More like paying men to not drive.
It seems bizarre that they even need to research this when they could simply ask Angelenos why half of us don’t take public transit.
It’s not safe.
We’ve got a massive homelessness problem in Los Angeles, and our unwillingness to house them means they’ll seek shelter. The official shelters aren’t safe either, and the homeless are just as scared as everybody else. So they go Metro.
There’s still regular thugs blasting music and looking for a fight, but they’re few and far between, and healthier public transit cultures like NYC can better deal with troublemakers organically.
It’s a symptom of the housing crisis. Everything will continue to suck until we focus on housing first. No I don’t want to hear your chalkboard argument about drug-test housing because you are objectively wrong, this has already been studied to death and housing first is the correct answer. We don’t need more studies, the idiots just need to read them. Spend a goddamn day on the street and it will be obvious.
Sincerely,
an Angeleno public transit fanaticTo the detractors, this experiment is based off one done in Australia, and it can have good results. Some may decide they actually don’t need to drive as much and start using more public transit, and others will be able to more precisely point to pain points with not using a car.
Yes, they need more transit oriented development and better transit access, but this should be able to help
wow, a whole 100$ a week
LA needs mass transit first
I live in LA and use mass transit every week. Coverage is not universal but it is a thing.
Granted I moved away a long time ago, happy to hear it’s improved.
Slowly but surely! They’re expanding it as we speak.
Bloody typical, you seem to think you can skip straight to the end of the journey.
No, that’s not how things work, this is a stepping stone towards that.
You can’t just take a 200 meter horizontal leap across the water, you need these stepping stones to then make it across
The problem is you can’t solve the problem by simply removing the car. There are 3 major phases to commuting: 1st mile, primary transit, and last mile. A car solves all 3 at once, which is why it’s very easy to design around cars.
And the frustrating thing is, you really do need all 3 in a lot of places. I live in Texas where it can be triple digit temperatures for 5 months of the year.
The history of transportation in LA is tragic because at one point they had not one, but two massive streetcar networks.
Really? I grew up there and didn’t know that.
A lot of cities had them. But they got in the way of profits.
tl:dr for those that are interested.
Car Companies bought public transit (buses and street cars mostly), and scrapped it, to force more sales of their cars as people could no longer get around easily without public transit.
I visit a few times a year, and stayed once at LAX; getting to Santa Monica Pier took like 90 minutes by metro train. The metro system is beyond useless.
You have to have a car as it stands today unfortunately
That’s pretty cool
Maybe make your metro usable so not driving would be easier. It’s kind of impossible to get where you need to go without a car in LA
More people taking transit will help put pressure on improving it.
I agree but I think it’s much easier the other way around. First improve the infrastructure, then incentivize people to use it.
I have to admit that I’m unsure how LA does it, but up in Washington the voters have to approve more funding for transit. Which is difficult if voters feel like transit doesn’t work well to begin with and then it’s an uphill battle.
Double-edged sword, I’ll admit.
That’s a chicken-egg problem.
A double-edged sword is something that could hurt as much as it helps if you’re not careful.Hah you’re right! I’ll blame it on my lack of coffee thus far this morning ;)
Should try a double-sided coffee :)
LA is a tough one for this because it’s so spread out. San Francisco has a famously amazing BART system but the city is also very tiny compared to what most people think of as “LA”.
Depending where you live and where you go, LA Metro can be useful. I use the Metro quite often, and I know the bus system is pretty expansive as well. They’ve also consistently been adding new lines and stops including a way to get to LAX via Metro. So it’s not like improvements aren’t being made.
Love that you’re holding BART up as a shining example.
For getting to anywhere in the city it’s awful. Within the city all lines share the same stops. if you want to go east-ish/west-ish either no you don’t, or you have to transfer to a bus (which is an additional fare since MUNI is a different agency).
So would it be better at getting people into the city? Again, no. To go from my school (Cal State East Bay) to 16th and mission, a place that I went to basically weekly took about 58% longer than driving (I’m bad at math, so that may be off, but 40 vs 70 minutes). Additionally, I just did a fare caluclation, and now a round trip fare for that trip is $13.50. If I drove, it’s 2 gallons of gas and the $8.50 bridge toll. While driving is slightly more expensive, the save time and “last mile” convenience usually outweighed it for me.
Oh, and the hours were super limiting on week nights (when I would go to the city).
Any how the Maryland/Viginia/DC metro (WAMATA) blows BART out of the water while covering 1,500 square miles.
I mean, zoning reform needs to happen before transit is a viable option. Miles and miles of low density sfhs and strip malls will never be able to be effectively served by transit because a transit system can’t possibly be efficient enough to both serve a reasonable number of people and get people where they are going in a timely fashion. Its just geometry.
Yeah, a train won’t do much without transit oriented development.
Famously amazing BART system
Haha….hahahahHahahahaHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
…you spend too much time on Internet forums and not enough time riding transit lol
Edit: I see the “Your lived experience is invalid” people are showing up today.
Wow that edit makes you look such an idiot. Go re-read your comment again.
… I’ve been to SF several times and used the system, it’s great. Also to add, since you enjoy being condescending, I’ve used public transport in Asia and Europe as well. So… haha?
These are two separate comments.
The metro is usable.
It’s still impossible to get around LA without a car. It’s a very large spreadout city.
Not impossible. Just very difficult. Source: I lived there for several years without a car, moved close to where I worked (twice), biked and walked most of the time, some public transit when the routes lined up, had very little social life. If there was a special event across town, could use some money saved from not having a car to spring for a taxi.
