Getting back on topic, check out the recently updated streetviews of downtown LA, parts of it are feeling like the Chicago Loop or a mini Manhattan, (though the scale, architecture and size makes me think of a much nicer version of downtown Detroit by way of San Francisco) the growth has just been nothing short of phenomenal, and when the regional connector goes on line, its going to be even more game changing

 

Yeah, I agree with that. It is a mix of San Francisco and Detroit. Woodward Avenue Detroit has filled in for Broadway Los Angeles on some film shoots. But many of those new LA buildings look San Francisco-ish, though generally taller in LA. It is the tallest skyline on the West Coast overall, but it's weird how it goes from mega-skyscrapers to regular high-rises so fast. San Francisco tiers down more around its peaks. Ditto with Detroit. Still, LA's skyline is looking more and more impressive by the month.

 

San Francisco to me feels most Manhattan-like at its core. Financial District, Union Square, Tenderloin, Chinatown, and Nob Hill are basically the only sizable urban core neighborhoods outside of Manhattan with that density. Keep in mind they are 50,000-100,000 people per square mile and loaded with workers (over 300,000). They are some of the only sizable urban core residential neighborhoods like that in the United States. It's all contiguous too and walkable to the office towers. It's true mixed-use, super dense urbanity which is what makes people fall in love with San Francisco. The city certainly has its dumpy areas and has become insanely overpriced all the way to the Outer Sunset, but SF nailed it in the urban core. The major streets are even narrower in San Francisco's core than most other first tier cities. It is built for the pedestrian first. I think Montgomery and Kearny are pretty hard to top as far as urban canyons go. The general lack of trees also gives SF that hyper-urban feel. Part of what makes San Francisco appealing besides the mild weather and obvious geographic advantages are those narrow streets north of Market. South of Market has wider streets, and feels like a bigger, taller Downtown Oakland or a shorter Downtown LA, though it's important to note that LA does have some narrow streets in sections like the Jewelry District.

 

The Jewelry District of LA is feeling more New York-ish (but grittier), and the street-level vibrancy is there too. LA's downtown being mostly flat also lends it more of a Chicago or New York or Toronto geographic feel. San Francisco is unique due its extreme density on steep hillsides and all the great vantage points. It will always feel different from other first tier urban cores like New York, Toronto, Chicago, or Los Angeles just due to geography. Financial District/Bunker Hill LA still feels 9-5 and could use some more amenities for the residential population, but that's really no different from the situation in Financial District San Francisco. They're about on par now. LA has really been closing the gap in recent years. What LA still lacks is the downtown periphery of San Francisco- the Tenderloin and Nob Hill area. I'd rank Nob Hill as the best neighborhood in the United States, so it's unrealistic to expect that in other cities.

 

What's crazy is looking at photos of the Staples Center area 20 years ago compared to today. Not only was LA building all that new transit, but Staples Center spun off an insane amount of development. It is the gold standard for urban municipal arenas. A bunch of case studies could be done about how that arena changed that section of downtown forever and also exposed people to public transit. Native friends tell me Staples Center was a fundamental shift in the way Angelenos viewed downtown.

 

Downtown LA is clearly expanding both vertically and horizontally. The inner ring of LA is all filling in and will be one hell of an urban core when it's finished. There are cranes everywhere...

 

Will it ever get to Manhattan's level? No. But could it eventually match the next tier like San Francisco, Toronto, and Chicago? I think so.

Trains are now testing the Expo Line extension into Santa Monica:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/07/expo_line_extension_santa_monica.php#more

I'm going to try to time my defrost vacation to SoCal in time for the opening of that line.  I'm hoping that they get it done earlier than the current estimate which is early spring.

L.A. is truly becoming a dense, pedestrian-oriented mass transit city in many of it's core areas... It's got a ways to go, but the improvement over even 10 years ago is stunning.  20-years-ago?  Let's not even go there.  Suffice it to say the old freeway-city LA moniker is a thing of the past... With the Expo-Line extension to Santa Monica, you can cross off another LA hotspot you can't reach by train.  Awesome.

However the transit time from DT LA to DT Santa Monica is going to be upwards of an hour on both the light rail extension and the Wilshire subway extension.  There won't be express service on either line...I think the LA area needs express tracks to deal with the region's vast distances and to really start incentivizing people to take transit instead of driving. 

45 mins for lrt is what's estimated now, long yes but still manageable and competitive with the extreme traffic congestion on I-10. 

