Thomas Small Insights on Regional Mobility & Move Culver City

Tom, in past TPR interviews you’ve shared your personal involvement in Culver City Forward and their recommendations for improved multi-modal mobility planning. Update our readers on Move Culver City— the current status of this civic initiative and the significance for metropolitan LA of its recommendations.

There are a few different perspectives on Move Culver and the transit developments we've been working on in Culver City, which could potentially serve as a model for the rest of LA. I see it as part of an ongoing process. The initial pilot program for Move Culver was launched a few years ago, and it faced significant pushback. The council eventually decided to modify it, which I think was entirely appropriate since it was always intended to evolve. However, there was resistance from those who didn't like the direction of the changes, resulting in a lawsuit. The city recently won that case, so the council's directed changes are now in progress.

The changes include restoring a lane of traffic on each side of Washington Boulevard through sections where Move Culver was initially implemented. The bike and bus lanes will be consolidated into a combined bike/bus lane in some areas.

We’ve discussed rapid urban prototyping at VerdeXchange before, as well as how, in California, particularly in government, moving quickly on such mobility initiatives is truly challenging. Had we approached implementing Culver City’s  pilot project with a stronger focus on tactical urbanism, we might have made changes more flexibly—for example, by moving plastic bollards to test different configurations in a more temporary pilot format. However, that didn’t happen. We tried one way, and now we're trying another. Still, it’s part of a forward-moving process. 

The Move Culver multi-modal project is ongoing and around Culver City, with planned expansions on Sepulveda and further down Washington Boulevard, where bike lanes will be extended to connect with the LA bike lanes. Overall, that’s a positive step.

Many people, including you, have commented recently on the worsening traffic in LA. While the council's solution to ease traffic by adding lanes on Washington Boulevard in response to citizen push back has its merits, I doubt it will work long-term. Those lanes will likely fill up, and we’ll still face challenges getting to downtown restaurants by car in just a few months. 

With the City of Los Angeles' Mayor promising a car-free 2028 Olympic Games, Culver City's embrace of tactical urbanism becomes even more relevant and potentially instructive. Could you expand on how tactical urbanism differs from current urban transportation planning?

Tactical urbanism is a concept that's been around for years, and it's a straightforward, effective approach that has driven a lot of change. The basic idea behind tactical urbanism is to just go ahead and try something out.

For example, if you want to create small pocket parks in place of parking spaces, a tactical urbanist approach would be to simply put out cones, add some benches, maybe some astroturf, and see how people respond to it. If you’re thinking about closing a street to traffic to make it pedestrian-only, just temporarily block it off, add some seating and potted plants, and see if people enjoy it. If it doesn't work, you can easily remove it.

The Move Culver pilot project used this kind of tactical urbanism by relying on plastic bollards and paint instead of making permanent infrastructure changes like cutting concrete. This approach made it easier to modify the project later on. Though it still involves removing paint from the road, which is tougher than you'd think, it’s a flexible and successful strategy used across the country.

You've long been a strong advocate for increasing urban density to address housing affordability—despite mixed evidence of its effectiveness—and, you're deeply involved in LA County’s mobility planning. Given the unprecedented growth in the region’s traffic congestion, do you believe transit planners are effectively balancing the push for greater housing density with citizen frustration with unhealthy, traffic-choked road arteries?

That's a great but tough question. In some ways, I don’t think we’re doing a great job. We’re not delivering the quality of life we could achieve through better design. I recently spent two weeks in Germany, where I saw some impressive urban design solutions that we could model. Dresden, for instance, is a historic city that was bombed out during the war but has been beautifully restored. In their downtown area, they’ve created a pedestrian zone with an underground parking lot beneath the main square.

In Dresden, the entire downtown is closed off to through traffic, but vehicles can enter slowly and carefully for specific purposes—like dropping off someone with limited mobility. It’s a shared space where cars, bicycles, and pedestrians all coexist. Drivers can’t cut through the area, and bollards direct them to turn around if they try. I think downtown Culver could benefit from this kind of model. 

For instance, people who want to reach specific restaurants could drive up, drop someone off, and then park in an underground lot. In Culver, we have plenty of parking, but we haven’t effectively managed how people get around downtown. Dresden’s approach demonstrates that a high-quality public space is possible with thoughtful design.

In recent years, city planners appear less focused on neighborhood quality of life issues than on housing supply, homelessness, and access to public transportation. What explains why today quality of life is rarely the subject of urban planning and transportation policy discussions?

I believe that all these issues—housing, transit, homelessness—are fundamentally about quality of life. You can see this connection clearly if you look at The Planning Report from the past few years. Housing and transit are inseparably linked; you can't solve one without addressing the other, and both must aim to improve quality of life across all income levels. 

While there's a lot of focus on helping those most in need, particularly around homelessness, our efforts have been disjointed and insufficient. This is partly due to the structural challenges in Los Angeles, where the various jurisdictions and sprawling agencies make it extremely difficult to enact meaningful change in policy or infrastructure due to bureaucratic and political hurdles.

You’re very involved in Metro’s Sustainability Council. Share how growing traffic congestion is being addressed.

Metro is a massive agency filled with brilliant people, but it has a slow-moving culture, partly because of its sheer size and jurisdiction. While there are cutting-edge thinkers on Metro staff, it’s challenging for them to implement changes even within their own plans. Often, the ambitious goals laid out in these plans are scheduled to be achieved in what feels like centuries. There’s a constant push and pull from advocacy groups trying to speed up this process but that can also create conflict. Real progress requires consistent, dedicated effort, often beyond the tenure of individual officials or even career spans. This is not something that can be achieved in one electoral term; it requires a hand-off from one generation to the next.