Waste of fucking money. I think most people in LA already don’t want to drive. Build good public infrastructure and see the results.
Does Japan offer people money not to drive? No, they make good public infrastructure and make it expensive to own a car
You need to know the pain points before you can fix them
The focus of this really is data collection, to find out what problems exist for those people and then once you have that data you can shift the focus towards fixing the problems
So just ask people to answer survey questions. Go to some college campuses where a lot of students commute to and ask why are they paying hundreds a semester to park in a parking lot instead of taking the horrifyingly slow and inconsistent public transport.
That will only get one income level, with one group of people in it.
For good data you need DIVERSE INPUTS, which just canvassing those who already don’t have cars won’t do.
You need all kinds of people to respond, not just young people living on a handful of college campuses. There’s only one way to do that in an area where the vast majority of people have a car.
“It’s a waste of money” is a thought-terminating phrase that ruins a lot of attempts at progress. This is a drop in the bucket for a city as large as LA.
I’m just saying that people will gladly give their opinions on a short survey without $500 being offered
Maybe instead of paying to take the bus, we should pay people to take the bus. You’re putting up with a lot of hassle to avoid taxing the roads with another car. Maybe you’re owed a few bucks for your community service.
Or just make it free and pull the money from anti-homeless infrastructure.
yeah, but then the homeless would use it.
Bonus
I was just at a bus stop and no one wanted to use those awful standing benches so a guy decided to sit on top of a gas line cage instead. It’s crazy how infrastructure is somehow more ergonomic than anti homeless furniture.
but then how will we kick people when their down?!
Is this not the basic premise for taking fees from fines and car related registration to reinforce public transit and proper city planning?
What society isn’t invited to think about is how cars are so heavily subsidized to the point where it drains communities instead of supports them. From gas, roads, lighting, these costs are downloaded to every single person without much thought about any other option.
Also roads are typically paid for by new road building subsidies… Meaning more roads and no maintenance.
Yes, but it’s more a matter of scale. And most cities still charge bus fare. It costs cities 10x as much money to support one car commute as one bike commute, but you would be hard pressed to find a city that put even an equal amount of dollars into bike infrastructure as car infrastructure.
Why waste the money on paying people to not drive instead of using money to make the reasons they don’t use public transportation better?
Their paying for research data basically. When people say this shit ain’t working and it’s because xyz they can improve the public transit ! That’s my thinking anyhow.
Sounds like a great way to get a free car!
Buy the car, park it in your driveway for the next six years and use the cash incentives to make your car payments!
Looks like its only a one time payment and only 2000 households. So its just a PR stunt. 2000 is enough for a news story but not enough to effect anything.
it’s not a ‘pr stunt’, it’s a research study.
This is the second phase of the program. It’s already been successful.
Building on a successful pilot in Santa Monica, Metro is expanding the One Car Challenge to all of LA County in Summer 2026. This time, we’re inviting approximately 2,000 households to participate — and for the first time, one-car households are welcome.
Except those people will tell other people how it went… For better or worse.
“I gave up driving ages ago, I don’t even own a car. Can I get in on this money as well?”
“No, fuck you. You don’t matter. We’re only paying real people with nice cars to change, not for poor slobs who already rely on public transportation to keep using it.”
I mean, to be honest, you obviously don’t need incentive. What would be the point of paying you.
I think universal programs tend to have more public support.
The point was that it’s paying people who have options other than using public transportation, which would also correlate to them having more money than those who already have no other option.
An extreme comparison would be that it’s sort of like paying billionaires to try to pollute a bit less.
I understand the point but you don’t design public policy for vibes, you design it for results. You can use incentives and disincentives, and you have to choose which one works best with the population you have to get the results you want.
Giving some incentive to the pop that already does the action you are optimizing for is pointless and a waste of money, maybe the discussion should be if instead of giving money to motorists they should have instead increased tolls, parking price, fees to enter the city, etc.
That final idea of yours is the ticket, though the specifics would take work. But paying people with cars to slum it with the bums on public transportation is horrible optics and messaging. I understand trying to lighten road congestion and pollution, but there’s got to be a better way.
That’s almost enough to pay 1 week’s rent in a shitty loft in LA.
I think they’re researching how big of a congestion tax they need to get a certain percentage of people to stop driving. Giving someone $600 is very similar to not taking away $600.
$600? That’s a joke.
If it gets people to try it, its good.
Who couldn’t use $600 right now?
That’s not enough to replace the utility of a car for most people in LA.
For 5 weeks?
because it’s not ‘right now’. You either get $120 a week or the 600 after five weeks. Emergencies don’t just wait for you to have the money for them
I wouldn’t kick $120 a week out of bed, that’s for sure.
That’s literally my weekly grocery budget.
I don’t know with $120 a week that some good grocery shopping there.
So incredibly stupid/wasteful. Just put a $3/gallon additional carbon tax on gasoline/diesel. use revenue to at least cut other taxes/rent reductions if property tax cuts, or give every resident a dividend cheque based on the carbon tax revenue. Car owners will adjust and traffic/smog improved, without just paying car owners with free money. FFS, there are cheaper than $600/mo cars I can use to scam for free money.
Lmao it’s a STUDY they aren’t simply paying them to not drive. Read more than the title pls.
It’s a stupid study designed to answer the question “if we give money to just car owners or just rich people… will they be happy/comply”. One of the problems is it costs money to measure/police compliance for any conditional aid.
Another approach to discouraging undesirable behaviour is to tax it. Revenue instead of expense, including just funding such a pointless study. Parking fees/taxes where you don’t want people to go is pretty easy.