 

Also there is an express bus to take you to Santa Monica where it gets super slow, you'll be able to transfer to the train there. It pages right by a station when it gets off the freeway and is only 25 cents extra if you buy a muni transfer with your day pass tap card.

 

The subway will be faster too though that's a ways off...

However the transit time from DT LA to DT Santa Monica is going to be upwards of an hour on both the light rail extension and the Wilshire subway extension.  There won't be express service on either line...I think the LA area needs express tracks to deal with the region's vast distances and to really start incentivizing people to take transit instead of driving. 

 

An hour?  Really!?  When I took the Expo Line from it's current terminal into it's terminal at 7th St/Metro Center, it was only about 20-25 minutes, and this extension surely couldn't be another 35 minutes.  The distance from the current Culver City terminal is less than 7 miles and is mostly grade separated.

However the transit time from DT LA to DT Santa Monica is going to be upwards of an hour on both the light rail extension and the Wilshire subway extension.  There won't be express service on either line...I think the LA area needs express tracks to deal with the region's vast distances and to really start incentivizing people to take transit instead of driving. 

 

An hour?  Really!?  When I took the Expo Line from it's current terminal into it's terminal at 7th St/Metro Center, it was only about 20-25 minutes, and this extension surely couldn't be another 35 minutes.  The distance from the current Culver City terminal is less than 7 miles and is mostly grade separated.

 

I can't remember the exact figure but I do remember it being in the 45-55 minute range end-to-end.  A big problem is that slow in-street section near USC and The Staples Center that the Expo line shares with the Blue Line. 

 

Much of BART in the East Bay was built on abandoned railroad ROW's or next to active railroads.  That's similar to the strategy of most of LA's light rail network, but the grade separation in SF allows sustained speeds of 50+ MPH in the suburbs and 70MPH in the tube.  I don't recall the Expo Line slowing down for grade crossings when I rode it, but the top speed seemed to be around 40mph. 

 

The big crying shame is the lack of an express track (or two) like what exists in New York as part of the Wilshire subway.  Imagine Santa Monica to DT LA with a cruising speed of 70MPH and just two or three station stops.  That point-to-point would be under 25 minutes. 

 

 

 

^Transit ridership is still growing, and I believe LA maintains the busiest or second busiest light rail system in the United States most years (it competes with San Francisco's crush-load, often delayed Muni system). I believe it's quite a bit busier than Portland's (admittedly excellent) light rail system now. So for transit, LA is second to the Bay on the West Coast.

 

I agree LA could use express tracks under Wilshire, but it's not likely to happen since I don't think they are anticipating New York-level transit ridership (but I do believe LA is underselling the potential of the Wilshire subway). They are looking to match San Francisco-Oakland public transit, which makes sense since that's its California competition.

 

New York City is just so damn big and dense, it has the ridership levels to fund express trains. I can't imagine them working elsewhere in the United States, as much as I'd love them. Even BART has discussed a second transbay tube (study was approved last year) for express trains and 24-hour transit between San Francisco-Oakland, but I have a feeling the project won't get funded. I'd just be happy with late night trains on Fridays and Saturdays in the existing tube, which seems a lot more realistic to fund. BART starts a few hours later on weekend mornings, so it's feasible it could run a few hours later at night.

 

It's important to remember California has a long history of car culture. It was streetcar dependent first, but the post-WW2 population boom was highway dependent until the 1970's in the Bay and 1990's in LA. Mass transit in California is young...there are still a lot of suburban folks afraid of taking trains. It's ridiculous, but they exist all over the state. While things are changing, LA and the Bay won't be like New York City, or even Toronto, Chicago, and Montreal. Our best bet would be DC-level service. :|

 

If mass transit in LA and the Bay matches DC Metro ridership in the future, people will be thrilled. I think Jerry Brown also views that as a good target for the state's two largest metro areas. He is very pro-transit, and has been instrumental in supporting heavy rail and light rail expansions in California. We're lucky to have a governor who likes mass transit. He's an older dude who grew up in the freeway era, but he totally understands the importance of mass transit in supporting dense urban development. A lot of this comes from his time being mayor of Oakland. He really pushed for development near downtown BART stations.

^Total nitpicking, but Boston's Green Line was the country's highest-ridership light rail "system" as of last year; LA was close, so its new expansion will likely puts it ahead for the time being. Boston has a significant expansion in the works, so it could retake the lead in a few years.

