The StreetSmart podcast returns with an episode where we discuss how transit agencies can best fight global warming by encouraging more people to ride transit and by eliminating freeway widenings. This episode’s guest is Bryn Moncelsi, the Deputy Director of Climate Resolve.
The interview is divided into two parts. First, we discuss how transit agencies often overlook one of the most basic ways that transit can be made more comfortable and attractive for all riders
The second part of the podcast goes more into policy. We discuss LA Metro’s dual role as transit agency and highway expander. It was only recently, after a push by advocates, that Metro started admitting in its own reports (read Streetsblog coverage of said report here) the damaging role of freeway expansion in L.A. County has had the region’s efforts to battle global warming.
Catchup on past episodes of StreetSmart here.
Transcript:
Damien Newton
I'm here with Bryn Moncelsi, the Deputy Director of Climate Resolve. We are going to be talking about climate change. And one of the ways we can fight climate change and improve transportation together is by encouraging people to ride transit.
And you've done some studies and work on that topic. So first off, thank you for being here with us today. I think this is your first time on any of our podcasts which is surprising because we've crossed paths many times over the decades.
Bryn Moncelsi
Thanks for having me.
I think that might be right. So good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Damien
Transportation and climate change are obviously big issues.
One of the things we wanted to talk about is things that transit agencies can be doing to make their services more appealing, because obviously every person that rides transit is a person that's not riding in a car or driving a car.
So let's talk a little bit about transportation and climate change and some of the work that you guys are doing right now at Climate Resolve.
Bryn
Thanks. Yes, I thought we could start out by talking about how days are getting hotter, extreme heat waves are becoming more extreme and and longer, more intense.
And when that happens, it's maybe harder to convince people to get outside of their own private air-conditioned bubble cars and want to be out waiting for the bus, or walking to the bus stop.
But it just becomes all the more crucial that we make our sidewalks and our bus stops a little more inviting, a little more hospitable to people out there in their urban environment.
We love street trees and want to see all the street trees out there. But also at bus stops, there's a lot of opportunity to get more bus shelters out there.
Who doesn't love a good bus shelter?
Damien
Now, and this is an issue that's been ongoing, at least in the city of Los Angeles, where I live.
I actually remember a piece, one of Sahra Sulaiman's first pieces with us, and she's been with us for a dozen years now, was called Desperately Seeking Shade. And it included a photo essay of South LA and people standing out in extreme heat ah with no shade around them waiting for the bus.
Is that a barrier? Just the inability to find a comfortable place to wait for the bus?
Bryn
Yeah, and it's something that really became on our radar back when we were doing a lot of organizing in the EnviroMetro Coalition, and we were conducting our equity survey where we looked at what transit dependent folks really want to prioritize investments in.
That's what led us towards caring about frequency, and reliability of the bus network, but also bus shelters as really, really important, in what affects people's quality of life. We're finding stories of people who would not go to school, not go to work if it was a really hot day and they just couldn't bring themselves to go out there in that heat.
So it is a really important thing that affects people's transportation choices…and their health, frankly.
Damien
I have a bus stop right outside the house I live in. It's a Big Blue Bus stop, and for those that aren't from the area, that's Santa Monica's bus service. I live in LA, but I have a Santa Monica bus stop outside my house.
But anecdotally, I've seen over the past couple of years a big decrease in the number of people that use that bus stop. And it wasn't until I started taking my notes for this conversation a couple of weeks ago that I realized that the dip in me seeing people standing there was because the big tree that's also right in front of my house was cut down a couple years ago.
Like in my head, I had assumed ridership never recovered from COVID. But the bus stop is really used by UCLA students. There's lots of apartments around me that are full UCLA students. But I think the drop is because the tree is gone. The UCLA students are still here.
Bryn
When we want to talk about bus shelter provision, I'd say there's kind of two areas we could break it down as. It's like, where are we putting bus shelters? And so we were doing a lot of advocacy there when the City of LA redid their contract for how the ad agency that was responsible for installing these bus shelters decides where to place them. And it used to be driven by where they could generate the most ad revenue. And so in 2020, when they redid the contract for those bus shelters, we were really proud to get integrated heat equity metrics into the system.
