Alternative Transportation and Considerations of Inequality

Attempting to change the car dependent culture on Occidental’s campus must parallel the challenges with urban developers face in planning a city that is socially, economically, and resourcefully egalitarian. In terms of transportation, urban planners face the challenges of economically developing transportation infrastructure that can be maintained, without sacrificing convenience of use, accessibility, and placement. For a city as vast and sprawling as Los Angeles, these decisions are especially delicate in that transportation is the life-blood of the city, giving people access to jobs and resources and linking communities together. Car culture is so deeply engrained by this reality; Los Angeles grew to the extent to that cars have become a necessity, and cars eventually began to define how this growth would continue.

In understanding this development, we can’t really blame Occidental students with cars to be car dependent (in a survey conducted by Professor Ashenmiller, it was found that most student driving is done within three miles of campus). Even non-Angeleno students perceive this city as infamous for its highways, traffic, and smog, but perhaps choose Occidental because of its proud status as an inner-city institution. And accessing the city and building a relationship with its different faces is certainly one of the strongest pedagogical resources Occidental has going for it, giving many students that come from a privileged or sheltered lifestyle a perspective of the world through less of a rosy-colored lens. Although I have discovered this way too late, recent excursions Downtown, the Westside, and Hollywood have exposed me to the ways in which LA is a living, breathing city, each neighborhood extremely unique and distinct, yet every bit of vital to the city as the organs of a body. But it is important to note that this realization was not done through the removed, celestial freeways, but rather on the bus and the rail, infrastructure that is very much grounded…

Learning to substitute this car culture for more sustainable, alternative ways of transportation absolutely depends on people challenging their phobia of interacting and sharing spaces with different communities. While Los Angeles is following suit as a global city in planning and implementing alternative forms of transportation infrastructure, like Bagota, Curitiba, and Copenhagen, this work must be done with the social factors kept in mind. While the average rail rider in Los Angeles is a white, upper- middle-class professional that possesses a car, but receives a subsidize rail pass, 94 percent of public transportation is utilized by people of color and working class backgrounds riding the bus. Meanwhile, bus infrastructure receives a great degree less support than rail, which is partly already supported and feasible because of limited access in only the areas that have the tax base to support such infrastructure. Despite the obvious inequality, there is also a distinct social problem with this situation, reinforcing the racial and class segregation white flight has already perpetuated in the city. Public transportation not only can be space for people of color and white people to interact, but to educate one another about the different struggles they face within their community. Political engagement becomes an outcome of mere exposure to how “the other half live,” working to remedy not just neglect common in an urban environment, but to enlighten the ignorant or unknowing.

I guess the take away would be this: car culture is an inevitability considering the historical development of a city like Los Angeles. But in seeking to change this reality, we are given a unique opportunity to reconcile several more pervasive social ills in our society. Even in choosing to rely on alternative, more sustainable forms of transportation, I implore Occidental students to embrace their liberal education to even be critical of the reasons how and why not only sustainable transportation, but sustainable culture in general is impacting or neglecting social disparities. Ask why bike lanes are just only recently being embraced when poor folks have relied on bikes for so long… Consider what the economic consequences of public transportation ridership changing or expanding, and what this means for the poor… More than anything, make the effort and take the initiative to move past yourself on public transit, and be open to drink in the different worlds around you—the beauty, the injustices, and the tenacity of life within their own spheres.

Implementing a Parking Fee

When Kelsey, Dmitri and I began brainstorming our project for implementing a parking fee and using part of the revenue generated to further subsidize metro passes for Oxy students I thought it was a relatively straight forward project. I was told that the President backed the idea and I thought to myself that this project would be easy and we would have it up and running in no time, especially considering most colleges have such a system already in place. Much to my surprise, we found out that implementing a parking fee required a new full-time campus safety officer as well as thousands of dollars for signage. We managed to circumvent the large expense of an additional officer by proposing a new student employment position. Then we tried to set up a meeting with President Veitch, which was unsuccessful. Recently, we have been trying to coordinate a meeting with all of the various department heads that have an interest or say in the project, which is a surprisingly large group. This project, although I am confident we will accomplish our goals, has demonstrated to me the increased time and difficulty that having a bureaucratic system implies. There are many levels that have to give their input and have a say as to how someting will be completed. This is both an advantage and disadvantage to our system, hopefully everyone's interests are accounted for to minimize the possibility of a negative outcome for a certain group. Yet I now understand the difficulty of pursuing change because what we are all experiencing with our individual projects are a mere microcosm of what happens in Washington and all over the world every day.

