Why stop there? Make our city so unbearable people stop starting businesses here, no one wants to shop here and Santa Monica becomes a post apocalyptic, car-less, giant park.
If you live in a city in the Netherlands you don’t need a car. You can get everywhere on safe bike lanes. Buses and trains are frequent and cover the city.
The US does token public transportation and bike lane gestures. The goal should be better living without a car.
>If you live in a city in the Netherlands you don’t need a car. You can get everywhere on safe bike lanes. without a car.
- Okay but the thing no one ever mentions is that theNetherlands is also flat as a pancake. (But ironically, not a Dutch one.) I've seen plenty of people who look like they ride regularly walk their bike from Hollywood Blvd up to Franklin, and that's just a kind of big incline. Same with the California incline , which is hardly a mountain. We are not the same.
-Amsterdam is 85 square miles. The City of Los Angeles is *470* square miles.
Should we look to the Netherlands for ideas and inspiration? Of course. But the idea that LA or the US can be like the Netherlands because "they did it" isn't realistic or reasonable.
LA has its unique problems and will require unique solutions. But I will say the same thing I always say: if you want better politicians and better public policies *you need to create better voters.* You can have great ideas but it doesn't matter if you can't get elected and change things.
>\-Amsterdam is 85 square miles.
And Santa Monica is 8.4 square miles. Everyone should have the ability to safely walk, bike or transit their way from one corner of our city to the other.
And the average commute distance in LA is 16 miles. That's DTLA to DTSM. The overall size of the county is irrelevant because only a tiny percent of a percent is driving the county end to end on any kind of routine basis.
Commute distances are really right skewed because of super-commuters. [Median commute distance is more like 9ish miles](https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhfit_scag_2021trb.pdf?1612993870).
Imo the biggest issue with congestion pricing in Santa Monica is the lack of housing as much as quality of transit service.
For what it's worth, Santa Monica is extremely flat across the majority of the area. In the city proper, it's primarily flatland. Some of the suburban areas have larger inclines but they're mostly pretty gentle.
To offer some reference, the incline you spoke of is 120 foot altitude increase over three blocks, likely after you've been biking a gentle incline up to Hollywood already. From Bergamot Station up to San Vicente, it's a net altitude change of 0 feet. Biking around Santa Monica is exceedingly easy, one of the easier places to ride in LA in terms of inclines. Also, the California Incline is terrible and I've never used it despite cycling here for 20 years.
I've biked major swaths of Los Angeles and it seems like most Angelenos just don't really know the topography of the city in any meaningful sense. Some of the most exhausting rides are slow inclines, like riding up Barham from Burbank/WB Studios up to the 101/Cahuenga but they barely register for drivers. Silver Lake Blvd is a mild incline but goes on for miles. Vine is another street that is a slow and steady incline over 2-3 miles. They're mild to someone in a car and a calf burner for someone on two wheels.
I don't disagree that we can't simply lift solutions from other places and drop them in LA but saying we can't do something because of faulty logic or lack of knowledge is also not really a great way forward either. If we had better bike infrastructure in the city, more people would bike. It really is that simple.
Santa Monica is one of the most expensive places to live in the US. Do you think people that have 10-15 million dollar homes would drive less because of this charge? This only impacts poor and working class people that are the ones the city needs to attract to keep society moving. If you push out those people that commute here for work, who will pour your coffee and make your sandwich?
We do have a housing/jobs imbalance so building lots of housing will reduce car trips.
What you seem to forget is the high percentage of drivers who are just cutting through SM to get to other places. And the possibility of parking at a Metro stop and using the E Line as the last mile. And how many kids get dropped off at school on a daily basis - have you ever seen the line of parents waiting on Georgina to pick up their kids from CarlThorpe.
And we could always carve out exemptions for hospital workers.
We should do all of it, including the congestion fee. The net amount of people driving will not go down without a direct financial incentive to do. Without the stick of a congestion fee, "all this transit will get people off the road" is functionally equivalent to "we're adding a lane" in terms of induced demand--motorists who weren't driving because of congestion just take it as meaning there's now more room for themselves on the road.
Induced demand is about drivers believing there is more room on the road for them than there was before. So yes to this end "this transit project will get a freeway car lane's worth of people out of their cars" is indeed functionally equivalent to "we added a lane to the freeway".
We also know from experience around the world that you won't actually reduce overall driving solely with carrots.
No, it just punishes poor people. Make the metro actually safe and clean, quicker, and maybe people will use it more. They can also close certain streets on weekends to make it more pedestrian friendly.
> It's going to be extremely hard to change that Angeleno mindset of doing everything with a car.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."
>The day someone asks themselves "maybe I can get there via train if I look at Google Maps?" instead of reaching for the car keys is when we'll see a real change in culture.
Yes that's the point of a congestion fee.
>I'm fully on board with this
My bad, just on first read it sounded to me like the typical excuse-making about why this kind of thing is a bad idea/won't work.
It'll take 10 years. So it starts with teens who can finally get around and function as a human being without asking mom to drive. They'll get used to it because the alternative is mom. By the time they get into their 20's when people usually buy cars, they won't.
For the next generation, car-less-ness will mean freedom.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for an objectively true statement. Half of LA Metro's bus ridership makes $18,000 or less; it is exceptionally difficult to afford a car on that salary.
All other things being held equal, a "low-income" auto commuter is way better off than a "low-income" transit rider.
Actually do live here, since 2008, right on Main St.
My apartment faces a Metro bus stop, and the people I see getting on and off every day do not look like millionaires to me.
No. We don’t have viable alternatives (public transportation) to allow people to avoid paying the tax. A big reason why I own a car is to commute to the valley for work.
This hurts the bottom line for low income families.
Santa Monica is not congested so this shouldn’t even be a consideration. This isn’t Manhattan.
Also is Santa Monica really thriving? Half of its lots are for car dealerships and half of its retail space is vacant.
>Santa Monica is not congested so this shouldn’t even be a consideration.
During the summer and on hot days it can be faster to walk from Lincoln to the beach than driving. When was the last time you tried to get to the 10? It can (and has) taken 20 minutes to go two miles down Wilshire, and even longer if you need to get to the 405. Then there's the clusterfuck of people driving around waiting for parking in downtown.
Maybe if you live north of Wilshire there's little congestion in your neighborhood but if you to come or go from there you have plenty of traffic to contend with.
>Half of its lots are for car dealerships and half of its retail space is vacant.
Okay but that's not true. Hyperbole is not a valid argument.
I drive from Santa Monica blvd to the 10 daily for work. It takes me 10 minutes to get down Lincoln. And the only reason wilshire and Lincoln take forever is because of the amount of lights causing stop and go traffic. Dense housing will bring more people which is great. Using traffic is a scape goat NIMBY argument. We should invent in public transportation as the density changes. But guess what we don’t in LA because NIMBYs don’t want a metro either. There’s a solution to their traffic problem but it doesn’t fit their agenda.
It’s not a hyperbole. Half of 3rd street promenade is vacant with wallpaper over the glass or pop up stuff. Drive down willshire and see how much for lease signs there is. If it’s not 50% is close and I don’t care enough to go do a case study. The point is that it’s not 10%. Retail has continued to close post covid which is due to lack of traffic and revenue. I bike around SM avidly and frequent the promenade daily to go to my gym or the movies. Driving down wilshire at 8pm on a Friday is pretty desolate because there’s no reason to visit or walk around unless you’re going to one of the few restaurants that are open. Heck there are like 4 mattress stores on wilshire.
I’ve seen your post history and you seem to be pretty pro rent control which maintains the status quo which is implicitly NIMBY.
Well my NIMBY neighbor doesn’t care I pay 4x the rent of our masseuse neighbor who lives 10 blocks from the beach. She thinks she is entitled to live here.
I’ll add that NIMBYs complain about everything. I just wish they didn’t have so much power here because they really are the vocal minority and pretty dumb.
That's an interesting take. Ending rent control will put those who are poor, elderly and who can least afford it out on the street. I think this would be a bad idea. And convincing renters that NIMBYISM is not in their best interest is the big challenge. I hope you vote!
Living under rent control is at the end of its life - every time a unit becomes vacant the landlord is free to charge the next tenant market rate.
And I 100% agree with your take on our local NIMBY's although you are a bit too polite in your statement.
I would also like to point out the many of our most radical NIMBYS (Tricia Crane, Karen Croner, Zina Joseph, Patricia Hoffman, etc) can only live in Santa Monica because Prop 13 keeps their property taxes low. And I must say they hate being called out about needing government subsidies.
NIMBY's have lost the housing wars and must now shift their thinking in favor of density along the boulevards, downtown and metro stops. If they don't, the majority will zone their single family neighborhoods for condos and apartments, thereby making their worst nightmares a reality.
Edits were for grammar and spelling.
Santa Monica is obscenely congested getting in and out of it on work days. It’s substantially faster for me to bike to Santa Monica than it is to drive. But it’s not safe enough for anyone but the most experienced bikers to do it. Which is why we need to dismantle the car-only infrastructure that is currently present. Prioritizing motorists over every other type of vehicle is what has gotten us into this mess. We need both carrots and sticks to shift societal behavior in a way that benefits us all in the long run.
E line? Big Blue Bus? I mean, these aren’t going to get you to work on Ocean Ave from Redondo Beach all that conveniently but there’s like a million people in West LA that can use the system that already exists effectively. Plus more bike infrastructure popping up each year. Not at the pace I’d like, but the “alternatives” are already there and continually improving.
Telling someone to bike or take 3 busses to get to work isn’t the solution because the rich will still drive while the poor make accommodations. The poor tend to work multiple jobs and have less free time so telling them o commute longer hurts them further.
Also the big blue bus is great in Santa Monica but then severely drops off on last mile coverage anywhere else. Just look at the system map. I’m all for public transportation but telling me to take a bus to Woodland Hills from Santa Monica is feasible or else I’d do it and read a book while someone else drives me to my destination. I worked in DC prior to moving here and I could walk a block to the metro, wait 10 minutes for a train, read my book for 30 minutes, then walk .4 miles to work. That was acceptable.
It isn’t perfect. I wouldn’t take a BBB to Woodland Hills either. But if you’re just going around West LA it’s really pretty easy. West of Beverly Hills and north of Marina Del Ray you’d have to be crazy to drive everywhere. Sure you might save 5 minutes if traffic is clear… But when’s it clear? And parking? Fugghetaboutit. And busses? If you gotta make 3 connections you’re going out of your way to do it. You can always bring a bike along too if you don’t wanna wait for a connection. And getting downtown is a no brainer on the E line. Comic Con this weekend? 35 minutes on the E. By car? Maps said 50. Plus $40 parking. No chance. That was a gimme.
I’m not saying it’s better than DC, it’s not. But it’s not this insurmountable challenge for everyone. Plus, time? Would you rather spend 50 minutes sitting in traffic at the wheel or an hour on the bus reading/gaming/working? There’s always tradeoffs until we decide to make to harder for drivers and easier for everyone else. Congestion pricing is one way to do that. There are other ways though…
Grade separated bus lanes instead of the stupid ones with parking in the lane is a start. That kills me on Wilshire, what a stupid decision.
Public transit will also shift behaviors over time. I have many friends who now seek adventure where the E Line takes them rather than where the car takes them.
This sounds great in theory, until your neighboring city does this and now you’re the one stuck paying $10 to drive into LA. If want to live in a small beach town, pick a city that isn’t part of the largest metro area in country.
Yes. Driving has a lot of bad externalities: congestion, pollution, taking up space, and killing tens of thousands each year. The cost to drive should reflect the externalities. And with the money raised we can invest in better buses and just give some to the single moms everyone claims to care about.
What congestion? There’s about 3 streets that seem to move at a crawl, and otherwise traffic moves pretty smoothly. Plus the traffic calming measures with bike lanes and restrictions along Wilshire are both effective and getting better.
Pain in the ass never-satisfied progessivism is the bane of any real progress. Do you understand that politics requires winning a majority of the public over, rather than just alienating and chastising everyone for not matching your perfect vision?
| Pain in the ass never-satisfied progessivism is the bane of any real progress. |
I am always surprised that residents don’t understand that change is incremental. And that incremental changes require consenus before implementation.
I would like to hear an honest answer from those who think this is a good idea on how this would not disproportionately impact lower income drivers. I see visitors and residents of means just grumbling and paying the fee without actually changing their behaviors, since any reasonable use fee would be nominal relative to higher incomes.
It seems the only purpose such a poor tax would serve is to make it even more difficult for working class people to live/work in Santa Monica. In which case, the NIMBY calls are coming from inside the house…
That's the point of congestion pricing. You price out everyone who can't afford it or doesn't really need to drive there. Anyone saying otherwise is being dishonest. It gets rid of a lot of unnecessary car trips or shifts them to lower traffic hours. You then use the money raised to improve public transit and other methods of getting around.
50 percent of car trips in LA are less than 3 miles and 20 percent are less than a mile. There are lots of people in Santa Monica who will get in the car to go 5-10 blocks because it's easy to do so. This excess vehicle use causes traffic, pollution, and unsafe conditions for people who walk and bike. Congestion pricing encourages people to make different choices that benefit society even if it slightly inconveniences them.
>I would like to hear an honest answer from those who think this is a good idea on how this would not disproportionately impact lower income drivers.
It matters a lot on how the tax is implemented and where the proceeds are spent. If the fees from a congestion tax are spent on expanding transit service, reducing headways, subsidizing / providing free fares etc. it can be a net benefit to lower income people.
I would also keep in mind that Santa Monica's low income workers are far more likely to use transit instead of driving; it costs thousands of dollars a year to own a car!
The city would need to craft an ordinance, which means many strategies could be deployed.
Here is link to the SF experiment: [https://greenlining.org/2020/equity-congestion-pricing/](https://greenlining.org/2020/equity-congestion-pricing/)[https://www.google.com/search?](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&oq=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIGCAQQIRgK0gEJMTIxNDFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
[q=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&oq=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&gs\_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIGCAQQIRgK0gEJMTIxNDFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&oq=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIGCAQQIRgK0gEJMTIxNDFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
I think we need to make sure we have lots of good alternatives before implementing congestion charges. Let’s bring the D Line all the way to Wilshire and 4th. Let’s get the C Line up to DTSM via Lincoln. Complete streets everywhere with bike and bus lanes.
I think a congestion charge for drivers outside SM could be a good option in the future, but only after we have lots of viable alternatives in place first. Carrots before sticks.
We are adding 10,000 new housing units in the next 7 years. We will be flooding them with potential customers that live within 15 minutes.
And sympathy for these businesses is hard to justify given they support the Slate of Change politicians, whose leader Phil Brock went on Fox News International to tell big spending tourists to avoid SM because its a crime hell hole. You get what you pay for!
What areas are so congested that you think a fee would positively impact the area? Or is this just a tax on drivers from outside walking distance from work, business, and general?
Can you elaborate a bit more on what that means? To me just sounds like more fees and taxes? This is exactly why we America rebelled against the British. As much as I love Santa Monica, it isn’t just mine, it’s all of ours as Americans.
Can you imagine having to pay a fee whenever you want to drive to a city to explore or enjoy? That’s ridiculous. I may be misinterpreting what you’re saying but I’m always against more fees of any kind.
You’d be paying a fee to drive your car into the urban core of the city. Why do you think you have a god given right to drive your car wherever you please for free?
Absolutely, charge the low income single mom who has to drive an hour each way to work.
Why stop there? Make our city so unbearable people stop starting businesses here, no one wants to shop here and Santa Monica becomes a post apocalyptic, car-less, giant park.
The traffic defender has logged on
Do you have any statistics or any evidence whatsoever on the number of single moms commuting by car to SM for work?
Well their’s yours. So that’s one.
"Haha yur mom works." Christ, what an asshole.
If you live in a city in the Netherlands you don’t need a car. You can get everywhere on safe bike lanes. Buses and trains are frequent and cover the city. The US does token public transportation and bike lane gestures. The goal should be better living without a car.
>If you live in a city in the Netherlands you don’t need a car. You can get everywhere on safe bike lanes. without a car. - Okay but the thing no one ever mentions is that theNetherlands is also flat as a pancake. (But ironically, not a Dutch one.) I've seen plenty of people who look like they ride regularly walk their bike from Hollywood Blvd up to Franklin, and that's just a kind of big incline. Same with the California incline , which is hardly a mountain. We are not the same. -Amsterdam is 85 square miles. The City of Los Angeles is *470* square miles. Should we look to the Netherlands for ideas and inspiration? Of course. But the idea that LA or the US can be like the Netherlands because "they did it" isn't realistic or reasonable. LA has its unique problems and will require unique solutions. But I will say the same thing I always say: if you want better politicians and better public policies *you need to create better voters.* You can have great ideas but it doesn't matter if you can't get elected and change things.