So rather than add revenue driving where these bus shelters would go, it was then ridership and heat exposure to target. The goal was within five years, we'd have 3000 new shelters and at least 75% of all trips and transfers would be protected by bus shelters.
So, location is a really strong equity driver. But then what you're talking about, too, is the quality …what do these bus shelters consist of because there can be big disparities there, too. Whether you've got a tiny sliver of shade that ends up in the middle of the road where people aren't actually trying to wait for the bus, or if you have a more functional shelter that has features that serve the people who want to be there waiting for the bus.
So some of what we've done in more recent years has been engaging with bus riders about what sort of features they would like to see in their bus shelters. What is their ideal bus shelter?
We've come up with designs and worked on renderings to get those visions out there. And so, it's things like having different angles of shade so that depending on where in the sky the sun is, you're directing shade to the sidewalk where people are trying to wait.
We've done designs around bench types so that you can accommodate bodies of all shapes and sizes. Things like security buttons and lighting are really important to people, especially taking trips later at night to make them feel safe.
And then the hardest thing to troubleshoot has been trying to integrate hydration stations into bus shelters, too, so people can get a refreshing drink of water while they're waiting.
Damien
We're talking about L.A. because this is more local for both of us. But this is not an L.A. issue that bus shelters are not what we would hope they would be. This is, at best, a statewide issue, probably a national issue. It's the type of infrastructure that America hasn't completely invested in as much as some of the European and South American countries that we compare ourselves to.
Bryn
We've had a little bit of a shifting the buck, pointing the other way because, at least in our region, our largest transit service provider, Metro, is not the one that then has jurisdiction over the sidewalks.
So, there's a little bit of pointing to the cities that it's their responsibility. And no one is quite stepping up and owning that as their mandate.
Damien
You mentioned the goal of 3000 more bus shelters. Do we know how they're doing as far as reaching that goal or a promise?
Bryn
It's been a slow start. The LA City's budget shortfalls have led to some hiring gaps and hiring freezes that have been getting in the way of getting some of the permit approvals. But, I have a lot of faith in the vendor that has the new contract. They've been doing a lot of good design work, engineering work, kind of trying to make it as smooth as possible to get the approvals and get going.
So our latest advocacy on that front is to try to lift some of the hiring freezes and get those staff positions filled so that that bus shelter program can start moving.
Damien
We mentioned there's lots of different levels of bus shelters for people in Los Angeles. The sombritas made the news a couple years ago as a “budget way” to try and do bus shelters.
They got panned by the press. Is it worth trying to do something in an area where there's nothing, even if it's not the ideal situation? Or do you think this is something where we should be waiting until we can do an investment for an integrated shelter?
Bryn
We're pushing for higher quality bus shelters. You get what you pay for. We saw some attempts of putting just umbrellas stuck in the back of benches and those disappeared pretty quickly. When you give communities lower quality investments, it gets vandalized, it disappears. It's not there to serve needs for very long.
Damien
And I think you mentioned that there was a lot of outreach you were doing and that the company that's going to be putting the shelters is doing. And I wanted to echo the importance of doing that. People that follow Streetsblog in LA may know I've been the Santa Monica Next editor for a couple years. And they put in a bunch of new bus shelters with these like tiny little chairs and these cool looking shades. And it was supposed to be this cool modern design. And everybody on the West side made fun of them.
And the city council wondered, “How could this happen? We're supposed to be the standard. These are supposed to be the best bus shelters ever.”
If you went back and looked at the city council hearings from when they approved the design, the same council members that were losing their stack were the ones that voted to approve the shelters.
Literally, it was the same people. We could track their votes. To be fair, they probably didn't remember. It was a couple years later. I don't think that they were intentionally doing that. But people can see something in a rendering and it might look cool to them. But then the people that are actually riding the bus just have a different experience and different expectations for what the shelters will look like.
