Why LA is America's Transit Mecca

Author of the recent book "Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves From the Automobile", Grescoe tells Angelenos what he's been telling the world - that Los Angeles is the U.S. city "working hardest to improve transit."

"Many Angelenos are surprised to learn that their city's reputation is at
an all-time high among international transit scholars. This is the
place, after all, that consistently ranks first in measures of commuter
stress, as well as in hours wasted in traffic."

"Outsiders may see freeway-driven sprawl, but metropolitan Los Angeles is
actually more densely settled, over its entire urban area, than the New
York-Newark metro area. That makes the area ideally suited for the
transit revival its leaders are trying to foster."

"The real fight in Los Angeles is not going to be over issues such as
methane pockets under Beverly Hills High," says Grescoe, "but over whether street space
now given over to the private automobile will go to public transit."

"The
drivers I talked to in Los Angeles all acknowledged that their city
needed better transit. But, they admitted, that didn't mean they planned
on using it themselves. Too often, unfortunately, transit is seen as
something the other person ought to be using."