For years, car culture has dominated the commuter scene in the sprawling Los Angeles metropolitan region. While public transportation exists, it is difficult to provide efficient service that connects such a vast area. The car naturally becomes the preferred, most convenient choice, which decreases the demand for transit. Less demand leads to an even greater reduction in transit service and coverage. This is very apparent in the suburbs of Los Angeles County, particularly in the city of Diamond Bar and in the unincorporated community of Rowland Heights.
In many cities, such as New York, public transportation is, in fact, a key alternative to the car. Driving is not always desirable, or even possible, when streets are hopelessly congested, parking is difficult, or a car is not available. Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights may not have severely-overcrowded streets or a lack of parking, but there are groups that do not have easy access to cars, the elderly and the youth. Members of the elderly community may not be able to operate vehicles safely and the majority of the youth are unlicensed. Since most adults work, they may not always be available to provide rides to places of interest or to extracurricular activities.
Currently, Foothill Transit and the Orange Country Transportation Authority (OCTA) operate the local buses while Metrolink operates the commuter train. Foothill Transit operates several east-west routes that run through Rowland Heights, Diamond Bar, and several other cities in the San Gabriel Valley. Foothill Transit and OCTA additionally operate north-south routes through Diamond Bar that connect to Pomona and cities in Orange County. The Industry Metrolink Station, located close to the Diamond Bar boundary in the City of Industry, lies on a train route between Riverside and Downtown Los Angeles.
While the current coverage is aimed primarily at commuters, the system also has the potential to better serve the elderly and youth. With the passage of the Measure R Sales Tax in November 2008 (Weikel) and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s publicly expressed desire to expedite transit projects (Bloomekatz), there will be more funding to expand and improve the current regional transportation network.
For the time being, however, overall commuter travel in the southeastern San Gabriel Valley still seems to be dominated by cars.
Compared to the rest of the area and county, relatively few commuters in Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights utilize public transportation.
The vast majority of households in Diamond Bar own cars. While the percentage is still relatively low, it is worth noting that more households in Rowland Heights do not own cars compared to other communities.
Since most of Diamond Bar and parts of Rowland Heights are upper-middle class and relatively affluent neighborhoods, they may have better access to cars and a small (or nonexistent) need for public transportation.
A large percentage of the households in the entire area possess three or more cars.
Given these observations, I predicted that much of Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights is geographically underserved by transit agencies.
Methods
For the reference map and all of the thematic maps, data was taken from the U.S. Census Bureau website and compiled into an Excel sheet. City shapefiles were obtained from the UCLA MapShare website. The Excel sheet was then converted into a .dbf file and joined to the city shapefiles. Data classes were determined using the “equal interval” method.
Buffer analysis was used to test the hypothesis (that most of the area is geographically underserved by transit agencies). In addition to the same shapefiles used in the thematic maps, street and highway shapefiles were also downloaded from UCLA MapShare. The “Commercial Zone” shapefile was digitized from memory and checked for accuracy against Google Maps. Bus stops had to be geocoded. Every bus route passing through Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights was found using the Foothill Transit and OCTA system maps. The bus stops on these routes were found using the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Trip Planner, which listed bus stops as intersections. These lists were run through an address locator, but due to inaccurate information, many stops had to be placed on the map manually (under the “Bus Stop” shapefile). The Industry Metrolink Station was also geocoded. Buffers were then created around each bus stop and the station at the 0.25 and 0.5 mile marks. 0 – 0.25 miles was considered to be a “desirable” distance to transit. 0.25 – 0.5 miles was considered “acceptable”. 0.5 miles was determined to be the maximum distance a commuter or traveler would walk in order to access transit on a regular basis. Anything beyond 0.5 miles was deemed “inaccessible” to transit. Euclidean distance was used to measure proximity to bus stops.
Results
Analyzing the proximity of neighborhoods to local bus stops and the train station reveals that transit is inaccessible to large sections of Diamond Bar and most of Rowland Heights.
Diamond Bar lacks transit coverage in the southwestern, southeastern, and northeastern neighborhoods. It appears, however, that most of the city is within 0.5 miles of a bus stop. The commercial zones generally seem to form corridors that are aligned with the bus routes.
Rowland Heights lacks transit coverage in parts of its central and in all of its southern neighborhoods. This means over that half of the community is isolated from transit. Transit is only present along Colima Road (on the northern end of town) and along Nogales Street, but only north of Colima. These areas are also where most of the commercial corridor is located. To the southeast, one of the Diamond Bar bus stops near the border covers a small portion of a Rowland Heights neighborhood
Conclusion/Discussion
It is difficult to determine why the present transit coverage is what it is. It is clear, however, that many residential neighborhoods in Diamond Bar and especially Rowland Heights are currently inaccessible to transit. As predicted, they are geographically underserved by transit agencies. Even when a bus stop is nearby, it may only be served by one route with limited destinations when a different route and destination is desired. In this case, transfer points may be too far out of the way and service may not be frequent enough to encourage transit ridership.
Further observation of inaccessible neighborhoods reveals that they belong to more affluent portions of the local population. The neighborhood, known as “The Country”, in southeastern Diamond Bar, for example, is a gated community of large mansions. The wealthy generally have easier access to private vehicles and have very little reliance on public transportation, if any at all.
Investigation into the topography of the inaccessible neighborhoods, and even some of the 0.25 – 0.50 mile buffer zones, reveals that many of the neighborhoods are situated on hills. Since travelers would have to walk back up these hills from a bus stop, it increases the perceived distance to the bus stop, decreasing the desirability of transit.
Whether or not this indicates an urgent need for route improvement has yet to be determined. In studying the use of public transportation, or lack thereof, many factors are involved. It necessary to consider income, car ownership, commuter behavior and preferences, demand and desired destinations, street layout, local traffic patterns, parking, stop and route locations, and frequency of service.
Regarding the thematic maps- although the “equal interval” classification method exaggerates the differences between cities, it made comparison easier. Had these maps included cities from the entire county, the higher and lower values from other cities would have expanded the range of each data class. The southeastern San Gabriel Valley would then appear more uniform.
Regarding buffer distance, Manhattan distance would have been a better measurement than Euclidean distance since people must walk along streets to reach a destination. Following Euclidean distance would mean cutting across property, which may be illegal or impossible due to walls and other barriers. However, due to complexity, using Manhattan distance was not an advisable technique during the creation of this report.
Future work could consist of a second proximity analysis, this time using Manhattan distance. This could be combined with more detailed income, car ownership, and commuter information by census tract, rather than city-level data. Information at the census-block level would be of even greater use. Furthermore, surveys could be conducted in neighborhoods to assess pure desirability for improved transit and to determine desired destinations.
Sources
Bloomekatz, Ari B. “Villaraigosa Wants Transit Projects on the Fast Track”. LA Times. 30 Oct 2009.
Weikel, Dan. “Measure R Sales Tax Hike Goes into Effect Wednesday”. LA Times. 1 Jul 2009.
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