I'm guessing that's something that you guys see all the time as you do this. You have people that really want to design something that looks cool. Unless you have people that ride the bus and know what the sun is like at a certain time of day at a shelter, you end up with a design that might look cool from the street, but isn't practical for the people using it.
Bryn
We've really been trying to center that rider experience and get designs that are responding to real needs and not just kind of what looks cool, but what can actually make people's commute…make people's transit riding experience better.
Damien
So talking about LA Metro, we had a second topic we wanted to talk about with them, unless there was something else we wanted to hit on bus shelters.
Bryn
No, we can move on, but the main point is we're trying to make transit a better quality experience so we can entice more people to choose that as their daily transportation option.
Damien
A lot of the mainstream press will focus on two things when they talk about transit: safety perceptions and fares, and sometimes maybe the reliability of schedule.
And Metro does pretty well with reliability of schedule. So we don't hear that one very much down in LA…at least not as much as some other transit agencies.
So the rider experience is important. It's supposed to be, I feel like if I say fun, people are going to take it the wrong way, but it's supposed to be an enjoyable experience to be on transit. And that starts from the moment you leave your house, the first mile, last mile, the wait at the stop and when you get off the bus or train
Bryn
Yeah, there's a Danish planner, a famous urban planner, named Jan Gehl, and he has this phrase that says that transportation should feel like a good party that you don't necessarily want to end.
So I think, you know, solving for like the fastest time getting from point A to B doesn't always need to be the guiding light if you can make it a more enjoyable experience.
And I know that's part of why I choose riding on the bus. I feel like those little interactions with people around you in the community just kind of brightens my day. It's a nice way to start and end the work day.
Damien
It's been almost 20 years since I moved here and it's still very strange for me that the transit agency and the people that are in charge of the highway expansions are the same people. I mean, obviously not the same engineer sitting at his desk at Metro, but the same organization.
Metro and vehicle miles traveled has been a big coverage for Joe Linton at Streetsblog LA. this is We're going to again talk about the LA thing, but this is not a phenomenon that is unique to Los Angeles throughout California, um where you have long range plans that um even in an era where we really understand how climate change and the number of miles one travels in a car are connected, we still have agencies that have transit right in their name um that are doing projects that increase VMT.
Bryn
To some extent it does kind of sometimes feel like the left hand is not talking to the right hand. You have folks at Metro whose main job was to make traffic flow smoothly on highways. And they were looking at a range of “solutions”, which I'm doing in air quotes, being limited to investments you could make on that highway system rather than thinking of the bigger picture.
If we invest in other modes and try to reduce the number of vehicles and driving that's happening on those highways, that's ultimately the more sustainable, feasible option in a region with a growing population that's trying to achieve greater density, we need to achieve that mode shift.
But so there's been some needed focus, and I will give credit where credit's due to Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins for doing some org chart reorganization, making sure the highway team was brought under the larger multimodal planning team.
So, there are some more interactions there for planning for all modes and not in their separate silos. But in this day and age, you'd think we would have turned the page already and not see highway widening as an option that's in our playbook. But, unfortunately, there are still enough of these legacy dinosaur projects that were thought of a long time ago and are just hard to erase off the books.
So there's still some advocacy on that front, of trying to stop the pouring fuel on the fire that's happening in the highway widening camp that could make it a lot more possible for us to achieve some of the the road reconfigurations, the dedicated bus lanes, the bike lanes if we create more space for our other modes out there.
Damien
My job before I moved to California and started Streetsblog LA was I worked for a group on the East Coast called the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. I was their New Jersey person.
Ironically, a large part of my job was driving around the state because the places I was going to One of my bosses, the former executive director who was now a consultant, used to say, “There’s no such thing as a defeated highway project. They're only delayed indefinitely, at best.”
We used to sort of roll our eyes at her defeatism. And then right after I moved out here in 2008, the project that I was most proud of having defeated, we defeated it by getting it defunded, was a right highway widening right through protected forest lands in Northwest New Jersey.