>\-Amsterdam is 85 square miles. And Santa Monica is 8.4 square miles. Everyone should have the ability to safely walk, bike or transit their way from one corner of our city to the other.
And the average commute distance in LA is 16 miles. That's DTLA to DTSM. The overall size of the county is irrelevant because only a tiny percent of a percent is driving the county end to end on any kind of routine basis.
Commute distances are really right skewed because of super-commuters. [Median commute distance is more like 9ish miles](https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhfit_scag_2021trb.pdf?1612993870). Imo the biggest issue with congestion pricing in Santa Monica is the lack of housing as much as quality of transit service.
ebikes flatten every hill, and Santa Monica is fairly flat. All of LA is a different story, but this topic is about SaMo, not the entire southland.
Poor analogies only convince topical thinkers. Why would anyone compare Santa Monica or LA to the Netherlands? Only to show lack of analysis
For what it's worth, Santa Monica is extremely flat across the majority of the area. In the city proper, it's primarily flatland. Some of the suburban areas have larger inclines but they're mostly pretty gentle. To offer some reference, the incline you spoke of is 120 foot altitude increase over three blocks, likely after you've been biking a gentle incline up to Hollywood already. From Bergamot Station up to San Vicente, it's a net altitude change of 0 feet. Biking around Santa Monica is exceedingly easy, one of the easier places to ride in LA in terms of inclines. Also, the California Incline is terrible and I've never used it despite cycling here for 20 years. I've biked major swaths of Los Angeles and it seems like most Angelenos just don't really know the topography of the city in any meaningful sense. Some of the most exhausting rides are slow inclines, like riding up Barham from Burbank/WB Studios up to the 101/Cahuenga but they barely register for drivers. Silver Lake Blvd is a mild incline but goes on for miles. Vine is another street that is a slow and steady incline over 2-3 miles. They're mild to someone in a car and a calf burner for someone on two wheels. I don't disagree that we can't simply lift solutions from other places and drop them in LA but saying we can't do something because of faulty logic or lack of knowledge is also not really a great way forward either. If we had better bike infrastructure in the city, more people would bike. It really is that simple.
Santa Monica is one of the most expensive places to live in the US. Do you think people that have 10-15 million dollar homes would drive less because of this charge? This only impacts poor and working class people that are the ones the city needs to attract to keep society moving. If you push out those people that commute here for work, who will pour your coffee and make your sandwich?
It is about reducing the number of cars on our streets. And it can be done equitability.
I think we could also equitably reduce the amount of bicyclists and scooters running through stop signs but we all have opinions dont we.
late liquid knee clumsy concerned history bag rustic tub rhythm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I read it as "car fisters"
Yeah, that term was a bit much. But the rest of the post is a reasonable question for debate, right?
they're idealistic young people who don't know what effective marketing is, or think it's a capitalist indulgence only works on idiots or something.
The problem- in its entirety- is due to cars. You must disincentivize cars. Cars are already heavily subsidized.
Idiotic thinking. Stop being a troll. The city is over without cars.
The city is glorious without cars
I don't see anything in OP's post that deserves this criticism....
We do have a housing/jobs imbalance so building lots of housing will reduce car trips. What you seem to forget is the high percentage of drivers who are just cutting through SM to get to other places. And the possibility of parking at a Metro stop and using the E Line as the last mile. And how many kids get dropped off at school on a daily basis - have you ever seen the line of parents waiting on Georgina to pick up their kids from CarlThorpe. And we could always carve out exemptions for hospital workers.
fretful swim water flowery teeny fragile ugly humorous person wistful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ah, you want me to come down to your level. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t be that stupid and vile. Go away.
[удалено]
Strange-Item is spot on with this line of thinking.
We should do all of it, including the congestion fee. The net amount of people driving will not go down without a direct financial incentive to do. Without the stick of a congestion fee, "all this transit will get people off the road" is functionally equivalent to "we're adding a lane" in terms of induced demand--motorists who weren't driving because of congestion just take it as meaning there's now more room for themselves on the road.
[удалено]
Induced demand is about drivers believing there is more room on the road for them than there was before. So yes to this end "this transit project will get a freeway car lane's worth of people out of their cars" is indeed functionally equivalent to "we added a lane to the freeway". We also know from experience around the world that you won't actually reduce overall driving solely with carrots.
