic. For the record, Santa Monica smells bad because of all the trucks on it. And of course, there's really no good route to UCLA from the East. But I co-founded a student advocacy organization that now has about 90 members, and we're working on that.

A quarter of spinning cranks and velo-love.

Ride Report: Monday, December 21, 2009

An extraordinary and unlikely run-in with a motorcycle cop today.

It's 2:13 PM, and I'm climbing a small hill on Olympic just east of San Vicente, already feeling a little edgy about sharing the road with crazed last minute holiday shoppers. If they are the same people who come into the bookstore (where I just worked a 7 hour shift) and cut in line, yell, and leave mess everywhere, I don't particularly want to ride with them.

The rightmost lane on Olympic is available for parking, and I'm in what's left of it, technically in the door zone. I'm fine being in the door zone when I'm going pretty slow. All of a sudden someone SCREAMS in my ear. They seem to have direct access to my eardrum and they have let a scream rip at maximum pitch. I jump in my (bike) seat and look up to see an SUV with a teenager's head sticking out of the back window. As they pass me, in a total failure of my principles, I flip them off. Well... it was a heated moment. I was very startled and frightened.

I managed to note the SUV's license plate and I pulled over to call the LAPD. I have actually practiced noting license plates, because I call the LAPD regularly when I am harassed, or when someone drives recklessly around me. I've been on the phone for literally 10 seconds when a motorcycle cop passes by. Perfect! "I need your help!" I yell frantically. "Police!"

The motorcycle turns around and sort of scoots over to me. "Are you yelling for me?" he asks. I say, "Yes, I've just been harassed by an SUV... it was white, and it's headed that way, this was literally under a minute ago." He says, what do you mean harassed? I tell him that someone leaned out of the car and screamed in my ear.

He seems irritated. He tells me that there is no crime in yelling out of cars. He gestures toward the pavement and says, "Well, how were you riding, I mean, if you're in the roadway then..." I interrupt him. I show him where I was riding and he sort of shrugs. Then I say, "It's a good thing that they're writing that anti-harassment ordinance to deal with the problem of bicyclists being harassed. He leans his motorcycle-helmeted-head back slightly and squints his eyes. What "problem"? he asks skeptically. I tell him, you know, people yelling at us, passing us closely, throwing stuff at us.

"Oh." he says, as if admitting that such a problem might exist in Los Angeles. "Well, here's the thing, though... lots of bicyclists don't know the rules of the road, and lots of them are running lights, riding the wrong way..." I don't remember if the officer used the words "asking for it," exactly.

I actually interrupt him and tell him that if this is gonna be a lecture on bicyclists and the law, I'll pass. I tell him I'm intimately familiar with the laws. And anyway, I say, aren't motorists breaking the laws constantly, too? I cite some examples, like how they are always speeding. And how they never stop behind the limit line at red lights.

Turns out, Officer Corbett (? Collett? I forget.) is actually a speed patrol on Olympic and San Vicente, and he warms up to the idea that motorists are always breaking the law. Yes, he says. And what's more - "Wanna know the top speed I've ever seen? 98. Ninety-eight miles per hour on San Vicente. If somebody pulls out of their driveway in front of a car going that fast, they're dead." He goes on to tell me that he does more than the average officer for bikes and pedestrians, and he seems sincere. We talk for a while about Assault with a Deadly Weapon and how if a car ever veers toward you intentionally, it's ADW with a vehicle. He speaks with some venom, as if he has had experience with it, and he actually derides the fact that so many folks want to classify ADW with a vehicle as a traffic accident. Yes, that definitely happens in Los Angeles, I think as I listen, recalling the recent Hummer incident in downtown LA. Later he goes on a rant about how motorists don't know when pedestrians have the right of way, and how drivers need to slow down in this area, which has a hospital, a school, and plenty of elderly people crossing at unmarked intersections. We're on the same page about that, I think. I briefly consider enlisting the officer's support for traffic calming on Olympic.