You’ve spoken often about how major sporting events like the Olympics are incenting urban mobility investment. Are the LA28 games & other mega sporting events accelerating better urban planning? 

The Olympics does give that impetus, but there's still uncertainty. There’s an interesting new entity created by Katherine Perez and Aaron Paley, Los Angeles Tomorrow, which will focus on preparing the city for the Olympics. They bring significant experience in urban planning and the arts, respectively, and they’ve received some support from the United Way. If anyone can make meaningful changes ahead of the Olympics, they can.

However, there’s still a lot of skepticism, especially from the private sector, about the city’s readiness. We’re far behind compared to where Paris was at this stage for their Olympics. And the big question remains: whatever improvements we make for a car-free Olympics, will they create long-lasting benefits for our transportation system? That’s the real test. The Olympics are as much a televised event as they are an in-person one, and LA is excellent at showcasing itself on a global stage. But whether we can maintain any positive changes afterward is still very much undecided.

Last May at the VerdeXchange VX2024 conference, you moderated a fascinating panel titled "The Digital Mirror: Developing Cities, Housing, and Resiliency." Could you elaborate on the promise of AI and digital twin planning; and, how cities currently are employing these tools?

This topic is both thrilling and frustrating for me. The potential to create a digital mirror for Los Angeles—to digitally plan the city while representing all the various interests involved—could be a powerful tool for urban planning. There’s an incredible promise here to simulate and refine city plans within a digital model, helping address complex urban issues virtually before making changes in the real world. While I’ve been advocating for this, the technology is still somewhat sluggish, and even with significant investments, we’re not quite there yet.

On the exciting side, I’ll be hosting a panel next month featuring a major think tank from the Netherlands that’s a public-private partnership, well-funded, and further along in utilizing this digital twin technology. They even have an office in San Diego, which might help move things forward here. So, while we’re not there yet, I’m optimistic that by the next VerdeXchange, we’ll have new perspectives on the technology’s application. 

Pivoting to politics. Considering the polarized nature of national and global politics, share your take on Culver City's political landscape. How does public will arise, become focused, and organized in Culver City—literally a Westside LA crossroads?

Culver City is a fascinating place in that regard because Culver City is very diverse. We still have a broad cross-section of the American electorate here in Culver City. You might think that it’s all Democratic, or almost all, but you do have folks on what I’ll call the Huntington Beach side of the equation—people who want to push things back to the way they were before. And especially here in Culver City, I know these folks. I understand them. Some of them, sure, are a little wacky—as is inevitable in any political situation—but a lot of them are just expressing the values and love for the city they’ve lived in for decades, and the way of life they’ve enjoyed. So, there’s that.

Then on the left, you’ve got folks who, over the past few years, have gone even further left than we’d seen before. So, it’s very confusing. Some young families have moved into Culver City and people who work for tech companies or media companies, so they’re not as involved in the political process, but they may vote. The election is going to be interesting. Because everyone’s a Democrat, it’s even more confusing. People on the right say, “We’re not the right; we’re the center.” So, finding a compromise or a middle ground is very hard.

There are a couple of candidates here in Culver City who are trying to do that, but overall, it’s combative from one side to the other. I mostly stay out of it, because I see them spending so much energy just fighting each other instead of getting things done.

A respectable answer, but re public will, what Hyde Park-like civic message today would most resonate with Culver City residents—ie., attract the largest crowd?

It would be exactly what we're talking about. It would attract the largest crowd. You know, the homeless issue is there, the mobility issue is right there, housing is right there, and they're all together. That would attract the largest crowd. 

Yet, moving towards solutions on any of those things would be very hard. When you ask that question, it makes me miss it. It makes me miss that political scene because I think that being able to offer real hope and a real way forward, that message would resound. But it’s very hard for people to listen to it among the battle cries from the right and the left. Still, I think it would resound, and it’s something that we don’t hear that much of.

 We do hear some of it, but it’s caught up in the fighting as well. Anybody in these fields knows that certain folks have more time on their hands to organize, and that side gets the bully pulpit quite a bit. That’s the conservative side here in Culver City. Then, at times, you have business interests that want to come in and tip the scales, and they tend to tip them on that side as well.

Before concluding, could you share with our readers a few of the lessons you’ve taken from your recent trip to Vienna and what you hope to inspire other cities to consider and emulate?

The trip to Vienna was fascinating, and I know it’s been repeated several times. The great lesson is that they had many of the same problems we have in LA 100 years ago, and they built up a system that works, so they don’t have issues with homelessness or housing affordability to the same degree. The problem with the trip was that we found it very difficult to figure out how we could take those lessons and apply them here. I mean, the idea that “oh, maybe in 100 years, we'll be in a better position to,” is not a very good answer.

This gives me a great opportunity to talk about how we’re planning a similar trip to the Netherlands next year to study their mobility system. On that trip, we want to focus on what could actually work in Los Angeles. There’s a fascinating comparison in terms of area and population density. The LA County area, or maybe slightly larger, is comparable to the entire country of the Netherlands. We’re different because we have large tracts of unpopulated mountains, so our density is more concentrated.

There was a plan in Los Angeles called the Centers Plan back in the ‘70s that aimed to create transportation nodes throughout the city. In the Netherlands, it works much like that plan. They have different cities connected by high-speed rail.

To me, the most fantastic part of what the Netherlands is doing, and what we could learn from it, is that the different transportation modes are much better connected. It’s that first and last mile that makes it easy to go from the train to the tram, to your car, or your bike. So, it’s much easier to get around the city, and it lightens up traffic. I’m sure they have car traffic, but having the train and other systems means you can get across the country much faster than you could with a system like ours.