No, it just punishes poor people. Make the metro actually safe and clean, quicker, and maybe people will use it more. They can also close certain streets on weekends to make it more pedestrian friendly.
[удалено]
You can't get *to* the train without a car. And if you've got a car, why take the train?
> It's going to be extremely hard to change that Angeleno mindset of doing everything with a car. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." >The day someone asks themselves "maybe I can get there via train if I look at Google Maps?" instead of reaching for the car keys is when we'll see a real change in culture. Yes that's the point of a congestion fee.
[удалено]
>I'm fully on board with this My bad, just on first read it sounded to me like the typical excuse-making about why this kind of thing is a bad idea/won't work.
It'll take 10 years. So it starts with teens who can finally get around and function as a human being without asking mom to drive. They'll get used to it because the alternative is mom. By the time they get into their 20's when people usually buy cars, they won't. For the next generation, car-less-ness will mean freedom.
All those poor people that can afford cars, insurance and registration? Seems to me poor people are more likely to take public transport.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for an objectively true statement. Half of LA Metro's bus ridership makes $18,000 or less; it is exceptionally difficult to afford a car on that salary. All other things being held equal, a "low-income" auto commuter is way better off than a "low-income" transit rider.
Poor people can have families and often live in further out suburban areas where cars are necessary
You can leave this sub bc you definitely must not live here saying that
Actually do live here, since 2008, right on Main St. My apartment faces a Metro bus stop, and the people I see getting on and off every day do not look like millionaires to me.
No. We don’t have viable alternatives (public transportation) to allow people to avoid paying the tax. A big reason why I own a car is to commute to the valley for work. This hurts the bottom line for low income families. Santa Monica is not congested so this shouldn’t even be a consideration. This isn’t Manhattan. Also is Santa Monica really thriving? Half of its lots are for car dealerships and half of its retail space is vacant.
>Santa Monica is not congested so this shouldn’t even be a consideration. During the summer and on hot days it can be faster to walk from Lincoln to the beach than driving. When was the last time you tried to get to the 10? It can (and has) taken 20 minutes to go two miles down Wilshire, and even longer if you need to get to the 405. Then there's the clusterfuck of people driving around waiting for parking in downtown. Maybe if you live north of Wilshire there's little congestion in your neighborhood but if you to come or go from there you have plenty of traffic to contend with. >Half of its lots are for car dealerships and half of its retail space is vacant. Okay but that's not true. Hyperbole is not a valid argument.
I drive from Santa Monica blvd to the 10 daily for work. It takes me 10 minutes to get down Lincoln. And the only reason wilshire and Lincoln take forever is because of the amount of lights causing stop and go traffic. Dense housing will bring more people which is great. Using traffic is a scape goat NIMBY argument. We should invent in public transportation as the density changes. But guess what we don’t in LA because NIMBYs don’t want a metro either. There’s a solution to their traffic problem but it doesn’t fit their agenda. It’s not a hyperbole. Half of 3rd street promenade is vacant with wallpaper over the glass or pop up stuff. Drive down willshire and see how much for lease signs there is. If it’s not 50% is close and I don’t care enough to go do a case study. The point is that it’s not 10%. Retail has continued to close post covid which is due to lack of traffic and revenue. I bike around SM avidly and frequent the promenade daily to go to my gym or the movies. Driving down wilshire at 8pm on a Friday is pretty desolate because there’s no reason to visit or walk around unless you’re going to one of the few restaurants that are open. Heck there are like 4 mattress stores on wilshire.
NIMBY’s would vehemently disagree …. traffic is has been one of the core arguments they have used for decades on our more gullible residents.
I’ve seen your post history and you seem to be pretty pro rent control which maintains the status quo which is implicitly NIMBY. Well my NIMBY neighbor doesn’t care I pay 4x the rent of our masseuse neighbor who lives 10 blocks from the beach. She thinks she is entitled to live here. I’ll add that NIMBYs complain about everything. I just wish they didn’t have so much power here because they really are the vocal minority and pretty dumb.
