Shared Thoughts & Shared Mobility

This first introductory episode focuses on a general background of the two different cities of Riverside and Long Beach, how they are related, the different characteristics of those cities, and how they are involved in the transportation sustainability issue.

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Transcript

Anthony: As residents in Southern California, do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you only took the bus or the metro to go to work? Have you ever wondered how shared mobility can be improved to make your community more convenient and sustainable? Welcome to Shared Thoughts and Shared Mobility, a podcast that focuses on different aspects of transportation sustainability, more specifically, shared mobility. Our group is from the University of California, Irvine. My name is Anthony and I’m a third year neurobio major, and I come from Irvine.

Cindy: And my name is Cindy. I’m a third year English major from Santa Ana.

Catherine: My name is Catherine and I’m a third year computer science major from San Jose.

Aidan: And I’m Aidan. I’m a third year economics and international studies major and I’m from Beijing. We will be your hosts for this series of podcasts. To start off, mobility can be defined as transportation services and resources that are shared among users. This includes public transit, bike sharing, car sharing shuttle services, ride sourcing, scooter sharing, and more.

Cindy: For today’s podcast, we aim to introduce the cities of Riverside and Long Beach and briefly compare the transportation systems of these cities. Upon researching these two cities, we have decided that they’re comparable because of their broad relationship to transportation systems. While both cities have positive aspects in this field, they also have distinct characteristics which reflect their different approaches and achievements toward sustainability.

Catherine: Most notably, both Long Beach and Riverside show similar demographics. Long Beach has roughly 470,000 residents while Riverside has roughly 320,000. Not only are their population sizes close, the age distribution of those living in these cities are almost identical as well. Their median household incomes are likewise similar. In Long Beach, the median household income is $58,000 whereas it is $62,000 in Riverside.

Anthony: And so while you can see that Long Beach and Riverside are quite similar. One of their biggest differences is in their population density. So with Long Beach, it has roughly about 9,000 people per square mile and Riverside has about 4,000 people per square mile, according to the world population review. Riverside’s population density is less than half of that of Long Beach’s. The difference in population density demonstrates how Riverside is more of a sprawl city in comparison to Long Beach and serves to explain why most people drive in Riverside as opposed to using public transportation. According to Congressman Mark Takano, 77.6% of surveyors responded that they drove, 14.9% responded that they used another form of transportation in their daily commute to work, and only 2.5% responded that they took the bus. The average travel time to work in these cities likewise differ slightly, as individuals typically spend about 26 to 20 minutes traveling to work in Long Beach, while Riverside residents average around 33 minutes.

Aidan: So based on our research and interviews, we found that Long Beach has various means of public transit that are both affordable and well known in the general public. To add, bicycles are one of the most widely used modes of transportation in the city. In fact, Long Beach is ranked as one of the top 25 Best Bike cities in the United States. Despite this, local residents still complain about major issues that prevent them from taking public transportation more often, including frequent delays, insufficient frequencies, limited destinations, and concerns for safety.

Cindy: For Riverside, there are various means of public transportation, including buses operated by Riverside Transit Agency trolley services around UC Riverside, Metrolink trains, on-demand taxis, and ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft. As an educational institution-based city, Riverside also offers free or unlimited rides to student communities in local universities on fixed routes through Go Pass and U Pass programs provided by Riverside Transit Agency. However, according to Mark Takano, residents have expressed concern with the transportation system, stating that while they wish to use public transportation, they find it hard to use and end up driving instead.

Anthony: Now that we have defined the cities and their transportation backgrounds, we will talk about the main problem that we will try to propose some solutions to, and that is the general problem of transportation sustainability. Transportation sustainability can take on many different forms. One way to approach the topic of transportation sustainability is to look at the infrastructure involved with transportation systems. This includes everything from different personal modes of transportation to how roads are built and maintained, and how human behavior dictates how transit is established in both the public and private sectors.

Catherine: The Southern California Association of Governments is an important resource that we can use to frame the city transportation infrastructure discussion. By looking at the geography of these cities in relationship to their use of public transit, with Riverside being the Inland Empire and Long Beach being near the coast, we are able to gain more insight into how transportation systems operate and where they are feasible places to have interventions. Transportation sustainability can also be included within the discussion of previous shared mobility, such as Uber andLyft, as well as public transit. The main question is how can we accommodate current and future populations with our current and future transportation systems?

Cindy: That’s a good point. It’s important for the future of the U.S. and for sustainable efforts, because cities need to adjust to growing populations and for economic growth. With the advent of new technologies, it’s important to see how our transportation systems can change in a quick span of time. Sustainable transportation systems require careful planning and policymakers who understand the nuances of their city and adapt to sustainable efforts. Some possible efforts could be focused on higher density public transit, for example. It’s clear that current transportation systems are not sustainable because of the amount of environmental pollution congestion and overall inefficiencies weaved into the system.