Our conversation goes on for about 15 minutes longer, and we reach a much more level, respectful rapport than when I interrupted what I presumed to be an oncoming lecture. Ok. I want to end here with Three lessons from this.

1) Bottom line is, in our initial exchange, the officer's first question toward me was whether I was breaking the law or riding illegally; his first impulse was then to educate me regarding bike law and describe the rampant problem with scofflaw cyclists. I called him over asking for his help, and his first assumption is that I did something to deserve the harassment, like ride "in the roadway." (Ummm.... not against the law! I suspended my urge to give him a lecture about that. anyway...) Imagine if you called the cops because someone was harassing you and their first question was whether you were breaking any laws.

Even an officer like this one, who was fair and respectful, professed to be pro-bike and pro-ped, and viewed cars as deadly weapons, displayed anti-bike bias. That's just one more indicator that the anti-cyclist bias is huge and rampant among LAPD particularly.

2) We definitely need the cyclist harassment ban proposed by Councilman Rosendahl's office. I know that most of the vehicle code can't be touched by cities because its considered a "matter of statewide concern," and legally only the State of CA can create laws like a three-foot passing law or a stop-as-yield law, but we need to find the legal areas the city actually does have jurisdiction over and regulate on this. (By the way, the city does have a local ordinance against throwing things out of cars, apparently because of a problem with motorists and their passengers spraying people with fire extinguishers (?!) a while back. Officer Corbett explained this. So if you do get something thrown at you, definitely note the license plate and call it in to LAPD.)

Here I was with the improbable, fortunate coincidence of blatant harassment and the arrival of a police officer, and unfortunately for me, he couldn't do anything. If we had an anti-harassment ordinance, I could have cited the code, listed the license plate, and watched justice speed off.

3) There is no evidence that cyclists use their discretion to break the law any more than motorists do - no, definitely no evidence. But we must be ready to face the "scofflaw cyclist" stereotype at every turn. Our law-breaking stands out in motorists' minds because we break laws that would be VERY dangerous and stupid for cars to break. Their law breaking is just routine. I had some success tempering the "scofflaw cyclist" stereotype with 1) mention of the routine criminal activity of motorists, and 2) meticulous knowledge of the law and 3) meticulous following of the law. I think we need all three of these things to prevail in the face of this stereotype, which is why I basically never break the law on a bike when there is any kind of witness around (and of course not when it'd be stupid).

Geek note: this whole "motorists come in all shapes and sizes, but cyclists are all arrogant scofflaws" actually reflects a broader psychological/sociological phenomenon called "out-group homogeneity bias."

Rosendahl and City Hall, pass that law. Cyclists, know your laws. And LAPD, stop assuming we're breaking them.


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(The scene of the crime. In the background you can see the unmarked intersection the officer and I discussed.)

Open Urban Planning Degree 2: Carpool Fail

In an earlier post I explained my efforts to make my urban planning papers accessible to a knowledgeable, interested, general audience by imagining that I'm writing them for this blog. An added benefit of this exercise is that by posting my papers here, I make available some planning related ideas. The questions, "What is urban planning?" and 'What constitutes (or should constitute) an urban planning education?" are highly contested, and I certainly cannot, at this point, answer them. But a sort of practical answer may emerge as I pass on these papers. And I like to think that this could be of some use to someone considering going to planning skool, or to folks who do planning-related work, like community organizing, local politicking, etc., (see - I write etc. because the bounds around urban planning are perpetually implacable). Like MIT's OpenCourseWare does, I'll use the internet to make knowledge available outside the ivory tower, except unlike MITs OCW, I'll do it in a tiny, unsanctioned - let's just say it, meek way.

I wrote this paper in response to an "economic naturalist" prompt. It says, go out into the world, observe some urban phenomenon, and analyze it with economics. This assignment evinces the imperative in urban planning to address what is practical. Economics for urban planning only has worth inasmuch as it can explain some real behavior.