And it was funded by the Obama stimulus, which funded “shovel ready projects.” And even though the towns that were along the route didn’t want it anymore…it was jobs and stimulus… and that damn widening happened anyway.
In California that’s not as true. That massive 710 widening, where they were so desperate to do it, they were going to dig a tunnel under Pasadena for a couple of years. That's not happening. Now they're even selling off the land around it.
So it's not as true here, but I always get nervous when I see these highway projects on the books that are quote unquote defeated. They're still out there somewhere.
Bryn
It's still happening. It's piecemeal. It's like a little bit here, a little bit there. I see it as death by a thousand cuts. We are still adding lane miles to the state highway system.
Caltrans released a report last Friday with a five year look back at the number of lane miles that were added to the system and buildings that were destroyed or relocated. It's still happening. We can't quite claim that we've learned all our lessons there.
I want to bring it back to Metro and the increased focus they've started to have on some of the VMT increasing projects that are in their portfolio.
Back in 2019 when they last did their climate action plan…I should mention that I have the honor of chairing Metro's Sustainability Council. And so we get to work pretty closely with staff as they're doing draft analyses and reports and this climate action plan was no exception to that.
And so when we were looking at an earlier draft of that climate action plan, it did not include the highway expansion projects. It was only looking at all the good stuff they're doing by expanding transit service to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
We raised a red flag there. We said, “This is not the full picture. You gotta be looking at both sides of the ledger and also accounting for the projects that Metro continues to fund that are increasing VMT.”
And to Metro's credit, they took it on. They decided, “It's time we start facing the facts and not turn a blind eye to that and realize the impact we're having.”
I'd credit that as kind of a first step in the right direction.
It kept evolving as we were increasing the board's knowledge and getting more awareness of the negative impacts, the VMT increasing impacts, that these highway projects were having. Then it was last year when the Metro board adopted a new set of VMT reduction targets.
In the books, the official target is a 15% reduction in daily VMT, which if people are familiar with the Air Resources Board scoping plan, you’ll know that we need to be getting to a 25% reduction to meet our state climate goals.
Damien
I was about to say, that sounds low to me, based on the numbers I've been hearing, but okay.
Bryn
They also set a stretch goal. Their climate action stretch goal is a 27% reduction. We need to keep getting them to think about what’s not included yet in those targets, which is just taking highway expansion projects off the table.
What they've looked at so far is just mitigating the impacts, but if you're still adding VMT and then decreasing it elsewhere, it's still hard to get to that total reduction that that we really do need to be getting to.
Damien
In San Diego, I know a couple of times that the SANDAG, their regional planning organization, will pass these long range plans that have all these great transit projects and other things in it, but those are a little bit down the road.
We're just going to do the highway widenings first.
This isn't just a San Diego thing, though. This is something that we've seen around the state where there are these regional long-range plans that over 30 years pencil out to be pretty good.
But it just so happens that all the bad stuff's the first five years..
Bryn
There's some truth to that. I have a bone to pick with some of our long range planning, too. There's this like black box model that things go into and magically pricing our roads is what kind of makes it all pencil out at the end and shows that we can meet our targets.
But yet, like congestion pricing. I don't know. It doesn't seem to be moving too quickly. So it feels a little bit like a tech fix. Like someday we'll implement this and then we don't need to worry as much about what our infrastructure investments are looking like in the meantime.
Damien
Did you almost bring up congestion pricing?
Bryn
<Laughs> Did I? But we can't call it by that name. We got to...
Damien
No, no, that's a New York thing. When Mayor Villaragosa had that plan to densify downtown Los Angeles and for some reason decided to call it “Manhattanizing Los Angeles.” So immediately the entire region hated it before we even heard what any of it was.
Can't say congestion pricing. Yeah. But there's been some interesting studies for that with the West Side. And I think the variable price variable pricing toll lanes or HOV lanes, I can't even remember what we call them here, um had some ah interesting results like where they've been tried in Orange County and little bit farther out from downtown L.A.
