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THE METRO - The folks in Bel Air and Sherman Oaks adamantly oppose L.A. Metro’s proposal for a subway under the Sepulveda Pass which would run from the San Fernando Valley, through and under the Sepulveda Pass, on to UCLA. There are studies to continue the subway south through West L.A. and perhaps LAX.
The section under the Santa Mountains, Sepulveda Pass would be a major construction undertaking.
A section of this proposed line in the San Fernando Valley would be above ground, and then run south underground at the pass. It seems when the trains would be above ground the sight would be horribly intrusive to these neighborhoods. Yet, there seems to be no complaints about seeing and hearing the 405 Freeway through the Pass.
Then there are the fears that once underground the subway would pose what seems to these neighborhoods end-of-the-world threats from the earth collapsing. Subways throughout the world, and Los Angeles Metro’s existing subway lines, have proven to be remarkably stable during earthquakes. Metro’s Red Line opened in 1993, and the Purple Line opened in 1996. Both have withstood earthquakes without major damage since. The ground above the subways has not cratered. The subways were back in operation within days of major earthquakes while freeways suffered catastrophic failures.
In their opposition to the Sepulveda Pass proposed subway the neighborhoods have continuously attacked Los Angeles Metro with accusations of gross negligence, with personal attacks against the Metro organization and Metro Board.
Lately, the Bel Air and Sherman Oaks folk have gone on the attack with a suggestion that business leaders on the Metro Board could make improvements to operations. This needs to be stopped in its tracks. Business leaders have proven repeatedly that their dealing with mass transit have led to destruction of services, which on the bottom line creates hardships for the ultimate client, the riders.
Before the examples of business destroying and negatively disrupting the operations of buses and trains, an overview of business practices warrants an examination. It is not promising
Monopolies
When a business, or collusion between businesses achieve dominance in the marketplace a monopoly is created. This stifles business competition, and the consumer suffers when the monopolies control prices. These are not price breaks but increases.
California railroads in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and specifically Southern Pacific railroad, through its monopoly controlled the state legislature which led to the California Initiative Process of 1911, still used today. The upcoming November 5, 2024, election has initiatives up for vote which are the continuing use, or misuse, of the initiative process.
Monopolies and Price Gouging
Monopolies are found in the exclusive selling of goods and services which can lead to price gouging with the consumer paying more. Price gouging happens with food, gasoline, ticket prices, to name a few. One of the most notorious and dangerous monopoly and price gouging was through Martin Shkreli. He purchased a generic drug manufacturing company which produced lower priced lifesaving medications. After the purchase the drugs were sold at greatly increased prices, and without any improvements to the medicine. These price increases of medications made them unaffordable for many whose life was dependent on these lower cost drugs. For this Shkreli served six- and one-half years in prison and was fined $70 Million dollars.
The idea that business acumen would improve the supposed slow-witted bureaucracy of public works, with monopolies there is not a good history. Governmental agencies, such as mass transit agencies, operate not to enrich themselves and their leaders, but for the common good.
Executive salaries
From salary.com: As of October 01, 2024, the average annual pay of Chief Executive Officer in the United States is $880,692. While Salary.com is seeing that the highest pay for Chief Executive Officer in the US can go up to $1,347,625 and the lowest down to $460,933, but most earn between $660,975 and $1,125,102. Salary.com shows the average base salary (core compensation), as well as the average total cash compensation for the job of Chief Executive Officer in the United States.
Stephanie Wiggins is the current CEO of Los Angeles Metro. According to Los Angeles County Metro her annual salary is $244,765.65. With the average annual CEO salary of $880,692, this seems like a bargain. I know through news articles that she works long hours as conscientious CEOs do. She will oversee the proposed Metro budget for 2024-25 of $8.9Billion.
Under her leadership Metro continues to operate it fleets of buses and trains, and to expand services. I know as a regular rider of Metro trains and buses not all is perfect, but they do listen to complaints to try to improve services. When there are interruptions to services, they work hard to fix matters and find alternative modes of transportation.
