[Crawford]

There's some scholarship suggesting that transit orientation is more a function of driving being hard than transit being easy.

Obviously hard can take different contexts, where, for example, in Singapore it's generally too expensive to own a vehicle, or in Mexico City, the auto congestion is terrible. But in LA, I've never felt that driving was in any way difficult, anywhere, so it isn't shocking that choice riders go with the convenient option. Traffic moves, parking is affordable and plentiful, and the city is structured to accommodate private vehicles.

It also means that here in the U.S., we shouldn't be surprised when transit share doesn't increase due to transit investments, but due to measures making driving more burdensome. LA is probably more likely to see rising transit share via (to take random examples) additional gas taxes, parking restrictions, tolled highways, narrowed streets, etc. Of course these moves are all much more difficult than transit ribbon-cuttings.