Guest blogger visits Curitiba, home of the busway

Jeff Jacobberger, chair of the transportation committee of the Mid-City West Neighborhood Council, just traveled to Curitiba, Brazil. Curitiba is perhaps best known in these parts for its busways, which were the inspiration for the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley.

Jacobberger is known here for being a mass transit advocate. He lives on the Westside and has also earned a reputation for being independent-minded -- as you'll see from some of the things that he writes below in the captions for the three photos. He's working on a master's degree at USC in transportation planning and took summer courses in Rio de Janeiro. He traveled to Curitiba, he said, mostly out of curiosity because the city has earned a reputation for its urban and transit planning. 

I thought Bottleneckers would find them interesting and may perhaps want to discuss or argue about them on the comment board. (Bottleneckers, of course, are a breed known for their highly intelligent comments that are both civil and civically inclined).

The policy question that most interests me involves density around transit corridors. While urban planners commonly say that density needs to be greatly expanded to support transit lines, I wonder how that will play out here in coming years. Yes, residents want more mass transit. But will they tolerate the upzoning that comes with it? If I was a gambling man, I would bet that the real controversy over the Westside subway extension won't be over the project, but attempts to add thousands of residential units near the subway stations.

Enough of my bloviations. Take it away, Jeff:

The first is a photo taken from an observation platform (hence the weird reflections).  It shows that, along the rapid bus routes, there are narrow ribbons of very tall, high density buildings that drop off very quickly to much lower density. 

The closest equivalent I can think of in L.A. is along parts of Wilshire in Wilshire Center and the Miracle Mile, or the stretch of Wilshire from Beverly Hills to Westwood (if all those buildings were mixed-use).  But even Wilshire doesn't have the nearly solid line of high-rises that Curitiba has. 

It seems L.A. could benefit from the same -- very high-density along true transit corridors (instead of the current planning which allows medium density on any local bus line that runs every 15 minutes during rush hour). 

From what I observed, much of Curitiba looks like much of the Los Angeles area, with Super Wal-Marts and other big-box retail, drive-through fast-food restaurants, gated communities of single-family homes, and a lot of automobile traffic. People who want that sort of development can have it, but those who want a more urban lifestyle have that choice as well. 

The second photo is of a block-long bus transfer terminal. Passengers pay to enter the terminal, and then can board any bus.  Because people don't need to pay fares or show bus passes, they not only board faster through the front door but also are allowed to board through the rear door. 

It was surprising how little time buses had to stay stopped, even when large numbers of passengers were boarding. By necessity, there is a free transfer policy within these stations. Given the numbers of bus lines that converge downtown, it would seem that creating a couple of these stations downtown (say, one on Bunker Hill and another closer to 7th or 8th) could make a lot of sense. 

Metro has some of these transit stations already, such as at San Vicente/Pico, the West L.A. Transit Station under the I-10 at Fairfax, Artesia, LAX, etc., although I don't know that any of those stations actually generate enough riders to make a trial worthwhile there. 

The third is of a street that is configured much like [L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's] Olympic-Pico proposal. A close look at the photo shows that, while there is parking on both sides of the street, there is no center turn-lane. L.A. is the only major city I know of where making a left turn anywhere one pleases is seen as a God-given right. The real choice isn't extra traffic lane vs. curb parking, but rather empty-95%-of-the-time left turn lane vs. curb parking.

Intro: Steve Hymon

Captions and photos: Jeff Jacobberger

Comments

[Dana Gabbard]

I mentioned military rule because while many love to extoll the ability for surface bus lines to provide signifcant performance in key corridors when given certain advantages (bus lanes, signal premeption, pre-paid boarding) marshalling the political will to do it is difficult, at best. Metro Rapid appears to be at about the fare end of what can be done, given political realities. After that we have to bite the bullet and go to the next level.

[Dana Gabbard]

I mentioned military rule because while many love to extoll the ability for surface bus lines to provide signifcant performance in key corridors when given certain advantages (bus lanes, signal premeption, pre-paid boarding) marshalling the political will to do it is difficult, at best. Metro Rapid appears to be at about the fare end of what can be done, given political realities. After that we have to bite the bullet and go to the next level.

[D. Malcolm Carson]

Great article. I hadn't realized how important the transfer stations are in the Curitiba model. We've headed in the exact opposite direction here in LA, with Metro not even selling transfers anymore and the Day Pass currently selling at zero discount to the cash fare (assuming one transfer on each side of the trip).

I think Tom Rubin makes a great point about the importance of a comprehensive network as against just a few dense corridors. I think most of Wilshire more or less warrants subway service now, but I don't buy that there are going to be zillions of high rise buildings built along it, or next to any other rail line anytime soon. But LA as it stands now has the density to support good, frequent, bus service (and/or in places light rail or streetcar service as well) in many, many areas of the city and county.