Aidan: So now we are going to give you a brief overview of the next following episodes. In episode 2, we’ll be going to Long Beach Riverside to interview residents there. We’ll hear about their opinions about shared mobility and public transportation in both cities. And we’ll be talking more about what we have found by interviewing the experts from UC Irvine, which are in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Civil Engineering. We hope to get their insights on how public transportation systems are managed, how urban design is crucial to these types of transportation systems, and how transportation and mobility can be structured more effectively.

Catherine: In episode 4, we’ll be sharing our own opinions regarding the subject matter and respond to local and expert perspectives. We’ll also analyze the condition of shared mobility in both cities, based on our studies and research. In our final episode, we’ll summarize what we have done, and present our sustainability solutions and hope for the future in transportation sectors. This includes policy suggestions, recommended community actions, and our visions for a better shared mobility in Southern California.

Anthony: All right so now that we’ve kind of talked about transportation sustainability and the cities of Riverside and Long Beach in the generic sense, let’s talk about like why do we even think that this topic is interesting or important or relevant to society.

Cindy: Well I think it’s important because it’s in our daily lives, right? All of us has to get somewhere from point A to Point B. And I think we all have different experiences, right? Because for me, last year I used to commute by public transit myself, so I would take the bus everyday, back from home to school, and I feel like everyone else has their own experiences, right?

Catherine: Yeah I like to agree with you cause prior to coming to college, I’ve actually never taken public transportation because back at home, I would just drive everywhere. In here, I have to take the bus to school or like bus to everywhere else. And I think this is really applicable, especially ’cause, like you say, we all have to travel somewhere. So I have to travel from school or to work, and so I’m just curious as to how we ourselves can help make transportation more sustainable.

Aidan: Well I mean I also have some points on that. For me, I commute to school, right? And I have my own car, but it’s not like I want to drive. It’s like I have no other choice but to drive. It’s like now in Irvine, I used to take a bus to school during the fourth quarter of my sophomore year but I thought, that is very inconvenient, and there were very, very many like delays and there are not enough frequencies. It’s very inconvenient for me, but on the other hand, when I drove I always encounter many traffic jams coming up like I-405, and that always made me annoyed. I’m from China, and I’m actually from a metropolitan area where I took buses subways to my school every day. But after coming to Irvine, I found that the public transportation system is kind of almost non-existent here. So I kind of like wonder why is that. And I kind of wonder how can we improve this situation, especially considering that because of the sprawl, because of those commutes, Southern California has been one of the most polluted regions in the United States.

Anthony: Yeah I think just to add onto that, like transportation sustainability is a very kind of general topic and is a very like broad topic, and there’s a lot of ways to go about like examining transportation sustainability or researching transportation sustainability, and then we treat it like this very big broad topic that only policymakers can deal with and like big government people can deal with. But as Catherine kind of alluded to this, I’m very interested in how the lay person or the common individual is able to contribute to sustainability. Because I think that we can all make some changes too, like how we approach transportation sustainability or even change kind of our viewpoint on it, that it will kind of benefit us in the long run. Cool. So do any of you have any I guess personal experiences using the public transit, or just with Riverside or Long Beach in general?

Cindy: Well yeah, as I said before I used to commute by the OCTA, so the Orange County public transit, because I don’t have a car and personally since I’m from Santa Ana, the commute from my bus–it’s a lot longer. So for me, it averaged around at least 40 minutes of like sitting there in the bus. Yeah. And if I would ever miss the bus stop, I would have to wait an hour for the same bus to come back. So yeah I was like it wasn’t fun, but I would say the only benefit was just to relax in there and saving a lot of money, because I bought the year pass for UCI students and I believe for the whole academic year it was around like one hundred fifty dollars. So in comparison to like buying three parking tickets, it’s a lot cheaper.

Catherine: That’s true.

Aidan: So my hometown is Beijing and I had my high school in Hong Kong. And in those two cities, I always took public transportation, like subways, like buses, like taxis. And I felt that … ok, so first of all it’s not like private or quiet as driving a car, because driving a car you have personal space, right? But public transportation is very convenient in a way that in those two cities, it can physically get you to everywhere you want. And more importantly, like different from Irvine, we have a lot more frequencies, like maybe five minutes a bus, like that kind of thing. And it’s cheap, it’s cheap, it’s affordable as students, and I mean public transportation has many of its own problems, but I still prefer taking buses, subways to driving.

Catherine: I guess like me personally, because I don’t have a car here and not a lot of my friends do, I think I rely a lot on shared mobilities such as Uber and Lyft. And so prior to this, I’ve only ridden like once or twice back home. And so I think it’s really convenient especially because I don’t have a car and you can just ask someone to come pick you up with you. And especially because I split with people I think it’s pretty cheap compared to like, yeah if you were to take like trains.

Aidan: On the other hand if you drive, you have to focus on the road, right? But in public transportation, you can do whatever you want. So yeah when I took the buses and subways I always like read something or studying or reading the iphone.

Catherine: Or you can take a nap.

Anthony: Yeah. So thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. So that’s it for our first episode of Shared Thoughts and Shared Mobility. So tune in to episode 2 to hear what local residents have to say about their city’s transportation system.