“Saturday Mornings at The Huntington” is a colloquium series presented periodically by the Los Angeles Region Planning History Group in cooperation with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
The typical Angelino does not believe that there is a coherent plan for transportation in the Los Angeles region. We hear the sad lament that we lost the nation’s best transportation system when the historic Red Cars were abandoned. Transportation and land-use go hand in hand. But what comes first – the transportation or the land use? Perhaps it can be understood better from the point of view of basic, but not simple, economics. To what extent has the current Los Angeles been influenced by changes and limitations in the funding process? How can a rational transportation system be implemented in the 21st Century with limited funding resources? What lessons can today’s urbanists and planning practitioners learn from the history of transportation funding?
A distinguished and experienced panel traced the development of the Los Angeles transportation system through the history of transportation funding. The story starts with funding by land developers, who, on their own, built transport systems to create access to undeveloped land. Later came the use of property taxes to build and maintain roads, gasoline tax/user fees, federal and state funding (with caveats for coordinated planning), local sales tax measures, developer impact fees and proposals for public/private transportation ventures. All of these will be explored, with a lively and interactive discussion to follow.