A final sidenote: I've read a lot of Chomsky and Naomi Klein, and had always thought of economics as an ideologically broken discipline, focused on currency and unquestioning of capitalism. This class sort of converted me. I want to use concepts such as opportunity cost, marginal cost, and externalities to create organizational systems (maybe markets - not necessarily "free" markets) that place value on the environment and distribute benefits equitably. I no longer believe that a microeconomic analysis of choice is incompatible with my ideological leanings toward anarchy and social democracy. Perhaps that's all for another post. Now, here's the paper.

Why are there so many empty seats moving (slowly) down the freeway? Wouldn’t commuting be faster and cheaper if we filled up all the vehicles?

Most cars seat 4 or 5 people, but most traffic consists of solo drivers. That’s a lot of underused capacity moving down the road. During the morning and evening rush hours, solo drivers are stuck in a sea of empty seats, yet nobody attempts to take advantage of all that potential mobility.[1] Drivers don't sell their empty seats to passengers who want to go the same places, and we don't see would-be passengers lining up to bid for rides.

The absence of such a market is most puzzling when you consider that the road is very congested, which means a lot of people want to travel along the same route. An economist would say that demand for travel on this freeway is high.[2] Whenever there's some demand for a good, anybody who can supply that good has an opportunity to charge a price for it. Then we have a seeming economic paradox. A service (mobility) is in high demand, and the ability to provide this service (empty passenger seats) is under private ownership and available for profit. This same scenario exists on the LA Metro, and there is a market: used fare tickets, still good for a few more hours of travel, are sold at informal (and illegal) markets around the stations. Why isn't there a market in casual carpooling?

In order to answer this question, let's imagine how such a market would have to work. Such a thought experiment addresses some logistical questions, like how would carpoolers match up with drivers going to their destination? And what about safety concerns? Let's just imagine the most low-tech solution possible. Let's say I am one of the many Angelenos who does not travel to work by car.[3] If I want to get to UCLA from the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, I walk to the nearest on-ramp to the 10 W freeway. I stand there with a sign saying “405 N – Wilshire” which represents where I want to get off the freeway. In a robust market, I'd find another passenger hoping to go my way so that we could get in a car together, because traveling in twos alleviates safety concerns for the driver. With all the rush-hour activity at every on-ramp, eventually someone going my way would roll up. The two of us would get in and we would pay the going price. The driver would drop us off shortly after the freeway exit, and we would be on our own to reach our final destinations.

It would seem that everybody gains in such an arrangement. That's the talent of private markets: they match up buyers and sellers who are both better off when the transaction is made. In this case, my fellow passenger and I are better off because we can get to work without owning a car. We save a lot of money, even if we spend some of it on the commute. The driver, who has already sunk a lot of money into the cost of owning and maintaining the car, gets to recoup some of this while getting to her final destination in nearly the same amount of time. So let's return to the question, why doesn't such a market form?

First of all, the market depends upon a level of robustness, or else passengers look like crazy commuter hitchhikers. The whole thing has to be established at many locations and well-known. This means there's a significant start-up cost. Whoever invested the time and energy wouldn't receive any special benefit, and everybody else who participated in the market afterward would be a free rider on the founder's original effort.

More importantly, the marginal cost per mile of driving is very low. Economists distinguish between fixed costs, which must be paid upfront to engage in some activity, and marginal costs, which vary with the level of use. In the case of driving, there are huge fixed costs: the cost of ownership and maintenance. Even the cost of a tank of gas is a fixed cost when you're behind the wheel. You already paid for the tank of gas, so the next mile is free. The distinction between fixed and marginal cost doesn't necessarily defray the driver's general incentive to recoup his costs. But a basic precept of bargaining (and markets) is that everybody tries to get the best deal possible.[4] In this case, consumers know that the marginal cost to producers is zero, and they will try to bargain them down that low. Why should I pay you to give me a ride when I know that you're going there anyway, and you already bought the car and filled the tank? I should get this ride for free.

