The Los Angeles cab controversy is much more than a fight between old-line cabbies and alternative newcomers armed with apps, their own cars and an entrepreneurial spirit.

It’s a sign of how Los Angeles slowly is changing from a one-person, one-car city of sprawling suburbs to one where an increasing number of residents use trains, buses, bicycles, their own feet and cabs. Going hand in hand with this are multi- story apartments, condos and retail stores around new transit stations.

I discussed this with University of Southern California Professor Maged Dessouky, an expert on ride sharing and other aspects of urban transportation. He said we’re in the midst of a big change in how we get around the streets, freeways and neighborhoods of Los Angeles. But the transformation is occurring slowly, and it’s difficult for a driver, caught in gridlock, to notice.

“Driving alone is becoming more costly in terms of time and dollars,” he said. Over the years, he said, developments such as better connected Metro lines, an increased use of charging for use of congestion free lanes on freeways (now in use on the 110), higher gas and parking prices and more accessible cab and ride sharing will change ingrained Los Angeles habits. “We will see people driving alone but that will not be the dominant mode,” he said. “People are shifting away from it now.”

My interest in the subject was piqued by e-mail from the big public relations firm Edelman. No, it wasn’t Edelman’s new employee, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a senior adviser. Rather the pitch came from a persuasive man named Andrew Flick. He talked me into interviewing a client, Sanders Partee, who heads a company called Taxi Magic.

With Taxi Magic, you download an app and, with it, order a traditional cab and watch its progress on your mobile phone screen as it heads your way. At present, Yellow and Beverly Hills cabs are on the list but Partee is planning to expand. Other app-connected alternatives have vehicles usually driven by the car owners. Among them are SideCar, Lyft, Zimride and Uber. Taxi companies, regulated by cities, have fought them. But the State Public Utilities Commission approved them under a category called “transportation network companies” and permits them to operate if they obey a number of regulations, including carrying a minimum $1 million insurance, have a zero tolerance of drugs or alcohol and criminal background checks for drivers. Taxi companies wanted the Los Angeles City Council to appeal the ruling, but the council declined. Mayor Eric Garcetti, an app and technology guy, agreed.

Partee supports the traditional cab companies, which Taxi Magic serves. But he said the trend to a variety of options for riders “is irreversible. The sharing economy is real; the changes in attitudes toward one car, one person is irreversible. People will use alternative means like buses, trains, short-term rentals, and the traditional taxis will play a significant role.”

I can see it a few blocks from where I live. The Casden development—that’s a whole other column—will be built at the Metro train station at Sepulveda and Pico. Apartments and retail will flood the area with more people and shoppers. They’ll need an alternative to the packed streets and jammed 405 and 10 freeways. Alternative companies, competing for riders, will hopefully bring prices down from the present rates. I’ll take the train downtown or to Santa Monica, and a cab home if it’s too late. The new L.A. sounds good to me.

When Mayor Eric Garcetti completes his second 100 days in office, there may a better system to grade him than the present one.

When he reached 100 day milestone earlier this month, journalists engaged in the usual custom of assessing the event---originated in the historic first 100 days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. It’s now become a journalistic staple with every new national, state and city administration getting a 100- day rating.

If Garcetti’s plans for a data-dominated city hall work out, Angelenos won’t have to wade through these stories, but will be able to make up their own minds by reading the website lamayor.org/performance.

The late Mayor Ed Koch of New York used to ask everyone “How’m I doing,” expecting—demanding—a reply of “great.” This mayor won’t have to do that. He’ll just steer you to the web site.

I checked out the performance web site. Part of the site is in a beta or test mode. But I looked up some items that had long interested me. Pothole repairs were up from 301,653 in 2012 to 354,125 in 2013. Road repairs were up from 2012’s 1,987 miles to 2,356 this year. Actually, Antonio Villaraigosa, who was mayor during most of this time, gets some of the credit.