^Forgot about Boston since it's more heavy rail. Good catch. :wink:

NYC wouldn't have gotten so dense without the express tracks.  The very first line under Broadway was built with express tracks so that it could be both a local and a commuter railroad.  The later "duel contracts" phase of construction in the 1910s expanded this concept to 4 or 5 more 4-track lines in Manhattan.  The intention was to enable super-dense early-1900s Manhattan residents to move out to Brooklyn and The Bronx and commute into town, dropping the residential population of Manhattan.  Except it didn't really work because NYC kept attracting 100,000+ immigrants per year through the 1920s.  Manhattan didn't really start emptying out until the 1950s and 1960s.  Deindustrialization left many of the warehouses and factories empty and the residential tenements of the Lower East Side finally emptied out.  Subway ridership today is still significantly lower than it was in 1950 because more people commute into Manhattan by car/bus/ferry/commuter train than did when the subway was built. 

 

NYC is still the only subway system in the world where use of 4-track express trains is widespread throughout the system.  There is one 4-track line in Philadelphia and Chicago has one elevated 4-track line.  BART has a 4-track tunnel it shares with MUNI, but there aren't express trains.  Incredibly Cincinnati originally planned two miles of 4-track subway in the canal, although that would have not been for express trains but rather a way to organize the many trains that were to funnel into the tunnel from the north and west. 

 

I'm not an expert on San Francisco's situation but I'm skeptical that building a second BART tube is the absolute best plan.  It might be possible to transition the lesser-used East Bay BART lines to light rail and build a light rail tube under the bay into SF rather than a heavy rail line built to BART specs.  This would be a completely separate system from BART and MUNI built to something like Seattle's light rail specs with 400-foot stations rather than 700.  It might be possible to build many more lines and stations with the new, cheaper light rail technology rather than the extraordinarily expensive BART specs.  Getting one of the east bay lines off BART would enable more frequency on the other BART branches. 

 

But it might be possible to build much more track mileage in the east bay with light rail than would be possible with an all-BART system.  You could have surface-running streetcars in Oakland do a one-seat ride to SF. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NYC wouldn't have gotten so dense without the express tracks.  The very first line under Broadway was built with express tracks so that it could be both a local and a commuter railroad.  The later "duel contracts" phase of construction in the 1910s expanded this concept to 4 or 5 more 4-track lines in Manhattan.  The intention was to enable super-dense early-1900s Manhattan residents to move out to Brooklyn and The Bronx and commute into town, dropping the residential population of Manhattan.  Except it didn't really work because NYC kept attracting 100,000+ immigrants per year through the 1920s.  Manhattan didn't really start emptying out until the 1950s and 1960s.  Deindustrialization left many of the warehouses and factories empty and the residential tenements of the Lower East Side finally emptied out.  Subway ridership today is still significantly lower than it was in 1950 because more people commute into Manhattan by car/bus/ferry/commuter train than did when the subway was built. 

 

NYC is still the only subway system in the world where use of 4-track express trains is widespread throughout the system.  There is one 4-track line in Philadelphia and Chicago has one elevated 4-track line.  BART has a 4-track tunnel it shares with MUNI, but there aren't express trains.  Incredibly Cincinnati originally planned two miles of 4-track subway in the canal, although that would have not been for express trains but rather a way to organize the many trains that were to funnel into the tunnel from the north and west. 

 

I'm not an expert on San Francisco's situation but I'm skeptical that building a second BART tube is the absolute best plan.  It might be possible to transition the lesser-used East Bay BART lines to light rail and build a light rail tube under the bay into SF rather than a heavy rail line built to BART specs.  This would be a completely separate system from BART and MUNI built to something like Seattle's light rail specs with 400-foot stations rather than 700.  It might be possible to build many more lines and stations with the new, cheaper light rail technology rather than the extraordinarily expensive BART specs.  Getting one of the east bay lines off BART would enable more frequency on the other BART branches. 

 

But it might be possible to build much more track mileage in the east bay with light rail than would be possible with an all-BART system.  You could have surface-running streetcars in Oakland do a one-seat ride to SF. 

 

 

Neither London nor Tokyo have widespread express-track lines?

It appears that Tokyo only has two subway lines (Lines 5 and 13) with any form of express service, and only Line 13 actually has dedicated express tracks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metro_Fukutoshin_Line

 

It's unclear from that article what form these express tracks and the express service take on Line 13.  It appears that the express tracks only exist as bypasses to stations, not like how they work in New York as completely independent railroads. 

