The headline above sounds like an oxymoron, given that Los Angeles has for 60 years come to represent everything brown and ugly as opposed green and bright in the environment. For "L-A" was the first city--and far from the last--to buy into the 1930s urbanist vision of dispersed sprawling communities linked by car-occupied freeways, popularized at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City.
The car and the wide, fast roads to accommodate it represented individual freedom, the escape from dirty, fetid cities into fresh countryside and wide open spaces, once the province of farmers and the elite. Unfortunately like most visions it overlooked the consequences, like smog, which began to be inflicted by cars on Los Angeles as early as the late 1940s, and traffic congestion that has proven to be impossible to build out of.
There is a plaque in the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal, (also known as Union Station used by Amtrak and the Metrolink commuter rail that discusses the deliberate freewayization of Los Angeles that destroyed what was the world's greatest mass transit network, the Pacific Electric interurbans or 'Red Cars'. This figured as a subplot in the hit animated/real action comedy film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' The city also had an extensive narrow gauge urban streetcar system, which shared tracks with the Red Cars with inside rails for the trolleys.
Since the early 1990s "L-A" has been pouring money if by fits and starts into returning the 'Red Cars' now known as light rail transit or LRT, plus in subways, commuter rail, and bus rapid transit that have proven popular especially with high gas prices. Thanks to this investment you can get around without a car, to places like Hollywood, Pasadena, and Long Beach. The Los Angeles County MTA's site will show you how. There is a new 'Red Car' line being built to the south west of the Los Angeles convention center that will reach Culver City by 2010 and eventually Santa Monica.
At the same time "L-A" has become the hub of a slowish but attractive, convenient, frequent, reliable, and affordable intercity rail and bus network that connects it with Santa Barbara, San Diego, the San Joaquin Valley (Bakersfield, Fresno, Stockton, Sacramento) and the San Francisco Bay area. Amtrak, the State of California, and bus partners have teamed up to provide a coordinated network known as Amtrak California.
LAX doesn't have a rail link, through there are bus shuttle connections to the Green Line light rail that in turn connects with the Blue Line for the downtown. Instead it offers excellent shared-ride shuttle vans from the terminals plus transit buses via frequent connections to an off-site transit station. So yes, you don't need to drive there either. "L-A" is also gradually returning to walkable, cycle-friendly downtowns and neighborhoods.
ITEXPO West is taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, which is in the downtown and not far from the subway and LRT/'Red Car' lines. ITEXPO West has exhibits along with sessions that can help you go green such as through teleworking and to employ technologies that use less energy. An excellent Show Guide via TMC President and Group Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani's blog will help you navigate the event.
At ITEXPO West there is also an opportunity to win a Toyota Prius hybrid: a worthwhile vehicle to own for no matter how good mass transit and alternatives like teleworking are, there will always be a big place and need for private cars. The key (literally) is to minimize their environmental footprint by hybrid and pure electric technologies and by unclogging the roads through transit and teleworking so that driving can truly be fast, convenient, and free.