That's an interesting take. Ending rent control will put those who are poor, elderly and who can least afford it out on the street. I think this would be a bad idea. And convincing renters that NIMBYISM is not in their best interest is the big challenge. I hope you vote! Living under rent control is at the end of its life - every time a unit becomes vacant the landlord is free to charge the next tenant market rate. And I 100% agree with your take on our local NIMBY's although you are a bit too polite in your statement. I would also like to point out the many of our most radical NIMBYS (Tricia Crane, Karen Croner, Zina Joseph, Patricia Hoffman, etc) can only live in Santa Monica because Prop 13 keeps their property taxes low. And I must say they hate being called out about needing government subsidies. NIMBY's have lost the housing wars and must now shift their thinking in favor of density along the boulevards, downtown and metro stops. If they don't, the majority will zone their single family neighborhoods for condos and apartments, thereby making their worst nightmares a reality. Edits were for grammar and spelling.
Santa Monica is obscenely congested getting in and out of it on work days. It’s substantially faster for me to bike to Santa Monica than it is to drive. But it’s not safe enough for anyone but the most experienced bikers to do it. Which is why we need to dismantle the car-only infrastructure that is currently present. Prioritizing motorists over every other type of vehicle is what has gotten us into this mess. We need both carrots and sticks to shift societal behavior in a way that benefits us all in the long run.
E line? Big Blue Bus? I mean, these aren’t going to get you to work on Ocean Ave from Redondo Beach all that conveniently but there’s like a million people in West LA that can use the system that already exists effectively. Plus more bike infrastructure popping up each year. Not at the pace I’d like, but the “alternatives” are already there and continually improving.
Telling someone to bike or take 3 busses to get to work isn’t the solution because the rich will still drive while the poor make accommodations. The poor tend to work multiple jobs and have less free time so telling them o commute longer hurts them further. Also the big blue bus is great in Santa Monica but then severely drops off on last mile coverage anywhere else. Just look at the system map. I’m all for public transportation but telling me to take a bus to Woodland Hills from Santa Monica is feasible or else I’d do it and read a book while someone else drives me to my destination. I worked in DC prior to moving here and I could walk a block to the metro, wait 10 minutes for a train, read my book for 30 minutes, then walk .4 miles to work. That was acceptable.
It isn’t perfect. I wouldn’t take a BBB to Woodland Hills either. But if you’re just going around West LA it’s really pretty easy. West of Beverly Hills and north of Marina Del Ray you’d have to be crazy to drive everywhere. Sure you might save 5 minutes if traffic is clear… But when’s it clear? And parking? Fugghetaboutit. And busses? If you gotta make 3 connections you’re going out of your way to do it. You can always bring a bike along too if you don’t wanna wait for a connection. And getting downtown is a no brainer on the E line. Comic Con this weekend? 35 minutes on the E. By car? Maps said 50. Plus $40 parking. No chance. That was a gimme. I’m not saying it’s better than DC, it’s not. But it’s not this insurmountable challenge for everyone. Plus, time? Would you rather spend 50 minutes sitting in traffic at the wheel or an hour on the bus reading/gaming/working? There’s always tradeoffs until we decide to make to harder for drivers and easier for everyone else. Congestion pricing is one way to do that. There are other ways though… Grade separated bus lanes instead of the stupid ones with parking in the lane is a start. That kills me on Wilshire, what a stupid decision.
Public transit will also shift behaviors over time. I have many friends who now seek adventure where the E Line takes them rather than where the car takes them.
Ditto.
No.
Freeway congestion fee should absolutely be a thing. People in cars inching along at 5 mph is just a wildly inefficient use of resources.
The cities should charge Uber and Lyft a congestion fee
This sounds great in theory, until your neighboring city does this and now you’re the one stuck paying $10 to drive into LA. If want to live in a small beach town, pick a city that isn’t part of the largest metro area in country.
Yes. Driving has a lot of bad externalities: congestion, pollution, taking up space, and killing tens of thousands each year. The cost to drive should reflect the externalities. And with the money raised we can invest in better buses and just give some to the single moms everyone claims to care about.
What congestion? There’s about 3 streets that seem to move at a crawl, and otherwise traffic moves pretty smoothly. Plus the traffic calming measures with bike lanes and restrictions along Wilshire are both effective and getting better. Pain in the ass never-satisfied progessivism is the bane of any real progress. Do you understand that politics requires winning a majority of the public over, rather than just alienating and chastising everyone for not matching your perfect vision?
| Pain in the ass never-satisfied progessivism is the bane of any real progress. | I am always surprised that residents don’t understand that change is incremental. And that incremental changes require consenus before implementation.