Garcetti does deserve praise for starting to quantify exactly what goes in city hall and making it accessible. But I can see the pitfalls. The departmental reports so far are not informative. They contain data—plenty of numbers but no way of judging whether money is spent well .

Thursday, journalist Tim Rutten gave a good explanation of why such cascades of information may not be informative. He told a session of a lecture series I am coordinating at the Pasadena Senior Center that there’s a difference between data and information. Data are facts thrown out without context, explanation or judgment of what’s important, a technique beloved by city department heads. Information, such as you get in a good article, book or broadcast, makes these distinctions. For example, the Department of Water and Power entry on the performance site reported water use down, a longtime trend. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have something that really concerns the public, such as the cost of DWP employee benefits, which includes workers not contributing to their health insurance?

The performance web site, however, has a worthwhile political aspect. It tells the city that the mayor, not the city council, runs the city departments, that he’s the guy in charge, as he should be. This fits in with what Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times described in a story as a “push to consolidate power in the mayor's office.”

Unfortunately for Garcetti, that may not be how L.A. residents see him today. A poll by the Pat Brown Institute of Cal State LA found that a sampling of registered voters gave Garcetti good approval ratings but a substantial number had not formed an opinion of him. And only 8 percent would go to the mayor’s office for help with a neighborhood problem while a quarter would go to their council member’s office. Apparently, they don’t consider him the guy in charge.

That’s something for Garcetti to improve upon in the next 100 days.

Latino civil rights advocates have so far run into a stone wall of indifference in trying to create a Los Angeles County supervisorial district where a second Latino could be elected to the board. They have vainly tried to persuade the U.S. Justice Department to file a Voting Rights Act lawsuit forcing the supervisors to draw new lines.

But now an influential supervisor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is African American, has taken their side, strongly advocating Justice Department intervention.

Still, the Latino advocates face a tough fight. I talked to Cruz Reynoso, a former State Supreme Court justice, about the Justice Department’s attitude. He had made his case personally with Justice Department attorneys.

“My sense is that unless they feel some pressure to do so, they would not,” he said. “This matter has been pending so long, I don’t see a lot of interest. The facts are overwhelmingly favorable to a Justice Department action if they should take one. It seems to me that Los Angeles County with millions (in population) would be a high priority. So my impression is they need some outside pressure to practically embarrass them to act.”

He said that the department is now occupied with Voting Rights Act cases in Texas and North Carolina. “Maybe they would rather go into the South…where they are fighting a Republican governor and legislature (rather than) Los Angeles County where they are dealing with a Board of Supervisors that has been friendly (to the Obama administration).”

Ridley-Thomas told me that the Justice Department should file a lawsuit charging that the county Board of Supervisors violated the Voting Rights Act when it drew the current district lines. “The (best) likelihood it will be accomplished is through the courts,” he said. The act is designed to assure equal representation for minorities.

Ridley-Thomas was even stronger in a written statement. “So let’s cut to the chase,” he said. “What is the likeliest way to achieve adherence to the Voting Rights Act? Unfortunately, it won’t be through the action of this board…I know the Latino community will once again have to look to the courts for protection of their voting rights.”

His comments are a major development in the important dispute over realigning the five supervisorial district boundaries. He is the board’s only African American, and his support of the Latino effort makes it a multi-racial campaign. And he is a prominent Democrat, which means he may have some influence with the Obama administration’s Justice Department.

In the last redistricting, he proposed a plan that would have made possible the election of a Latino in the 4th, coastal, district now represented by Don Knabe. The Ridley-Thomas proposal also would have realigned Mike Antonovich’s district to improve chances of an Asian American being elected to the board there. Although Knabe and Antonovich are lame ducks that will lose their jobs through term limits, they opposed Ridley-Thomas’ proposal. There are two other supervisors on the board, Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina, a Latina and the first of her ethnicity to be elected to the board. She represents a district that was created in 1990 only after the Justice Department went to court and forced the county to obey the Voting Rights Act.