More like paying men to not drive.
It seems bizarre that they even need to research this when they could simply ask Angelenos why half of us don’t take public transit.
It’s not safe.
We’ve got a massive homelessness problem in Los Angeles, and our unwillingness to house them means they’ll seek shelter. The official shelters aren’t safe either, and the homeless are just as scared as everybody else. So they go Metro.
There’s still regular thugs blasting music and looking for a fight, but they’re few and far between, and healthier public transit cultures like NYC can better deal with troublemakers organically.
It’s a symptom of the housing crisis. Everything will continue to suck until we focus on housing first. No I don’t want to hear your chalkboard argument about drug-test housing because you are objectively wrong, this has already been studied to death and housing first is the correct answer. We don’t need more studies, the idiots just need to read them. Spend a goddamn day on the street and it will be obvious.
Sincerely,
an Angeleno public transit fanaticSo incredibly stupid/wasteful. Just put a $3/gallon additional carbon tax on gasoline/diesel. use revenue to at least cut other taxes/rent reductions if property tax cuts, or give every resident a dividend cheque based on the carbon tax revenue. Car owners will adjust and traffic/smog improved, without just paying car owners with free money. FFS, there are cheaper than $600/mo cars I can use to scam for free money.
Lmao it’s a STUDY they aren’t simply paying them to not drive. Read more than the title pls.
To the detractors, this experiment is based off one done in Australia, and it can have good results. Some may decide they actually don’t need to drive as much and start using more public transit, and others will be able to more precisely point to pain points with not using a car.
Yes, they need more transit oriented development and better transit access, but this should be able to help
That is the most backward way to reduce traffic I have ever heard of
It’s really not?
That’s almost enough to pay 1 week’s rent in a shitty loft in LA.
Waste of fucking money. I think most people in LA already don’t want to drive. Build good public infrastructure and see the results.
Does Japan offer people money not to drive? No, they make good public infrastructure and make it expensive to own a car
You need to know the pain points before you can fix them
The focus of this really is data collection, to find out what problems exist for those people and then once you have that data you can shift the focus towards fixing the problems
So just ask people to answer survey questions. Go to some college campuses where a lot of students commute to and ask why are they paying hundreds a semester to park in a parking lot instead of taking the horrifyingly slow and inconsistent public transport.
That will only get one income level, with one group of people in it.
For good data you need DIVERSE INPUTS, which just canvassing those who already don’t have cars won’t do.
You need all kinds of people to respond, not just young people living on a handful of college campuses. There’s only one way to do that in an area where the vast majority of people have a car.
“It’s a waste of money” is a thought-terminating phrase that ruins a lot of attempts at progress. This is a drop in the bucket for a city as large as LA.
“I gave up driving ages ago, I don’t even own a car. Can I get in on this money as well?”
“No, fuck you. You don’t matter. We’re only paying real people with nice cars to change, not for poor slobs who already rely on public transportation to keep using it.”
I mean, to be honest, you obviously don’t need incentive. What would be the point of paying you.
I think universal programs tend to have more public support.
The point was that it’s paying people who have options other than using public transportation, which would also correlate to them having more money than those who already have no other option.
An extreme comparison would be that it’s sort of like paying billionaires to try to pollute a bit less.
I understand the point but you don’t design public policy for vibes, you design it for results. You can use incentives and disincentives, and you have to choose which one works best with the population you have to get the results you want.
Giving some incentive to the pop that already does the action you are optimizing for is pointless and a waste of money, maybe the discussion should be if instead of giving money to motorists they should have instead increased tolls, parking price, fees to enter the city, etc.
Why waste the money on paying people to not drive instead of using money to make the reasons they don’t use public transportation better?
Their paying for research data basically. When people say this shit ain’t working and it’s because xyz they can improve the public transit ! That’s my thinking anyhow.
LA needs mass transit first
I live in LA and use mass transit every week. Coverage is not universal but it is a thing.
Granted I moved away a long time ago, happy to hear it’s improved.
Bloody typical, you seem to think you can skip straight to the end of the journey.
No, that’s not how things work, this is a stepping stone towards that.
You can’t just take a 200 meter horizontal leap across the water, you need these stepping stones to then make it across
I visit a few times a year, and stayed once at LAX; getting to Santa Monica Pier took like 90 minutes by metro train. The metro system is beyond useless.
The history of transportation in LA is tragic because at one point they had not one, but two massive streetcar networks.
Really? I grew up there and didn’t know that.
A lot of cities had them. But they got in the way of profits.
tl:dr for those that are interested.
Car Companies bought public transit (buses and street cars mostly), and scrapped it, to force more sales of their cars as people could no longer get around easily without public transit.
LA, what’s wrong with you?
Maybe instead of paying to take the bus, we should pay people to take the bus. You’re putting up with a lot of hassle to avoid taxing the roads with another car. Maybe you’re owed a few bucks for your community service.
Is this not the basic premise for taking fees from fines and car related registration to reinforce public transit and proper city planning?
What society isn’t invited to think about is how cars are so heavily subsidized to the point where it drains communities instead of supports them. From gas, roads, lighting, these costs are downloaded to every single person without much thought about any other option.
Also roads are typically paid for by new road building subsidies… Meaning more roads and no maintenance.
Yes, but it’s more a matter of scale. And most cities still charge bus fare. It costs cities 10x as much money to support one car commute as one bike commute, but you would be hard pressed to find a city that put even an equal amount of dollars into bike infrastructure as car infrastructure.
Or just make it free and pull the money from anti-homeless infrastructure.
but then how will we kick people when their down?!
I was just at a bus stop and no one wanted to use those awful standing benches so a guy decided to sit on top of a gas line cage instead. It’s crazy how infrastructure is somehow more ergonomic than anti homeless furniture.
yeah, but then the homeless would use it.
Bonus
I think they’re researching how big of a congestion tax they need to get a certain percentage of people to stop driving. Giving someone $600 is very similar to not taking away $600.
Anything but subsidizing transportation directly hu?
That $120 a week for every resident should just go directly into better and free transit.
Hell I would bet most car infrastructure is subsidized at a higher amount per week per person.
Do I have to buy a car to get the 600? And move to LA.
$600? That’s a joke.
I don’t know with $120 a week that some good grocery shopping there.
Who couldn’t use $600 right now?
because it’s not ‘right now’. You either get $120 a week or the 600 after five weeks. Emergencies don’t just wait for you to have the money for them
I wouldn’t kick $120 a week out of bed, that’s for sure.
That’s literally my weekly grocery budget.
That’s not enough to replace the utility of a car for most people in LA.
For 5 weeks?
If it gets people to try it, its good.