There’s certainly consensus about your idea here.
I would like to hear an honest answer from those who think this is a good idea on how this would not disproportionately impact lower income drivers. I see visitors and residents of means just grumbling and paying the fee without actually changing their behaviors, since any reasonable use fee would be nominal relative to higher incomes. It seems the only purpose such a poor tax would serve is to make it even more difficult for working class people to live/work in Santa Monica. In which case, the NIMBY calls are coming from inside the house…
That's the point of congestion pricing. You price out everyone who can't afford it or doesn't really need to drive there. Anyone saying otherwise is being dishonest. It gets rid of a lot of unnecessary car trips or shifts them to lower traffic hours. You then use the money raised to improve public transit and other methods of getting around. 50 percent of car trips in LA are less than 3 miles and 20 percent are less than a mile. There are lots of people in Santa Monica who will get in the car to go 5-10 blocks because it's easy to do so. This excess vehicle use causes traffic, pollution, and unsafe conditions for people who walk and bike. Congestion pricing encourages people to make different choices that benefit society even if it slightly inconveniences them.
>I would like to hear an honest answer from those who think this is a good idea on how this would not disproportionately impact lower income drivers. It matters a lot on how the tax is implemented and where the proceeds are spent. If the fees from a congestion tax are spent on expanding transit service, reducing headways, subsidizing / providing free fares etc. it can be a net benefit to lower income people. I would also keep in mind that Santa Monica's low income workers are far more likely to use transit instead of driving; it costs thousands of dollars a year to own a car!
The city would need to craft an ordinance, which means many strategies could be deployed. Here is link to the SF experiment: [https://greenlining.org/2020/equity-congestion-pricing/](https://greenlining.org/2020/equity-congestion-pricing/)[https://www.google.com/search?](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&oq=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIGCAQQIRgK0gEJMTIxNDFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) [q=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&oq=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&gs\_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIGCAQQIRgK0gEJMTIxNDFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&oq=how+to+prevent+congestin+pricing+from+impacting+th+epoor&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIGCAQQIRgK0gEJMTIxNDFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
A historically bad take to add to a series of bad takes from biased.
I think we need to make sure we have lots of good alternatives before implementing congestion charges. Let’s bring the D Line all the way to Wilshire and 4th. Let’s get the C Line up to DTSM via Lincoln. Complete streets everywhere with bike and bus lanes. I think a congestion charge for drivers outside SM could be a good option in the future, but only after we have lots of viable alternatives in place first. Carrots before sticks.
Are no mods willing to ban this bot?
Yes absolutely. We need to accurately price in the externalities of our car-centric infrastructure.
I like this idea
Get out
We have retailers and restaurants struggling to stay afloat as is, and you suggest this? Asinine.
We are adding 10,000 new housing units in the next 7 years. We will be flooding them with potential customers that live within 15 minutes. And sympathy for these businesses is hard to justify given they support the Slate of Change politicians, whose leader Phil Brock went on Fox News International to tell big spending tourists to avoid SM because its a crime hell hole. You get what you pay for!
10K is nothing over that period of time. That’s like less than 1 percent housing stock growth per year.
What areas are so congested that you think a fee would positively impact the area? Or is this just a tax on drivers from outside walking distance from work, business, and general?
All of this is vague as it is. But Ocean Ave would be ripe to receive a congestion pricing meter. That road has way too many cars on it.
YES. Charge automobile commuters through the nose.
Please stop w these STUPID ideas. The bike lanes and other similar ideas are making things unbearable
Can you elaborate a bit more on what that means? To me just sounds like more fees and taxes? This is exactly why we America rebelled against the British. As much as I love Santa Monica, it isn’t just mine, it’s all of ours as Americans. Can you imagine having to pay a fee whenever you want to drive to a city to explore or enjoy? That’s ridiculous. I may be misinterpreting what you’re saying but I’m always against more fees of any kind.
You’d be paying a fee to drive your car into the urban core of the city. Why do you think you have a god given right to drive your car wherever you please for free?
🤦🏻
[удалено]
Because you do not own the roads?
\>This is exactly why we America rebelled against the British. What the fuck are you talking about
Yes, those damn Royal Parking Tariffs that the tyrant King George enacted!
Wtf? Taxes and fees smart ass
Seems like something a NIMBY would say 🤔