Since the COVID shutdown and in the few years after Metro has made big gains in retaking the trains and buses for its riders from drug and alcohol users, and being overrun by the homeless. The homeless need help, but that should be for social works programs. Metro is not a social works program but a transit agency.
Articles in City Watch have influenced the Metro Board and Organization to finally take steps needed to correct the situation.
Some days I will ride three Metro light rail trains and one bus, plus transfers from and to other bus agencies for a total of six trips, and it is much calmer and more civilized than during the pandemic shutdown and the year following. The Metro Board has and is taking steps to improve service.
There has been too much violence on Metro buses and trains, with tragic deaths, assaults and sexual assaults. Metro through its contracts with Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff and Long Beach Police have increased patrols and staffing. There have been results, but more must be done. I support an increased presence of police on Metro trains and buses. Additionally, the recent creation of citizen Metro Greeters and Ambassadors has had some success in reducing crime.
But it must be noted that increases of violence on mass transit is nationwide and not just in Los Angeles.
Business failures and bankruptcies
Despite the supposed lauded acumen of business leaders, businesses small and large fail.
From United States Courts: Total bankruptcy filings rose 16.8 percent, with significant increases in both business and non-business bankruptcies, in the twelve-month period ending Dec. 31, 2023. This accelerates a continuing rebound in filings after more than a decade of sharply dropping totals.
According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, annual bankruptcy filings totaled 452,990 in the year ending December 2023, compared with 387,721 cases in the previous year.
Business filings rose 40.4 percent, from 13,481 to 18,926, in the year ending Dec. 31, 2023. Non-business bankruptcy filings rose 16 percent to 434,064, compared with 374,240 in December 2022.
There are many reasons for bankruptcies, but it seems the brilliance of business leaders is lacking. Last I heard, L.A. Metro is not bankrupt and continues to operate its trains and buses.
Businesses destruction and obstruction of mass transit
The dismantling of the vast network of trolleys running across the Los Angeles Basin has a deep history of many tellings. What is given as the history is that real estate and utilities tycoon Henry Huntington bought the existing Los Angeles Railway in 1898 and expanded service. It became the largest trolley system in the world in the 1920s. The system was sold National City Lines in 1944. The new owners wanted to de-emphasize the use of rail equipment and renamed it Los Angeles Transit Lines-LATL.
This is explained in Electric Vehicle News: National City Lines, Inc. (NCL), was a front company — organized by GM's Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. in 1922, reorganized in 1936 into a holding company — for the express purpose of acquiring local transit systems throughout the United States. "Once [NCL] purchased a transit company, electric trolley service was immediately discontinued, the tracks quickly pulled up, the wires dismantled ...", and GM buses replaced the trolleys.
Indeed, in the 1920s automaker General Motors (GM) began a covert campaign to undermine the popular rail-based public transit systems that were ubiquitous in and around the country’s bustling urban areas. At the time, only one in 10 Americans owned cars and most people traveled by trolley and streetcar.
GM Bought and Dismantled Streetcar Lines Nationwide
In 1938, NCL entered into exclusive dealing arrangements and obtained equity funding from companies seeking to increase sales of commercial buses and supplies, including General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, which enabled NCL to buy out more than 100 electric streetcar systems in 45 cities including, but not limited to, Cleveland, Detroit, the Pacific Electric Railway in the Los Angeles area , New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and Tulsa. By 1946, NCL controlled streetcar operations in 80 American cities.
Despite public opinion polls that showed 88 percent of the public favoring expansion of the rail lines after World War II, NCL systematically closed its streetcars down until, by 1955, only a few remained,” writes author Jim Motavalli in his 2001 book, Forward Drive.
Those systems were ultimately dismantled and replaced with bus systems in what became known as the Great American streetcar scandal.
Business leaders seem to have promoted the dismantling of the vast trolley network, aided by corporations Firestone Tires, GM and Chevron, with no interference from local governments.
Other websites dedicated to this dismantling of the trolley system: Southern California Railway Museum. The Huntington. Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California.
Granted, the old trolley cars were wooden and perhaps not the most comfortable, and may not make ergonomic rides today, but the tragedy to Los Angeles is that the business leaders and the local government had within their grasp the rights-of-way for miles of passenger rail tracks.