Making Move-Outs Better for the Environment and Society

While trying to develop our own Sustainable Move-out program for Occidental, my team and I looked at other schools for inspiration on how to successfully implement the program. While we were unable to find many concrete logistical information about these programs, the other university programs did show us that such programs can have extremely beneficial results on campus and within the community. Suffolk University developed its, Dump and Run Program, and 2.5 tons of goods avoided landfills and ended up in the hands of 64 needy individuals. Many other universities have similar programs and have teamed up with a variety of non-profits to make sure that clothes, furniture, and food are donated properly at the end of the semester. We are quite excited that the logistical details of our project our beginning to take form. First, we met with Juls, the head of res-life to determine if we could involve Res-Life in the project. With her approval of our current plan, we are well on our way to creating Oxy’s first program of this kind. We are still coordinating details with campus safety, and determining our donation partners, but these matters should be fairly easy to figure out. The biggest obstacle for our group is finding enough volunteers to man all of the dorms at the end of the semester when many students have already left, or are working on moving themselves out of the dorms. We plan on heavily promoting this opportunity through flyers, oxy digest posts, contacting the UEP list serve, and recruiting students at Earth day. Hopefully, we will be able to get enough volunteers to successfully implement Sustainable Move-out at the end of this semester.

An update on green transportation

A key component of our Green Transportation proposal is the implementation of a parking fee on the Occidental College campus. This has the potential to be a very controversial proposal, and has many components that make it so. The purpose of the parking fee would ultimately be to reduce the number of students who brought cars to campus, and in doing so increase the use of public transportation within Los Angeles.

Los Angeles has always been a car-centric city, therefore facilitating the best experience of the city is done through the car . Sitting on the freeway alone in your car, with thousands of other people also alone in their cars, at an almost dead stop for hours is an experience that you can get in few other places. But it's more than that, the freeways in LA have become the city's bloodlines. As Reyner Banham writes, for LA the space of the freeway is an entirely separate ecology- it has its own characteristics, as do the actions of those within its space.

So the question then becomes, what does it mean to change this model? What does it mean for LA to be experienced through public transportation instead of the private automobile? Public transportation opens up a whole different side of the city. It means exposure to more neighborhoods, the potential for interactions with more people. It means moving out of the private space of the car, and moving into the public space of the city. It means truly integrating into the city, and finding a sense of place through movement within it. In a city as rich as Los Angeles, using public transportation is not shorting out on the experience of the city, but it is in fact enhancing it- something that should be especially valued by the college community.

The implementation of a parking fee on campus is a sign of changing times, and of a changing city experience. It may be hard to culturally and socially adapt to that change, but it doesn't add up to a less complete experience. The parking fee in combination with subsidized public transportation would facilitate this changing city experience, while at the same time encouraging the transition to a more green campus and sustainable future.

Lighting Data Update

Today Brian and I received great news that our lighting modules have arrived. We will now be contacting facilities and letting them know we are good to go with the collecting process. We think this will be a great step to help make the campus more sustainable and less dependent of electricity. Cutting back on the use of light alone will potentially save the school an incredible amount of money each year. Even if our recommendations only save one percent of electricity use that is thousands of dollars that could then go straight back to motion sensor light switches, for example. Overall we are very pleased with where our project is now. Collecting the light data and putting it in a readable format are the next two sets in our project.

RECYCLING COMPANIES, ART FOR THE EARTH, AND MORE

Oxy’s current recycling company collects the contents of our bins for no fee. They do this in hopes that such a large institution will provide them with a large amount of recyclable products, which they will be able to use for a profit. Unfortunately, this means that the company is pretty cheap and does not sort through our bins. If a non-recyclable item (including the take out containers from the marketplace!) is in one of the bins, the company will trash the entire bin instead of sorting through it. Because many Oxy students aren’t aware of the restrictions for recyclables, many of our bins are contaminated and are never recycled. It has gotten to a point where our current company is thinking of dropping us because they have to throw out so many of our bins anyways.