 

Similarly London only appears to have a few very short sections of 4-track construction on just one line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_line

The other shocking thing about NYC is that it's the only 24 hour trains system in the world, Chicago has just 2 24 hour lines. Japan's trains go to bed really early even though the system is incredible...

 

Another issue that needs to be kept in mind in coastal California is that earthquakes are a real threat. This drives up the cost of heavy rail transit. I think that's part of the reason Los Angeles and San Francisco-Oakland have so little heavy rail compared to other urban regions with their population. They are light rail first, heavy rail second. That has been a limiting factor in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is no doubt demand is there today for more heavy rail hence LA funding and building the heavy rail Wilshire subway, and BART studying a second Transbay Tube. Light rail unfortunately is not enough in cities this size.

 

At-grade light rail is cheapest and safest to build, hence why I think we've seen more of that on the West Coast. It's also the least likely to have any fatalities during an earthquake. I know there are a few aerial sections of heavy rail on BART's system that don't look like they are going to hold up during the next big earthquake. While Loma Prieta did very little damage to BART, it wasn't that big of an earthquake. We have yet to see what a major earthquake will do to our mass transit systems. It has been a long time since a 7.0 or larger quake has hit an urban core area in California...

 

This is something better transit cities like New York City, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, and DC just do not have to worry about since any potential earthquakes they may experience are weak.

 

*Then again, Tokyo pretty much throws this all to the wind. The rail infrastructure they have built is astounding...

 

**In terms of of the situation in the Bay, BART's only lightly-used line is the Richmond-Fremont line, which shares its track with other lines. All the other lines feed into downtown San Francisco. The problem is the lopsided employment situation leading to regular crush-load crowding. Oakland is currently discussing a Broadway Streetcar above the BART subway, but that's getting into another thread topic. I will start something for the Bay since a lot of planning is being done this year in San Francisco and Oakland in regards to BART, Muni, and AC Transit. Any future BART tunnel is going to have to be heavy rail built to BART's bizarre track gauge since it will connect or crossover with the existing BART lines in both cities. There are also talks of a second Transbay Tube supporting the SF-LA high-speed rail plan. It was my understanding that the abnormally wide track gauge was used due to earthquake fears with a train traveling up to 80 mph under 135 feet of water...but that could be an old San Francisco wive's tale. A second heavy rail Transbay Tube is essential to deal with the crush-load crowds due to the daytime population in SF. About 325,000 people work in downtown San Francisco and over 125,000 tourists hit it every day. Its typical daytime population is at least 1.3 million people. Only about 75,000 people work in downtown Oakland and there are no tourists. I wouldn't be surprised if Oakland's daytime population shrinks since so many Oaklanders work in San Francisco. As a result, rush hour trains are absolute crush-load and things have gotten out of control on BART. Throw in a Giants game after work, and afternoons are a transit disaster leaving people stranded. We need a second heavy rail subway between SF and Oakland as well as promoting more companies to build office towers in downtown Oakland. The Lake Merritt subway station for example is extremely underutilized. There are no skyscrapers around it, and a lot could be built there. BART needs to ban bikes too. They take up a ton of space and slow everybody down. They need to either build a bike path under the Bay Bridge or force people to take bikes on ferries.

 

Weekday ridership now averages about 420,000 — 100,000 more than five years ago. But BART hasn’t kept pace with that growth and is hobbled by its inadequate infrastructure.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-can-t-keep-pace-with-rising-crush-loads-6192950.php

 

The Geary subway is also being looked at again. I think LA's Wilshire subway gave SF a much-needed swift kick in the ass. "Oh my God, LA is going to have more heavy rail than we do! They'll have two subways in the city!"

 

BART is calling the Geary subway proposal "BART to the Beach" much like how LA is calling the Wilshire subway "The Subway to the Sea." I love our marketing in California...

 

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/12/01/bart-will-study-second-transbay-tube-west-side-extension/

 

I'll start a thread for this stuff since it a lot is going on with transit in the Bay. Not as much as LA, but political attitudes are shifting all over California.

The other shocking thing about NYC is that it's the only 24 hour trains system in the world, Chicago has just 2 24 hour lines. Japan's trains go to bed really early even though the system is incredible...

