How Will the COVID-19 Crisis Shape L.A. and the Future of Transit?
Q&A with Martha Welborne, HR&A Senior Advisor
Written by Adam Tanaka and Thomas Jansen
This article is the first in a series of HR&A interviews with urban leaders across the country exploring how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting every aspect of our cities. This series will tap the expertise and insights of our collaborators to surface both short-term solutions and long-term strategies for a just and resilient recovery.
From the redevelopment of the Grand Avenue Corridor on Bunker Hill to the revitalization of Union Station, Martha Welborne has spearheaded some of the most transformative projects in the recent history of Los Angeles. Perhaps her most profound impact can be felt in the region’s transportation network, however. From 2010 to 2016, Martha served as Chief Planning Officer for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), where she oversaw the design of twelve transit corridors approved by County voters in 2008. She also oversaw the installation of LA County’s first Metro Rapid lines as Director of the Surface Transit Project from 1997 to 2002.
To launch our interview series on how urban leaders across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors are responding to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, we invited Martha to reflect on what the pandemic might mean for the future of mobility in the nation’s second largest city.
Given your many years of leadership at Metro, what do you think the impact of the current crisis will be on transit agencies — both in the short-term and in the longer term, once this crisis passes?
In the short term for Metro, the crisis has been quite devastating. Ridership is down 70% on both bus and rail services, and the agency recently moved to running a modified Sunday schedule every day of the week. Bus boarding is also now happening from the rear to keep operators away from as many people as possible, which has the potential to affect fare recovery. Farebox recovery for Metro has historically been very low, only about 29%, which may actually be an advantage during this crisis. For years the Metro Board has been reluctant to raise fares, so Metro now has one of the lowest fare structures in the country. They have even talked about going to a zero-fare model, which the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has been exploring recently as well, and this crisis may be an opportunity to further explore that.
Through all this, transit obviously remains a critical service, particularly in helping essential workers get to their jobs. As for longer-term impacts, Metro had just undertaken a NextGen Bus Study to revamp the whole bus network. Unfortunately, I imagine they will have to radically rethink that plan. With social distancing projected to continue in the medium-term, the next few months will be very tough.
Your role in forming and leading the Surface Transit Project (which later became Metro’s Rapid Bus and BRT system) was driven in part because of inequities and inefficiencies you perceived in the existing bus system. How does this crisis, and the necessity for public transit, play into your thinking about how transit agencies should be prioritizing investment?
Unfortunately, it is not easy for a big public agency to immediately pivot and reprioritize. Metro is bringing in close to $3 billion per year in sales tax revenue from Measures R and M, countywide ballot measures that passed in 2008 and 2016 respectively. But both measures had a specific list of projects and a specific pecking order in terms of timing and funding allocated. To change that, Metro would have to go back to County voters and get a reprioritization. That said, there is more latitude on the operations side in the bus network than in the rail network, where bus ridership has dropped slightly less than rail ridership. I think there is a lot that the agency could be doing on that front to revisit how to better serve all Angelenos.
It is often said that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Looking at the challenges facing the Los Angeles region, do you think the pandemic provides any opportunities to implement programs or projects that will have a positive long-term impact?
With so many cars off the street, Metro should seize the opportunity to finally create the dedicated bus lanes that we have needed for so long but have been so hard to implement politically. Some of us had dreamed of this with the Olympics coming in 2028. Hopefully, we will have herd immunity by then and the games will still happen! I have been pushing Metro to consider creating dedicated lanes as part of the changes that will need to happen in advance of the games — what planners sometimes call “Olympics lanes.”
We’ve already seen that the lack of cars on the streets has allowed for acceleration of rail construction. In Beverly Hills, for example, they have been able to close a good chunk of Wilshire Boulevard to advance construction of the Purple Line. I think we should put dedicated bus lanes in place in advance of the games and then keep them in perpetuity. We should have a transit-first priority in the County, not a single-occupancy vehicle priority. That said, I do worry that people will be more reluctant to take public transit once this crisis dies down.
Your work on the Grand Avenue project in downtown LA straddled the Great Recession, yet you were still able to get some elements of the project delivered during the downturn. Are there any lessons learned for how to keep a project moving, however incrementally, during the current crisis?
Grand Avenue is an interesting example. We obviously did not anticipate a recession, and much of what ended up happening was down to luck. Phase 1 of that project, which was supposed to be the largest part of the development, was delayed forever and only broke ground last year. But we insisted the developer prepay the ground rent for Phase 1 which helped us pay for construction of the park.
The economic downturn also impacted the ability of the developer to deliver retail on both sides of Grand Avenue. That was when Eli Broad jumped in and wisely suggested his museum replace some of the retail square footage on the west side of Grand Avenue. The momentum of the park and the Broad Museum — and the market coming back just enough to build an apartment tower — was sufficient to sustain the confidence of the developer and their capital sources. Although 20 years later, the completion of the project (anticipated for 2021) will completely transform Downtown LA’s Bunker Hill.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about how the pandemic is an assault on the very basis of cities: density. But given that most Americans live in auto-oriented suburbs, and many cities in the south and west are relatively low density, do you think this handwringing holds true across all metropolitan regions?
I think the impacts have probably been less severe in lower density environments. There is a lot of talk about the flattening of the curve here in Los Angeles, and overall numbers have been lower than in New York City. I am not sure whether that is because of our lower density, but it might be. We all love cities, but I am glad to be in Los Angeles; getting out and getting exercise is a lot easier here.
