CommentsFROM A TRANSIT WAR CORRESPONDENT--It was the simple act of trying to watch on television the Division Playoffs and World Series games of the Los Angeles Dodgers. From a commercial during the games I was not expecting the assault on transit which was personal because I ride transit.
Through my concerns for the environment I started riding buses, inspired from reading how the air quality of Los Angeles would improve if everyone changed their driving habits of single passenger vehicles to riding transit, even for just a couple times a week. Air pollution causes COPD, heart disease, cancer.
This was in 1992. Then, once the light rail and subway systems of the Los Angeles region were built starting in the 1990s, I also started riding those. I believe that to call myself an environmentalist there needs to be more than writing about it, hugging trees, marching, donating to environmental organizations, and so on. It was clear that to be truly involved a change of lifestyle was demanded, and so I started riding buses.
I remember as a kid while growing up in 1960s Los Angeles, running around, playing outdoors sports, and just being a kid, and my lungs burned from smog. I could taste the pollution. The mountains were visible only a few times a year because most of the time they were obscured by gray and brown smog. Since then, tremendous improvements have been made in reducing air pollution, but now with increasing bad air quality days in the Los Angeles region these gains are being erased, and there is the return of ominous health threats.
In addition to air pollution from vehicle exhaust a far more serious threat has appeared, continues to rise, and is starting to sow the destruction which was predicted by scientists: global warming and climate change from the burning of fossil fuels.
My conversion to a transit rider was transformative, and something I adhere to as much as possible for my jobs, schooling, events, and to wherever whenever I could. This change opened a new way of life in Los Angeles. The city became alive. I was not cocooned in the cars I’ve owned. I could feel the morning coolness and moisture on my face, know what is like to be buffeted by winds, feel the (increasing) heat. I walked in the rain under an umbrella with galoshes on my feet.
I was walking in LA, and enjoying it. The clouds became wonderful again, like when I was a kid on those rare good air quality days looking into the sky for no other reason than to do just that. Sunrises and sunsets could be safely studied and amazed at without the possible fatal distraction of doing so when driving.
But recently I have seen a growing war on buses and trains, in local newspapers, on-line publications, academics, and now through that commercial.
This constant assault against transit is puzzling. What has a bus, train, or subway ever done to those writers to put them on the warpath against transit?
In my personal defense of buses, trains, and subways, I try to give my experiences of regularly riding mass transit in a region whose planning for decades has been highjacked by planners whose first priorities were moving as many vehicles in as large a space as possible. This was supported in a recent CityWatch article where Dick Platkin gives the astonishing statement: “For example, 40 percent of the land area in Los Angeles is dedicated to congested freeways, gridlocked streets, buckled driveways, and barren parking lots.”
Besides leaving the city bereft of parks in favor of asphalt or concrete parking lots and structures, this type of city planning leaves transit behind, along with pedestrians since every transit rider is also a pedestrian.
I watched the Dodgers conquer all in the playoffs, and then struggle in the epic 2017 World Series, and there was that television commercial by State Farm Insurance. The commercial’s narrative is a white man, perhaps mid-thirties, is sitting glumly at a covered bus stop waiting for a bus. (He’s lucky to have a covered bus shelter.) Then we see him running up to a bus in the rain, just missing it, and the frustration shows on his face. Then he is on the bus, and experiences various annoyances such as another passenger’s backpack passes close to his face, or someone is (illegally) eating on the bus.
I know these annoyances, and there are dealing mechanisms, like making sure to get to the bus stop early to catch that bus; when rain is possible always carry an umbrella and galoshes.
It is true that some rides on a bus or train have annoyances, but certainly not each and every time I ride transit. Most rides are uneventful. However, these annoyances are nothing like annoyances the dangers posed to drivers on the road.
The annoyances are drivers tailgating on the rear bumper, making turns in front of me as I wait for the intersection to clear of pedestrians, those who cut me off, and those who creep into a crowded intersection and get stuck there on a red light blocking traffic for those with the green.
The dangers can be from life-changing injuries from an accident to a fatal one; the increasingly known negative health issues of driving in gridlock; or the scientifically proven threats from global warming caused by burning fossil fuels to power cars and trucks which is affecting everyone.
In the commercial the storyline is this guy’s life sucks because he rides the bus. He is supposedly living a subpar life. Then, he has a gleaming pickup truck. He drives, in a small town, past the empty bus stop. Life is good. Of course he needs to purchase insurance, preferable from State Farm.
The commercial is fantasy because it shows the new truck owner driving in no traffic in a small town. This commercial was shown in and for Los Angeles, a crowded city, a car capital of the world mired neck-deep in gridlock.
Recently I missed the memorial for the Mother of a friend because of traffic. I feel terrible about this. I did my research. I studied maps. I found three routes with driving times of a little over forty minutes from around LAX to Pasadena. I gave myself seventy minutes to get there, and as I drove up to the church, people who attended the memorial were driving away. No annoyance on any of my transit rides compares to the bad feelings I have for missing the memorial because of Los Angeles traffic.
Why don’t commercials for State Farm and other insurance companies, the auto and truck industry, and gas companies show the true life of driving. State Farm showed the worst aspects of riding a bus, and it should show only the worst aspects of driving. That is only fair.
As a bus rider I have many more uneventful days than those of frustration, but the car industry commercials show a complete fantasy of driving with no traffic on open roads where there is no frustration of gridlock. Indeed, car commercials seem to always show wide open roads with no traffic. This is false. This is not the typical driving experience in Los Angeles when most people are driving.
Isn’t this false advertising?
That pickup truck driver in the commercial aimed for the gridlocked Los Angeles market is not driving in real world conditions. He is not stressed and stuck in traffic. That is what should be shown in the commercial just like the annoyances he suffered from riding the bus.
This commercial for insurance for a truck or car is most certainly needed because driving is one of most hazardous activities of living.I was rear-ended this summer, and became acutely aware of how quickly things can change. Each day there are numerous accidents, some with life changing injuries, and some which result in death. From the website of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety Highway Loss Data Institute: “Crashes took 37,461 lives in the U.S. in 2016.” And from the United States Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics: “For the majority of Americans, driving or being a passenger in a motor vehicle is the most dangerous daily activity he or she will be undertaken.
I am just an individual, not an industry, or think tank, or in government, who is very concerned about the environment. Air pollution and climate change from burning fossil fuels are here, now, creating negative health issues, destroying property and life, raising the heights of the oceans leading to more catastrophic flooding, and threatening food production worldwide.
I am doing my part by riding transit to reduce my carbon footprint, and I’m up against a war of opposition to buses and trains. I understand car insurance companies wanting to keep their business because if fewer people own cars and ride transit then fewer car insurance policies are sold, and from the fossil fuel industry who would see sales fall if more people rode transit. But those are only two flanks on the war on transit. There are the other flanks of the war against transit: think tanks, academics, government officials and others, and it is curious as to why these are waging war on transit.
(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native. He is a transit rider and advocate, a composer, music instructor, and member and president and executive director of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra.)
-cw