 

 

The lack of late-night transit is a huge issue in a lot of cities and leads to drunk driving...though Uber has helped mitigate this some. I know cities have crappy 24-hour busses, but they are slow, unreliable, and can get very shady (at least ours do in the Bay). It boggles my mind that cities don't run trains until at least after last call on weekends. It would make a huge difference and save everyone a ton of money getting home. Last call in California is only 1:30am. Where LA kills the Bay is that they run the heavy rail Red Line until 2am on weekends. This is a huge advantage over BART, which has its last trains starting at 12am every night of the week. Two hours may not seem like a lot, but it makes a huge difference for weekend nightlife. We're not like New York City where people are out drinking until 4am...

 

Hell, that's a big part of the reason NYC needs those 24-hour trains. They've got people drinking all night!

LA Metro Wants to Speed Up Two Rail Lines So They're Ready By the 2024 Olympics

Thursday, September 10, 2015, by Bianca Barragan

 

LA's Olympic dreams include a big-time renovation of the Coliseum and the creation of athlete housing along the LA River, but the Games could also help get two pivotal transportation projects finished years ahead of schedule. The LA Times reports that Metro has officially asked to participate in a pilot program from the Federal Transit Administration that would kick the construction into overdrive on the Purple Line extension and speed up work on the Crenshaw Line's connection to LAX so that both are done in time for the 2024 Games that LA might be hosting.

 

CONTINUED

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/09/la_metro_wants_to_speed_up_two_rail_lines_so_theyre_ready_by_the_2024_olympics_1.php

Los Angeles's Expo Line Did Not Magically Fix Freeway Traffic

Tuesday, November 17, 2015, by Bianca Barragan

 

The Expo Line between Downtown Los Angeles and Culver City (and soon Santa Monica) is surpassing ridership projection numbers, but it hasn't taken a bite out of traffic on the nearby 10 Freeway, a new study says. The findings shouldn't be all that surprising—how can one transit project be expected to solve the mess that is the 10 at rush hour?—but the LA Times says that the study's results should cause officials to "rethink the way they market such transit investments to the public," since touting them as traffic solutions sort of sets projects up to look like they're failing.

 

The study was conducted by USC's Metrans Transportation Center at the behest of Metro. Researchers installed sensors on the 10 and on nearby arteries during two three-month periods—one before the Expo Line opened in 2012 and one after. What they saw was a six percent rise in bus and train boardings, but no "consistent or significant" impact on the average speed of cars on the freeway during rush hour.

 

On nearby high-traffic streets like Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., or Venice boulevards, speeds "scarcely changed or showed mixed results" after Expo opened. The researchers who conducted the study warn though that it's pretty early in the game to make any "firm conclusions" about the effects of the line. Metro defended Expo and pointed to a 2013 study that showed that people who live close to the line have reduced their car-dependence and are walking more.

 

One expert, a professor emeritus of urban planning at UCLA and a former director of the UC Transportation Center, told the Times that just because the Expo hasn't magically cleared freeways doesn't mean it's "a poor investment. It gives people more choice, attracts new development patterns and has environmental benefits. The effects are to be seen cumulatively over many years."

 

MORE:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/11/expo_line_reduce_traffic.php

It's not finished yet, they really shouldn't be judging until it actually goes to Santa Monica

Yeah, that's a bit comical.  That line carries people between specific origins and destinations along a single corridor, with a handful of people transferring to other lines in DT LA.  An urban freeway that is part of a network as extensive as LA's has all sorts of traffic origins and destinations. 

 

When LA builds out its transit network to include the Santa Monica extension, the Crenshaw Line, and the Wilshire Blvd. subway extension, the existing section of the Expo line will be part of a much more extensive and varied network.  There will be some percentage of trips originating in the existing area destined for areas that can not be currently reached.  And vice-verse...with people using the new lines to reach Culver City, USC, and other places located along the Expo Line. 

It still won't relieve existing highway congestion. A rail line does provide new transportation capacity for more development without adding significantly to congestion on the road network. So on that score, it does prevent future increases in road congestion. But if you want to make a significant reduction in vehicular traffic, increase the cost of using a road, slow down the traffic on the road, or get rid of the road.

It still won't relieve existing highway congestion. A rail line does provide new transportation capacity for more development without adding significantly to congestion on the road network. So on that score, it does prevent future increases in road congestion. But if you want to make a significant reduction in vehicular traffic, increase the cost of using a road, slow down the traffic on the road, or get rid of the road.

