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Los Angeles Metro Rails: An Asset or a Liability? Writer Fatima Ali Researcher Aaron Pawlinski
T
hroughout the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Los Angeles experienced a massive population growth, creating trafc congestion in the L.A. highway system. Tis provided an incentive for lawmakers and city developers to fnd a method of transportation that would allow a solution to solve the problem of congested highways, while also ensuring that residents had easy and afordable access to transportation. As a result, Los Angeles implemented a Metro Rail system that allowed residents to commute efciently
throughout greater Los Angeles. Metro Rails were found to be a useful public investment. However, developers did not take into account the efect the rail system would have on the surrounding communities and neighborhoods.
the metro rails, placing special emphasis on whether it generated neighborhood change. Pawlinski defned neighborhood change as a change in the income and racial dynamics of a region. At the end of the study, Pawlinski found that the Green, Blue, Purple, and Gold Aaron Pawlinski, an undergraduate lines did not have any efect on student at the University of neighborhood change. However, Wisconsin Madison, researched the his study had several limitations. impacts of the Los Angeles Metro Pawlinski stated that the parallel Rail system on the surrounding trend assumption may not hold neighborhoods. Using a diferences- in all cases, that not all L.A. metro in-diferences (DID) regression lines were studied. Furthermore, he model, he analyzed the efects of believes that yearly observations and
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