It’s possible that the only purpose of the California high-speed rail project is to provide evidence to the residents of Los Angeles County that there does exist a public transportation system worse than Metro.
By comparison to the state’s miserable sinkhole for tax dollars, which has swallowed roughly $18 billion over almost two decades without a track or a train car in sight, Metro looks cheerfully dysfunctional.
Going back at least as far as the Jimmy Carter administration, the people who think of themselves as transportation thought leaders have been frowning at personal vehicles and trying to get people out of them. A substantial majority of Americans have disregarded this prescription.
For all the carpool lanes, bike lanes, bus lanes and bollards that transportation wizards have forced onto the roads to send their anti-car message, a lot of people prefer sitting in traffic in an air-conditioned private vehicle with a phone, a cupholder and an entertainment system to walking, biking or experiencing public transit.
Nowhere is that more true than in Los Angeles. Even leaving aside any concerns about getting stabbed on a train platform or riding in an enclosed metal tube that is just a tent flap away from being mistaken for a homeless encampment, public transit doesn’t work for every trip. Long walks and multiple transfers can transform what might be a 40-minute drive into a three-hour adventure.
Unsurprisingly, people who are paid high salaries with your tax dollars to cheerlead for public transit are not willing to stop nagging everybody about it. Metro is determined to prove that public transit is a viable option.
The transit agency just announced that it will pay 2,000 L.A. County residents $600 each to park their car for five weeks and use public transportation or some other means of travel.
And no cheating. Compliance will be enforced through a smartphone app called GoCarma. Metro says participants must be “willing to take odometer photos to verify mileage.”
To be eligible for the program, participants also must live in Los Angeles County and must have at least two household vehicles or be “willing to go from a one-car household to a zero-car household.”
This pilot program is an expansion of Metro’s One Car Challenge in Santa Monica, which enrolled 300 people in 2023. According to Metro, there was a documented 16.6% increase in walking, biking and public transit utilization among program participants. A 16.6% increase from what number? Don’t ask too many questions, it makes the transportation thinkers irritable.
If you think this whole thing sounds like a pilot program for a mileage tax or worse, you’re probably right. One look at the GoCarma.com website will confirm your worst fears. The company sells “solutions” for charging tolls, enforcing congestion pricing, and restricting driving through a complicated system of credits and charges, all through smartphones.
The company markets its services to governments. “Price any road, anywhere, anytime. GoCarma’s smartphone-based road pricing suite of solutions automatically verify travel without infrastructure headaches,” the website advertises.
So that’s a heads-up for California’s powerful unions in the transportation and road construction sector. No need to build toll-road infrastructure. Any road can be a toll road. Union workers can be replaced with a smartphone app.
Can drivers cheat? GoCarma says the app “activates when a user drives on a toll road, even if the app is fully closed on their phone.”
What if the phone belongs to a passenger? No worries. GoCarma’s app “automatically confirms the vehicle ID through Bluetooth connection.”
GoCarma even advertises that it can spot HOV lane violations without the need for roadside enforcement. CHP officers can relax on their boats next to the unemployed CalTrans workers.
But wait, there’s more.
GoCarma can charge for congestion pricing and process transactions in real time, which it’s already doing in New York. For California, the company says its “solutions” can help governments enforce Vehicle Miles Traveled restrictions, giving commuters “credits for their VMT-mitigating commute trips, which they can cash out from the app.” With GoCarma, “commute trip modes are automatically classified, including walking, biking, driving alone, carpooling, transit and teleworking.”
It knows when you are sleeping, it knows when you’re awake.
Tell Metro to shove it up the chimney.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley