Students Talk Back panel takes on public transportation

Students and panelists convened for the weekly Students Talk Back forum hosted by the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics to discuss the future of public transportation in California and challenges faced by the state to fund ongoing projects.

Wednesday’s panel featured Tony Strickland, former California state senator from the 19th district; Darin Chidsey, director of strategy, policy and public affairs for the Southern California Association of Governments; Alex Kludjian, president of USC College Republicans; and Nathaniel Haas, columnist for the Daily Trojan.

The forum was moderated by Dan Schnur, executive director of the Unruh Institute, and Emma Peplow, news editor of the Daily Trojan.

Chidsey opened the discussion by providing background on few of the challenges that the state of California has faced in delivering practical, time-effective public transportation options. In his work with Southern California Association of Governments, Chidsey assists in the creation of a “Regional Transportation Plan” that the organization releases every four years, outlining solutions to reduce traffic congestion.

“There are going to be four million new people in Southern California over the next 20 years. That’s a tremendous [number] of people that are going to be operating primarily on the existing roadways,” Chidsey said. “Over the last several decades, there hasn’t been a real plan to add more lane capacities in much of Southern California.”

Chidsey named the large geographic size of the Southern Calfiornia region and its six counties as an obstacle to creating comprehensive transportation reform. One priority identified was the coordination of the location of new housing construction and transportation investment.

Next, Stickland provided historical context for Los Angeles’ transportation problems.

“Los Angeles was built around the automobile … The joke in Southern California is the mass transit that the masses don’t use,” said Strickland, who served as a legislator-in-residence for the Unruh Institute last year. “In the legislature, in my opinion, [California] missed the boat during the 1970s by a philosophy that said ‘if you don’t build, people won’t come.’ Well, people still came.”

Stickland named poor infrastructure — not only in transportation, but also in energy and water — as a challenge that the state has faced in light of the population explosion that has occurred over the past thirty years.

The panelists spoke about public-private partnerships as a way to fill gaps in funding for major infrastructure projects such as the high-speed rail project, which is expected to cost $68 billion. The price of this project has increased significantly since citizens authorized high-speed rail construction several years ago in a ballot initiative.

Kludjian argued that a high-speed rail is not a major concern of most Southern California residents.

“I have major doubts about the viability of this particular high-speed rail project,” said Kludjian, a senior majoring in political science. “I have a lot of uncertainty supporting a project that has a lot of holes in its funding sources. It’s not unprecedented for large infrastructure projects to not be completely funded, but when it is on the scale of $68 billion dollars … I feel like resources could be better diverted to issues that actually affect residents in a tangible way.”

The panel then transitioned to a discussion of the rise of rideshare programs such as Uber, Lyft and SideCar. Rideshares are seen to improve public safety by reducing the occurrence of drunk driving and provide an easy part-time employment option. Taxi companies have pushed back against ridesharing programs, however, because they do not share the same regulatory burden as taxis.

Chidsey expressed support for ridesharing programs

“[My organization] looks at ride-sharing as one of those things that’s a great complement to the system that already exists. Going back 20 or 30 years, transportation planners have always talked about carpooling and ridesharing,” Chidsey said. “Those same ideas that have been talked about for decades, there’s now a private industry solution that’s using tech to connect people in new ways.”

Though rideshares might present a viable substitute for public transportation options, Haas argued that companies like Uber and Lyft have a few drawbacks.

“Just because its cheaper, doesn’t mean that we should automatically treat Uber like Jesus arriving on Palm Sunday … There are a couple of real concerns.”

Haas explained that the company has been known to lower its prices at the disadvantage of drivers, in order to attract more riders. Even drivers who work for Uber full-time do not earn sufficient wages to cover living expenses, according to Haas.

“[Working for] Uber’s a great job, but it is one that comes without health insurance … [and] without a lot of the other benefit packages that most employees working for a major company in a good full-time job receive. These are things to remain cognizant of, but these aren’t reasons why Uber should go away or why we should oppose it,” Haas said.

The next Students Talk Back will be held April 8, and will examine the topic of the 2016 presidential race.