Getting Around the City: Sevilla vs. Los Angeles, by Hannah Deng

One of the first things I noticed when I came to Seville was the number of people that choose to either take public transit, such as the tram or the metro or walk on foot to their destinations. Los Angeles county is notorious for being a city/county that is so large and with areas that are considered dangerous to the point where people need a car to be able to get around, even when they’re simply exploring the downtown area. This is compared to Sevilla, named one of the best cities to explore on foot. Although you may see many tourists on foot in Los Angeles, most of the locals own cars and use that as their main form of transportation to get around. Most people in Los Angeles do not take public transit as it is not considered the safest option, and will often take an Uber to get around the city if they do not own a car. An article was just published by the LA Times showing that fewer women are now taking public transit because of concerns over their safety, the unreliability of public transit schedules, and homelessness plaguing the Los Angeles public transit system.

Even if the concerns people are having with the Los Angeles public transportation system are addressed, I don’t believe we will see more people willing to commute through the metro and busses as they do here in Seville because I think the lack of willingness to walk or use public transit has almost become a cultural practice. Even students who attend university in Los Angeles and live around the area will prefer to drive 5 minutes to school than to take a bus or the metro, whereas my morning train to Pablo de Olavide is typically full of students trying to commute to school. I often hear my friends from Spain making plans to walk to a café 25 minutes away or are surprisingly fine with commuting 40 minutes to school every day, which is not something people in Los Angeles would agree with. I believe these differences in perspective are due to cultural differences in behavior and how people are raised in Los Angeles compared to Sevilla. People in Los Angeles have the capability to walk 25 minutes just like people in Sevilla. However, they see 25 minutes as being an extremely long time to have to walk because they are used to the speed of a car to get places because it is what they’ve been exposed to since they were young whereas people in Sevilla may think a 25-minute walk is normal to be able to get to their destinations because the people around them find it ‘normal’ in their culture to do so.

 

Articles:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-04/female-ridership-on-la-metro-down-satisfaction-with-county-buses-drops

https://inspain.news/seville-makes-the-guardians-list-of-best-cities-to-explore-on-foot/