Relatedly, even if the market were already established (perhaps by some government wanting the road to function better) and even if the marginal cost per mile of driving were higher, driving alone may actually confer a significant benefit on some people. Perhaps they really enjoy rocking out to music in the morning.[5] Alternatively, drivers may perceive the risk of inviting strangers into their car to be very high. Either way, for these people picking up a paying hitchhiker would entail a large transaction cost. Whenever transaction costs are higher than the going price, a market will not form.

In the places where we do see casual carpooling markets, some of the above criteria do not hold. In the Bay Area, casual carpools form to cross the Bay Bridge. In this case, the market's logistics are simple: there is one pick-up spot, and one drop-off spot. This solves the free rider problem that comes with establishing the market. In addition, the marginal cost of driving is much higher than normal. Single occupancy vehicles pay a toll of $4 to cross the bridge; carpools of three or more can bypass it. Now that there is a monetary benefit, more drivers are willing to take on the transaction cost of picking up strangers.

If casual carpooling were widespread, freeways would carry more people, and overall we might spend less money on commuting and less time in traffic. Unfortunately, because no one wants to do the work to coordinate all these carpools, and because driving another trip to work is basically free, all those empty seats remain an untapped resource.

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[1] Except the government, which does provide a meager incentive in the form of a less congested carpool lane.

[2] Technically, they would say that the quantity demanded is very high because the price is very low. The term demand on its own refers to a dynamic function of price.

[3] About 20% of Los Angeles’ workforce, according to this document: http://www.ladot.lacity.org/pdf/PDF10.pdf

[4] In economic jargon, consumers try to maximize their consumer utility.

[5] Surveys suggest that this benefit is nontrivial. When people were asked to name their ideal commute time, the mean response was 16 minutes, not “no commute.” This is chronicled in the 2008 book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, p. 139.

Prius Ad Campaign on LA's Freeways Violates Public Space, Federal Law

Since I now do it so rarely, driving a car makes me feel like I'm in an alternative reality - either a dream state where everything floats by without any tangible sensations, or an exhilarating video game where I maneuver around vehicles and accelerate through curves.

Last night the 110 North was all video game thrill, the lane lines blurring and the curves making me lean in my seat. But today, driving East on the 10, just past Overland, I rubbed my eyes, 'cause what I was seeing disoriented me and intrigued me. Was it a dream? It looked like this:

It's an elaborate flower arrangement like you'd find in the Rose Parade. That orange thing in the middle? It's a 2010 Prius.

Why did it look so odd and disorienting? Because ever since 1965 when the Highway Beautification Act was signed, advertising has been restricted on Interstate Highway landscaping. Toyota themselves recognize this - check this excerpt from their press release:

Since federal regulations require that the Floralscapes be non-commercial in nature, abstract images of the new Prius will appear in different settings, capturing the essence of its marketing campaign developed by Saatchi & Saatchi LA – “Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine.” All of the images have been approved by California’s department of transportation, Caltrans.

I just spent 20 minutes re-reading the beginning of that sentence, and poring over relevant federal regulations, and I can't find any evidence that this is legal. The flowers obviously form a Prius, and this is obviously an ad campaign. This isn't the only spot Angelenos will be forced to stare at an orange flower 2010 Prius; they're at seven locations along LA freeways.

Will someone with legal training help me out on this one? I'm sure Toyota is prepared to defend their actions, considering that they have the time and money to make sure their multi-million dollar ad campaigns are actually legal. On the other hand, I still think the State Attorney General Ed Brown should bring charges against the parties who facilitated this ad: Mayor Villaraigosa, Caltrans, Toyota, and Saatchi & Saatchi. Attorney General Brown should file charges because the states can lose a portion of their federal highway funding for violating the Highway Beautification Act. Caltrans and Mayor V have definitely violated the act, at least in spirit, and what was a green public landscape is now lost to branding and commercialization.