Towards the beginning of the semester, our group met with Bruce Steele, head of Facilities. We discussed our current recycling system and learned just how inefficient it is. Bruce seemed very interested in finding an alternative that is more eco-friendly, but it is difficult to find a company that fits the college’s needs perfectly. After talking to him about the college’s needs, we decided to do some research on our own of some of the nearby recycling companies. We plan to collect information and then present it to Bruce. Hopefully we can work out a more efficient recycling system for the school!

One of the ways we began this research was by attending a meeting with other concerned Oxy students with the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. We met with Environmental Specialist, Jinderpal Bhandal, who hoped to do a waste audit of Occidental to help asses how much we throw away, how much we recycle, and how we go about these actions. Unfortunately, due to the lack of data on waste at Oxy, this was difficult to do and we realized that it has been many years since we collected any data on our recycling or trash disposal. Because of this, unfortunately Mr. Bhandal was not able to do a complete waste assessment of our campus. However, we able to give him some rough estimates and he walked around the campus to observe some of our bins and disposal sites. Mr. Bhandal suggested that Oxy adopt a single-stream recycling program. This means that we would use one company for all of our recycling needs. Currently, we use a company called SoCal Recyclers who, although they collect our recycling for free, only collects CRV items which they can earn profits from. This presents a problem, as Oxy students don’t often distinguish between CRV and non-CRV items. However, if we were to have a company that collected both, the restrictions on what we can recycle would be greatly reduced. In addition to this, the task of separating would become less necessary and we would be able to save gas and time by only have one company come to pick up everything.

While Mr. Bhandal was not able to do a full assessment of Oxy’s system, he did give us some materials that were helpful. We were given a book that contained information on locating an efficient recycler for larger businesses (like a college campus) and included a list of questions to ask, in addition to a list of local recyclers. We are currently in the process of narrowing down this group, as well as doing research on our own, in the hopes of compiling a list of about three recyclers that we think would best suit Oxy’s needs. The booklet we were given had a list of about 20 recyclers and so far we have narrowed down that list to all companies within 10 miles of Oxy. We are also waiting to hear back from Mr. Bhandal for a more comprehensive and up-to-date list of local recyclers.

In addition to this, April signifies the beginning of World Earth Month. Every year, students from our class put up presentations and exhibits on the quad on April 22nd (Earth Day). This year, we're going to have a wide variety of activities from transportation education to recycling. Our group has decided to focus on activities that will really integrate the Oxy community into the current recyling program on campus, including spreading awareness, art competitions and demonstrations. The art competition is on the theme of recycling, with a mandate that one of the components of the piece be recycled. We will also be having competitions to sort recyclables and signable pledges to commit to begin recycling this month.

--Sara, Rachel, and Marisha

Location: Eagle Rock and York

Time: 2:00

Street Width: 3 lanes plus a turn lane on one side, 2 lanes plus a bike lane on the other.

Bike Lanes or Signage: Bike lane only on one side. Sign for bike lane under speed limit sign.

Street Median Landscaping: Some trees and birds of paradise flowers on the median and by the right turn lane.

Sidewalk Amenities: Covered bus stop, newspaper dispensers

Pedestrian Safety Infrastructure: Multiple crosswalks, most of which are protected. Wide sidewalks, but bikes are on one of the sidewalk, which can be dangerous for pedestrians.

Posted Speed Limit: 35 mph

Traffic Count: 32 cars per minute

Bike Count: .5 per minute

Pedestrian Count: .5 per minute

Pedestrian Behavior Observation: Lots of people with groceries. Everyone uses crosswalks and they do not seem to be rushing. There are several high school students with backpacks.

Car Behavior Observation: Some speeding. Cars seem impatient at turns, which can be dangerous for pedestrians at crosswalks.

Noise and Feel of Being Pedestrian: Very loud noises, which is overwhelming. The trees are pretty but the area is not inviting and there is nowhere to sit other than two bus stops.

Suggestions to Improve Streets: Add a bike lane to the other side of the street. Make right turns "no turn on right" to protect pedestrians at crosswalks. Add seating areas for pedestrians.

Rachel and Brian