 

oh man, you know that type of nuance is beyond the capacity of transit haters! come on now! ;-)

http://la.curbed.com/2016/2/22/11095232/los-angeles-all-metro-projects-rail-map-2040

The Most Optimistic Possible LA Metro Rail Map of 2040

Perhaps the most interesting is the line to Santa Ana on the abandoned Pacific Electric ROW.  This ROW is 100 feet wide and almost perfectly preserved for 20 miles.  There's nothing else like it in the United States.  The big problem is that there are at least 3-4 grade crossings per mile as it cuts diagonally in a perfect straight line across the basin, so the whole thing would likely have to be elevated, not just periodic grade crossings like most abandoned ROW's.  Alternately, the whole thing could be placed in a channel like the Alameda freight trench.  But there is the obvious potential for express tracks since the ROW is so wide. 

It's not finished yet, they really shouldn't be judging until it actually goes to Santa Monica

 

Yeah, it's way too early to judge, and I'd argue it's already limiting traffic growth. People need to remember that LA is a growing city, so just having traffic levels stagnate is a win.

LA Metro to unveil $120B expansion plans - https://t.co/gguYDxFaIq

In regards to judging the transit projects, I was reading a lot about Portland when Cincinnati was in the throws of our fight for the streetcar.  People in Cincinnati would point to certain articles written by the Cato or something similar, or show comments from residents of the area, about how the city still has tons of traffic and the mass transit has done nothing for the city, etc.  But at the same time the city itself was growing by leaps and bounds since the transit projects were built and up and running, effectively making the city much denser and able to bring in that many more residents.  That means lots more sales tax and property tax within the city limits that would not have been possible otherwise.  It sounds like the same thing out of LA

Well Los Angels is a special case in so many ways.  The big, big issue everyone needs to recognize when thinking about LA transit is that the red line subway comprises about half of the rail ridership despite having only a fraction of the route miles of what has now grown to be a very large system.  That's because the red line subway has no direct competitor by cars or cabs -- the tunnel under the mountains can't be beat and the rest of the subway travels beneath the most congested and walkable part of the region.

 

The various light rail lines look good on paper but I'm not sure how much they have really done to improve mobility and get people out from under car ownership.  This is mostly because they travel along rail ROW's that mean there aren't very many stations in the most dense areas and light rail access isn't enough to motivate big-time developments in LA in the way it does in smaller cities. 

 

It all raises the question...instead of building a sprawling light rail network along abandoned rail corridors, would LA have been better off building more heavy rail subway just in its core areas?  Assuming that the cost of a Wilshire subway with express tracks could have been built to Santa Monica (about 12-15 miles) for the same price as the 50+ miles of light rail that have been built in the past 15 years, would LA have seen higher total ridership and a higher ROI?

 

 

While driving has picked up significantly nationally with the decrease in gas prices, the amount of driving in LA has a longer, steadier decline in driving. And it hasn't reversed course with the drop in gas prices:

http://la.curbed.com/2015/6/18/9948622/los-angeles-residents-just-keep-driving-less-and-less

 

LA is building more transit because it allows LA to keep adding jobs and population without adding to road congestion. Note I didn't say reducing congestion. Building public transit to reduce road traffic congestion is like saying a bucket of water removed from a swimming pool will create a hole in the water. You can't reduce car traffic without increasing price. Trying to regulate roadway demand only with more roadway supply produces only one result. Nor does it result in a greater quality of life beyond a point of vehicular saturation. Thus, if you want to increase the carrying capacity of your transportation system and thus expand economic growth but without all of the cars, pavement, storm-water runoff, degradation of pedestrian-friendly settings and pollution, then you need to provide another transportation mode offering meaningful capacity. I think that's what LA is doing by expanding its rail system. Yes, the land use density today in many areas where rail lines would run doesn't match the density of the rail service to be provided tomorrow. But as we've seen in LA, there's enough economic growth region-wide to push density to new rail stations. The land use density is catching up. This article discusses some of these concepts:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-ol-public-transit-freeway-traffic-20151117-story.html

 

The Red Line has significant ridership (over 150,000 per weekday), but it still pales compared to heavy rail lines in New York, Chicago, or Toronto some of which carry 200,000 to 500,000 riders per weekday. The LA Blue Line to Long Beach carries 90,000 riders per weekday, making it the second busiest light-rail line in the USA behind only Boston's Green Line which actually branches out into fives lines in the western part of the city. So it has a big asterisk in saying it's a single LRT line. No other single light-rail line in the USA comes close to LA's Blue Line.

