T HE EXPO LINE , a light railway which connects the city of Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles, is a marvel. For decades, Angelenos travelling to and from the beach had to sit in traffic on Interstate 10. Since 2012, when the line opened, repurposing a long-closed Pacific Electric rail line, they have been able to catch a sleek train instead. On board, Josh, clutching a smart yellow bicycle, says that thanks to the line he has managed to avoid buying a car since moving back to the city from New York three years ago. Instead, he commutes by bike and train to his tech-firm office each day.

Such stories delight urbanists, who want to make LA less dependent on the car. The city is trying hard to throw off its reputation as an automotive city. In 2016 71% of voters in Los Angeles County approved Measure M, a ballot initiative which imposed a sales tax to fund public transport. That and older taxes mean for every dollar they spend, people in the Los Angeles urban area now contribute 2 cents to public transport. Several new rail lines are planned. Last year the mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, announced that he wants to reduce the number of car trips there by half over the next 30 years.

Yet much more common than people like Josh are people like Debbie, a 22-year-old pharmacy worker. Standing waiting for a bus in El Monte, a city in the east of the sprawl, she looks sniffily around at her surroundings. Today her car has broken down; otherwise she would be in it. Driving “is just so much easier”, she says. Even as its budget has expanded, the number of people actually using public transport in LA has collapsed. Total ridership is down almost a quarter since 2013. Three in four Angelenos travel to work on their own in a car, the highest figure ever.

Half a century ago Reyner Banham, a British architectural critic, mocked urban planners who wanted to force LA to readopt public transport. “It will not be easy to persuade Angelenos… [to] climb into whatever coloured rolling-stock the new dream system offers,” he wrote. Some fear he may be proved right: it seems to be easier to persuade Angelenos to pay for public transport than to get them to use it.

According to Michael Manville, a professor at UCLA ’s Institute of Transportation Studies, the driving factor behind the decline is that public transport in LA is mostly a safety-net for the poor, not a service for most people. In a typical year, the average person in southern California takes 36 bus or train trips. But most people take none at all. And in recent years, as sub-prime credit has proliferated and wages have risen, poor people in the city have acquired cars. The proportion of households without access to a car fell from 10% in 2000 to 7% in 2015. Among immigrants, the fall was even sharper, from 14% to 8%. For a while the opening of new rail lines balanced out falling use of buses but no longer.

According to Mr Manville, providing public-transport options is not enough to persuade people to get out of their cars. Trains and buses must be almost as fast and convenient as driving. In sprawling Los Angeles, with its extensive freeway system, even the almost permanent traffic jams do not slow people down to the speed of buses. With over 100 square miles of parking, over four Manhattans, there is usually somewhere to leave the car.

What can be done to turn things round? Jessica Meaney, who runs a charity which lobbies for transport for poorer people, says that the city’s planners have often been too “romantic”, prioritising grand new rail lines and trying to attract freewheeling yuppies. Meanwhile the needs of poorer people, who mostly use buses, have been neglected. She notes several simple things that need improvement. Pavements around bus routes should be less dangerous, so people do not feel scared of walking to the stop. Rail stations need toilets and baby-changing stations, so that people with children (or without) are not caught short. Police officers patrolling lines could be less aggressive towards young men.

Modest changes are already under way. Last month the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which manages most public transport in the LA urban area, announced that it will update its bus routes, which have been mostly unchanged for 30 years. Joshua Schank, the agency’s chief innovation officer, explains how a study of people’s travelling habits found that buses were particularly bad for short journeys out of normal commuting hours—taking a child to a doctor, for example. Make those easier, and some two-car families might drop one.

Yet such tweaks will probably not be enough to lessen LA ’s legendary traffic jams. And as traffic worsens, it creates a downward spiral, as buses slow down even more and people switch to cars. Mr Schank says the city will eventually need some sort of congestion pricing. The roads “will never accommodate the demand as long as the price is zero,” he says. A pilot is already being planned. That will be controversial, however. Even removing a single lane of traffic to create a dedicated bus lane can cause a storm of anger.

For other American cities, or at least those which look a little like LA , all this ought to be worrying. Among the fastest-growing parts of America are sunbelt cities such as Houston, Atlanta and Phoenix. Such places also tend to have liberal leaders who want to move away from space-hogging polluting cars. Yet none of those cities have anywhere near the resources LA has put into public transport to such little effect. Money is important but to get people out of their cars it will take bravery too. ■

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