Will L.A. Escape the Tyranny of the Car?

We Love Our Freedom, But We Hate Traffic. And If We Want to Be a 21st-Century City, We’ve Got Changes to Make.

Aaron Paley, native Angeleno and founder of the CicLAvia bike festival, is tired of reading the same newspaper and magazine stories over and over again proclaiming that Los Angeles is at last “coming of age.” Paley opened a panel co-presented by Metro on the question of whether L.A. is mobile enough to be a global city with a bold proclamation. “We’ve been a great city all along,” he told the crowd at MOCA Grand Avenue. “We are a global city.”

Seleta Reynolds, who became general manager of the Los Angeles Department …

Can the City of Lights Solve the Traffic Woes of the City of Angels?

Looking to Paris and Other Global Cities to Help Southern California Get Moving

In London, tourists happily buy T-shirts and mugs with the city’s iconic Underground logo or “Mind the Gap” slogan. The New York subway’s signage for famous stops like Grand Central …

KCRW Traffic Reporter Kajon Cermak

A Woman Who Lives Out Loud

Kajon Cermak is KCRW’s traffic queen, reporting on Southern California’s roads on weekday evenings during All Things Considered. Before moderating a panel on the future of traffic in L.A., she …

Metro CEO Art Leahy

He Loves L.A. for Its Aspirations

Art Leahy is CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro); he began his four-decade transit career driving a bus in L.A., where he grew up. Before participating …

When L.A. Is the End of the Line

Train

Trains changed the world, but then cars and planes came along, and they became a tertiary form of transportation, particularly in the U.S. But journalist and Chapman University English scholar …

Trains Are Not the Silver Bullet

A Successful Rail System in L.A. Has to Help People to Get to Work, Complement Existing Bus Routes, and Serve 1,000,000 Riders a Day.

Trains and rail are inseparable from California’s past. When Leland Stanford hammered “The Golden Spike” in an 1869 ceremony in Utah, he united the first transcontinental railway in the U.S.—and …