What are we getting in the trade-off? Is Toyota going to maintain the landscaping around these ads? The press release implies as much:

California-based businesses are contracted to install and maintain the Floralscapes. The non-profit Los Angeles Conservation Corps, which provides training, education and work experience to at-risk young adults and school-aged youth, will maintain the areas surrounding the Floralscapes.

But the passive voice in that first sentence leaves some important questions unanswered. Hmm, who is paying for the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to do this? Toyota? Or our tax dollars? Inquiring minds want to know.

So much irony abounds here. Mayor Villaraigosa celebrates the advertisements as a symbol of "the city's progressive approach to solving environmental issues." He's right, technically. The Prius does pretty well symbolize Mayor Villaraigosa's idea of a greener LA. It uses fancy modern technology to produce basically no results (a Prius gets worse gas mileage than a Geo Metro), it maintains the car's hegemony, its costs are borne by your average Joe and Jane car-buyers, and it pleases big corporate interests. Oh, and let's not forget that Priuses cause just as much congestion as Hummers.

The Prius 2010 campaign intrudes on our lives by design, and this is not the only way it does that. First, we found ourselves in Prius "solar flower" playgrounds, like this one in the Americana. Then, Toyota found a legal loophole so that they could stick their ads in a place where no ads have gone before. LA is already embroiled in controversies about supergraphics and digital billboards. The Prius ads on 7 LA freeways mock the citizen movements against enormous advertisements that have popped up all over our city.

Caltrans and Mayor V have never allowed the everyday organizations that adopt stretches of highway to spread their message to this extent. That's for the best. Anybody and everybody can and will adopt a stretch of highway. I don't want the gun club or the Mormons (sorry, gun-loving LDSes - I'm sure there are many of you out there reading this) creating a flowery mural of this:



Anyway, that's beside the point.

This Prius ad isn't going to disrupt my personal view, and let's face it - even if I did drive a lot, sights and sounds on the freeway have never been that exciting or beautiful. The real scandals here are (1) the ever-encroaching privatization of public space, (2) the successful greenwashing of a technology that really doesn't do much to solve our climate and oil problems (3) the fact that our leaders think we buy this greenwashing, and think they can strike a sketchy deal like this with a huge car company like Toyota.

Come tomorrow, I'll be back on Olympic on my bike, and I won't be looking at this ad. But it should come down.

Then the 10-W at Overland will look like this again.

Road Anti-Rage, or We Will Meet Your Physical Force with Soul Force

There's no dearth of guides on how to ride a bicycle in a city -- on safe urban cycling practices, legal rights on the road, even how to cope when there's an accident.

This is not a how-to of any of the types listed above. This concerns how to talk to drivers, and how to engender their goodwill by displaying goodwill ourselves. This is a method for road anti-rage.

Though this method applies to the most extreme cases, and certainly must hold up in their light given the recent case with Dr. Thompson, I mean it primarily as a way of everyday riding and interaction. We must use nonviolence in each and every interaction we have on the streets. Every single day we face honking, yelling, dangerously close passing, purposeful braking, and buses buzzing us. Most drivers mean no harm. Some do. Most, we are confident, are ignorant of our perspective, and ignorant of how vulnerable we really are and all the dangers we face.

Ultimately, drivers control the heavy weaponry and they will win in any violent contest. What I am suggesting is that we embrace the fact that we are weak and a minority, and we champion the very vulnerability that often fills us with fear. If we take a principled stand against violence, we will always win.

Many of us bike because of our principles. Perhaps we want to take a stand against wars for oil, environmental degradation, and an automobile industry that shrugs at fatality counts. Or we want to see and engage with our city and our neighbors. Or we want to take charge of our health and body. For whatever reason, when we bike, we endure some unpleasant situations in the name of these principles, these commitments.

The issue of road rage and how we respond to it is then essentially an issue of how a principled movement should respond to violence. We must draw on the nonviolent tradition, the same tradition that peacefully overturned dictatorships in countless countries. The methods and philosophy of nonviolence gained civil rights in the U.S. It is a method that has proven to win remarkably. More important than that, though, we must adhere to nonviolence if we are ever to achieve more peaceful, civil, and humane roads, and that's the goal for which we all strive.