The oft-cited "3 million" people who are supposedly coming to LA in the next 20 years will only materialize to the extent that we choose to accomodate them. When rents and housing prices get too high, people who live here move elsewhere and those who live elsewhere decide not to move here. It's not rocket science, it happens every day all day everyone in the country.

That's not to say that there aren't areas of the city and county that should get more dense. My proposal would be to direct more development to the areas that need it and have the infrastructure to accomodate it, i.e. Central, South and East Los Angeles, rather than try to shove it down the throats of those areas that do not want it and don't have the infrastucture to accomodate it.

[Tom Rubin]

I have been to Curitiba and studied its transit system and related topics for years. Mr. Jacobberger appears to have successfully captured the essence of what's going on down there in his comments.

Dana is correct that the current direction of Curitiba's development began in the days of military dictatorship, but I think that it is fair to say that this was somewhat less of a local than a national feature of life in Brazil at that time. It is certainly true that, after the end of that, the then-Mayor, later-Governor, philospher-king who started it won reelection in free elections by margins that would make the 'ole Chicago Daly machnine green with envy.

Keep in mind that there are MANY types of housing in Curitiba. Along the five main "surface metro" lines, particularly the one in the picture, which is the most heavily utilized, the emphasis is on HIGH-RISE to the ultimate, with the transit lines providing the means of transportation that makes it work. However, there are many, many neighborhoods, including some very close by, which could be easily mistaken for single-family tracks in greater LA., although with more townhouse development and, generally, smaller lots (and LA lot size is, overall, not large by U.S. standards).

The comment about the aburpt change from high-rise to single-family detatched is not inaccurate, but this being good or bad is, I suggest, a matter of personal taste. Toronto is a major urban area with a more gradual design change from high rise on top of subway stations to single-family detached. Myself, I like to have a variety and, let me tell you from personal observation, the extreme density of these high-rises along these lines is what makes the transit backbones work -- that, and concentrating on relatively close spacing of stops (approximately three per mile, as opposed to the common one mile separation for most U.S. light and heavy rail lines). The surface metro is not real fast -- under 20 mph -- but this is more than made up for by the very frequent service (45 second headways during peaks on the busiest lines), plus VERY fast transfers; there is virtually no place in the whole area where you are more than two blocks away from a bus that will come by generally within five minutes, from six in the morning to midnight (and, yes, there IS a lot of "owl" service). As transportation modelers will tell you, preceived time is far more important than actual clock time in transportation modal decisions, and a common weighting factor is that time spent at a bus stop/train station has a 2.5 coefficient -- a ten-minute wait for the next train/bus seems like 25 minutes to the potential passenger.

Curitiba has the second highest auto ownership in Brazil, but claims a 70% transit modal split -- which is so high, I have a hard time accepting it, but, boy, until you see 270 people get on or off a bus in ten seconds, you haven't seen how well transit can work. (However, I'm not totally sure that the U.S. is ready for 80-foot double-artic, five-door, platform loading buses with 57 seats for 270 people.)

OK, folk, now the biggie: The Curitiba transit system is NOT subsidized; the fares and other operating revenues pay for everything, including replacing vehicles every five years.

One last thought -- although many people who go to Curitiba wind up amazed at the surface metro lines -- for good reason -- the REAL story is in the rest of the bus system, with an incredibly dense population of lines and SEVEN different types of service with color-coded vehicles operating at very short headways and very long hours, plus the free transfer system. While the surface metro, and the development patterns that it co-exists with in a mutually reinforcing manner so well, ARE a very significant advance in transit, if the surface metro did not exist in Curitiba, it would still have one of the best transit systems in the world; but, if the rest of the transit system was, say, on the usual U.S. major city scale, the surface metro would not have a third of the current ridership, even WITH the high-rise developments.

[Faramond]

Egads--such a sharp margin from high-rise to one- and two-story construction. I prefer Berlin's style: mandated mid-rise (6 stories) building heights, leading to uniform and livable density throughout the inner city (within the circle line), and a thick, city-wide network of public transportation and green spaces.

[Dan W.]

Greater density is coming. SCAG estimates three million more people in Los Angeles over the next thirty years.

The only responsible and sustainable approach is recentralization along transit corridors and building that transit.

[Dana Gabbard]

"I would bet that the real controversy over the Westside subway extension won't be over the project, but attempts to add thousands of residential units near the subway stations."

Amen to that.

Community NIIMBYist elements have always dominated this region - just read William Fulton's Reluctant Metropolis or Scott Bottle's Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City for details. The book History of the Los Feliz Improvement Association is available at Skylight Books [http://www.skylightbooks.com/] on Vermont near Hollywood Blvd. and is a peek at neighborhood activism in L.A. stretching back to the start of the 20th Century.

I remember during a preview tour of the Orange Line spotting an adjacent development mid-way between stations advertising how few units per acre it had. People tend to forget the miracle of Curitiba was mostly wrought during a period of military rule, and thus density could be rammed through by a visionary mayor w/o regard to the little people. The Yul Brenner "So let it be written, so let it be done" approach doesn't work in L.A., for reasons noted above.