Bryn
Yeah, and something we're trying to raise some awareness about, too. There's a pretty persistent myth out there that it's not allowed to convert general purpose highway lanes into managed lanes, either HOV or HOT toll lanes.
But I'm here to tell you it's a myth. We've gotten Caltrans legal to do some analysis showing that it's both feasible and somewhat straightforward.
I think that that myth out there persists and kind of keeps leading agencies to think that their only option is to widen roads. And really, there are better ways to price and manage how those lanes are used.
So, we don't need to keep just widening, widening, widening, but we can find smarter ways to use the existing infrastructure and get some higher quality other options out there as well.
Damien
Back at the Tri-State Transportation campaign before she was the bike queen of New York City, ah Jeanette Sada Khan actually sat on our board of directors.
Everyone remembers that she closed some streets to cars, she helped create this great bike network, but she was actually also a very big proponent of congestion pricing in New York.
I cut my teeth on urban planning with this idea that congestion pricing is not something to be scared of, no matter what term we use to define it.
When they wanted to widen the Garden State Parkway, one of the two big toll roads in New Jersey, our messaging was, “Okay, but if we do it, we should do congestion pricing because if you price it correctly, there will always be a congestion-free alternative. You'll never have to widen the Garden State Parkway again.”
And this messaging actually worked. People were excited about it. They ended up not widening the Parkway because in the end, the toll revenue wasn't going to pencil out. But before people knew what congestion pricing was and what it meant, just that argument that “there will always be a congestion-free alternative and we'll never have to pay for a widening again” worked.
It is true. If you price it correctly, there will always be the option to skip congestion. And I understand the Lexus lanes argument, which I haven't heard in a long time because I don't think people drive Lexuses anymore. We'd have to call them like Tesla lanes now or something.
But I understand the argument but if there's not a congestion free option then there's not one for anyone regardless. If the money is going into transportation, improving bus not just reliability and e-buses but also perhaps bus shelters and their bus riding experience these are these can be wins for everybody.
Bryn
Well, we've had such a disparity for so many decades now in what our transportation funding goes towards. It's been both at the federal level and at the state level. It's been on average like an 80 percent 20 split, 80 percent going towards supporting people driving alone in their cars.
For some time, part of the justification behind that was that a lot of our state money was coming from the gas tax. And so they were seeing it as the people who are taxed need to benefit from what the funds go towards.
And there was kind of a narrow view of how car drivers could benefit, right?
Damien
Yeah.
Bryn
Instead of seeing the possibilities for them with mode shift and in having options out there; it was seen as, “We just need to make it easier, smoother for people to drive.”
We have an opportunity ahead of us as we start to shift away from the gas tax. I see it in the VMT mitigation world as well in thinking of how funds that are dedicated for transportation for car oriented projects can then start to be more expansive in serving other modes as well.
Damien
All Well, we are starting to push up against our time limit and I'm actually a little late on saying this. I usually say it at the 25 minute mark, but I just heard the word “congestion” and thought this is my opportunity to talk about my favorite topic that none of my friends outside of the transportation world agree with me on.
Maybe they'll listen to the podcast.
BUT…is there anything you would like to cover as we start to approach our time limit? Any other thoughts you'd like to add on any of the topics we covered today or or anything else?
Bryn Moncelsi
It's been a real pleasure and I've become a true believer that there are modes that feel a lot better to take than driving in a car alone.
If you're someone out there who's felt that road rage maybe there's something else better for you. It's on us to create those better options.
So it motivates me every day and I appreciate you taking the time and yeah, and covering these important topics.
Damien
Thank you for the time today. This is our fourth of our Streetsblog California podcast we've ever done. So you're in our first five.
I guess you'll get a certificate down the road or something. But thank you again for being here with us today. And I'm sure there will be plenty of chances to talk as time goes on. So thank you.
Brym
Thanks, Damien. Take care.