Then I say, let us do away with the finger and with retaliation. Those are violent responses. Let us do more than put away the finger. Let us also refuse to hate the drivers that act violently towards us.

To be specific, I am suggesting that:

• When we are honked at, we nod humbly.
• When we are yelled at, we respond with calm.
• When we are passed closely and want to either fight or flee, we must engage in discussion with humanity and love.

Here's a rough template for how such an interaction would proceed:

1. Unsafe, unpleasant, or hostile encounter with motorist
2. Assume that motorist is a well-intentioned, good (but maybe ignorant) human being. This assumption shows on your face as you treat the motorist with kindness and respect. Empathize with the motorist.
3. Attempt to find a moment to interact. This may occur naturally, at a light. Or, you can yell, "Do you have a minute?" Motorists usually don't. They're especially unlikely to pull over if you show even a hint of defensiveness. But I've had some success with a genuine entreaty to have a conversation. For example, I'll say, "If you have a minute, I'd be happy to explain to you why I have to take that lane position."
4. Kindly explain why you were riding where you were riding. (Note that (4) requires you to be conscious in your riding style and choices, and confident in them. If you're rude or unjustified in the way you ride, this method won't work.) Some kind explanations can reference the law, but none focus on it. When interacting with a neighbor in a civil fashion, and searching for a way to share the road, the law becomes beside the point. Technically, yes, the law can keep us safe, but its not adequate as a guide for how to interact as citizens and human beings sharing space.
5. Kindly explain how the motorist's actions affect you. For example, "When you pass me so closely, it makes me feel very afraid." Readily admit fear and vulnerability. These are truths of our lives when we ride bikes.
6. State your needs offer the motorist a suggestion for how to meet your needs For example, "I need more room in the lane in order to feel safe. Would you be willing to pass bicyclists while giving us half a lane to comfortably ride in? I'd really appreciate it."
7. End by reiterating that you're cooperative and friendly. "Well - no harm meant on my end. I just want to get to work on time. Thanks for listening, take care!"
8. Just as it is important to learn how to state our feelings, thoughts, and fears without making judgment or using violent language, it is also crucial that we remain open to the driver's needs, thoughts, and feelings. Listen to what the driver might have to say. Listen for the fears or feelings driving their communication, even if the words come out as harsh or defensive. Acknowledge that motorists also need a safe space to drive.

It might be infuriating to consider this approach when so often motorists carelessly endanger our lives. But I'd argue that if we really want our interactions with them to increase our safety and make the world a better place, then we have to keep our side of the street clean, act like the upstanding citizens we are, and kill them with kindness.

I realized some time ago that my ultimate goal was mutual understanding with motorists. So I started practicing. For example, a driver would lay on the horn for a block, then pass me very closely, yelling "sidewalk!" and zoom away. We'd meet again at the intersection. I assume, going into this encounter, that this is a person, a human, with whom I can empathize. I show that assumption on my face. I say, hello. Usually I am greeted with what I perceive as disgust and anger. The motorist may expect a fight. But if I can remain calm, explain my perspective, and remain open to the motorist, we usually end the conversation on a good note. A much better note, at any rate, than if I tried to argue with them.

Martin Luther King said, Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

For all the attention that's been paid to the most minute questions of legality and safety, very little attention has been paid to how we interact with others on the road. In the absence of this attention we're left with crude advice and cruder instincts. This is an attempt to draw on the most old-school, time-tested philosophy of movements for social change. It takes the rage part of road-rage seriously and doesn't shy from the spiritual. So I'll end this post with a quote from the preacher of all preachers:

So in many instances, we have been able to stand before the most violent opponents and say in substance, we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.

Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Threaten our children and bomb our homes and our churches and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half-dead, and as difficult as that is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.