Had the governments and businesses held onto the rights-of-way they could have been updated to more modern equipment, or even left things as is. Either way, it would have avoided the duplicative and tortuous tasks of rebuilding rail mass transit which we now undertake.
How much better would our air quality be if instead basically forced to buy a gas burning vehicle to get around, this vast system was available to millions of people? With fewer vehicles on the roads how lower would-be global warming carbon gases if the people of Los Angeles could instead ride trolleys? How many fewer injuries and deaths from car accidents? How many fewer injuries and deaths of pedestrians and bicyclists from fewer vehicles on the road if only there still existed the most extensive trolley network in the world?
Some of the last remaining trolley cars were shipped from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires where they saw service. Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society. Los Angeles Times Archives.
Some of Los Angeles’ trolleys were dumped into the Pacific Ocean off the coast.
This dismantling of the vast trolley system by government and business leaders is not just a crime, it is a sin which continues to haunt Los Angeles.
The dismantling of the Metro Police Force
Businessman Richard Riordan was Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993 - 2001. In a move of “business efficiencies” he dismantled the existing police force for the Metro precursor RTD. The replacement was an expensive contract between Metro and Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff, and Long Beach Police Department, which is still in effect. The officers who now patrol most Metro’s subways and light rail lines are rotated from their usual shifts to patrol mass transit system.
This creates inconsistencies in patrolling. It takes time solely on the transit beat to know they systems, recognize familiar passengers, how to react in the limited spaces of trains and buses.
This current arrangement has not been successful with Metro now beginning to reestablish an in-house police department. The existing contract costs millions of dollars annually, and the establishing of the new police force will take millions more. It is unknown how much transit riding or oversight experience Riordan had, but this business leader’s supposed efficiency was costly, and ineffective compared to the old model.
The disruptions and obstructions of gig-based businesses
To reduce my carbon footprint as the planet continues warming to dangerous degrees I ride, as much as possible, buses, Metro’s and other bus agencies, and Metro’s trains. The gig-economy has brought nothing but negative and frustrating disruptions to transit riders.
Since their intrusions, E-scooters and bicycles have been and remain a constant obstacle to transit riders. These gig-economy business let those using their equipment and services leave scooters and bicycles strewn across sidewalks so that they become undistinguishable from other litter on the streets.
This gig-equipment blocks entrances and exits for buses. They block turnstiles at Metro stations. They block ramps and steps leading to and from station platforms. They end up on station platforms blocking trains riders.
Transit riders should not have to go out of their way to avoid this litter of E-scooters and E-bicycles stemming from decisions of business leaders, backed by local governments, to let the users park them wherever they wish. This is not a business disruption, but a nuisance and hazard.
Gig-based rideshare and food delivery drivers create their own chaos and impediments to transit riders. They park in red zones and cross walks blocking pedestrians. They park at bus stops.
Bus stops are carefully calibrated in their positions to make it as easy and safe as possible for bus drivers to pull up to the curb to safely discharge and pick-up riders. When the bus stop is blocked, hazards are created. Yet, gig-bases businesses have their drivers constantly park at bus stops, and there is no consequence for their disruptive driving behavior.
It is not just the gig-based businesses
Increasingly commercial trucks park at bus stops. Perhaps they take their cue from the lawlessness of gig-based economy drivers. Blocking bus stops, to name a few, are Amazon delivery vans and trucks, linen supply trucks, beverage delivery trucks, and workmen such as plumbers, all parking illegally at bus stops without consequence.
Business leaders have consistently applied their so called business acumen to mass transit to bring about efficiencies, but they have caused nothing but destruction, disruptions, nuisances and hazards for their financial gain while creating misery for transit riders.
There seems to be little business leaders can bring to the Metro board other than disruption and destruction, and added expenses in operations, and this is completely unfair to transit riders.
(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native, a composer whose works have been performed nationally, and some can be found here. He is the past President of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra and Marina del Rey Symphony. His dedication to transit issues is to help improve the transit riding experience for all, and to convince drivers to ride buses and trains to fight air pollution and global warming. He is an instructor at Emeritus/Santa Monica College and a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.)