 

 

Well Los Angels is a special case in so many ways.  The big, big issue everyone needs to recognize when thinking about LA transit is that the red line subway comprises about half of the rail ridership despite having only a fraction of the route miles of what has now grown to be a very large system.  That's because the red line subway has no direct competitor by cars or cabs -- the tunnel under the mountains can't be beat and the rest of the subway travels beneath the most congested and walkable part of the region.

 

The various light rail lines look good on paper but I'm not sure how much they have really done to improve mobility and get people out from under car ownership.  This is mostly because they travel along rail ROW's that mean there aren't very many stations in the most dense areas and light rail access isn't enough to motivate big-time developments in LA in the way it does in smaller cities. 

 

It all raises the question...instead of building a sprawling light rail network along abandoned rail corridors, would LA have been better off building more heavy rail subway just in its core areas?  Assuming that the cost of a Wilshire subway with express tracks could have been built to Santa Monica (about 12-15 miles) for the same price as the 50+ miles of light rail that have been built in the past 15 years, would LA have seen higher total ridership and a higher ROI?

 

It's actually not much different from the situation in the Bay. The vast majority of ridership on BART is just on a single 10-mile stretch between the Downtown San Francisco and Oakland stations. This is due to Oakland basically turning into a giant urban suburb of San Francisco. Congestion on that 10-mile stretch of BART is though the roof while trains are empty further away. So of BART's 100 miles of track, only 10 miles of it is used up to its potential. Most of the densest, most vibrant neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland do not have rail service. San Francisco's legendary high-income neighborhoods and big tourist hubs like North Beach, Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Marina, Russian Hill, NOPA, etc. have little to no rail service. Oakland's legendary 1-percenter urban neighborhoods like Piedmont, Grand Lake, and Adams Point have no rail service. Nearly all of the Bay's best mixed-use urban neighborhoods do not have BART service.

 

On Muni, ridership is highest on just a few hellish bus lines and the light rail lines which can't remotely handle the capacity since they should have been heavy rail BART subways (but Muni's light rail numbers are completely dwarfed by BART's numbers between Civic Center and Rockridge).

 

This lack of urban transit is due to wealthy NIMBY's who fought lines like the Geary subway in San Francisco. It's very similar to NIBMY's in LA who fought the Wilshire subway (and failed). NIMBY's got crushed in LA, so in the long run, Los Angeles could end up better off than San Francisco and Oakland. It's tough for some people to see that now, but LA is where the actual progressives are at in California. It's going to make a big difference ten years from now. After tech bubble 2.0 blows, young people will be moving to LA, not SF/OAK.

 

California has a long history of NIMBY's killing transit projects. It doesn't make sense since mass transit increases their property values even more than their current ridiculous valuations, but it's a generational thing. Gen Y and Gen Z overwhelmingly want more mass transit. The big ballot issues stopping transit expansions and stopping TOD housing construction are coming from Gen Xer's and Boomers.

 

There is the least resistance in slums. Believe it or not, Hollywood Boulevard used to be really ghetto and the middle class fled. It was a violent dead zone. Now it's one of LA's hottest neighborhoods! It's all due to the Red Line. That subway deserves all the credit in the world for reviving Hollywood. The same thing happened on Market Street in San Francisco. Homeless people in the Tenderloin weren't exactly protesting the BART subway...I won't even get started on how bad things were (and still are) on Broadway in Downtown Oakland. California's transit actually served ghettos before anywhere else. In the ghettos, there were not enough NIMBY's to stop subway boring or elevated track construction. By contrast, the wealthiest neighborhoods fought hard against mass transit.

 

This generally applies to both LA and the Bay. It's going to change though since the under 40 crowd is growing more pro-transit by the month. We are undergoing massive generational upheaval in California that will shape the future of America. It's not just happening in San Francisco-Oakland. It's happening in Los Angeles too.

 

*And as bad as traffic can get in LA, nothing down there compares to the Bay Bridge approaches at peak traffic. It can take 2-3 hours to get out of Downtown San Francisco some days (hence why so many people take the BART tube instead). LA doesn't have a traffic choke point like that between its two biggest urban nodes. It'd be like putting an ocean between Downtown LA and Santa Monica/West LA, and funneling everyone onto a single bridge!

 

**And yes, LA should be focusing on heavy rail subways! So should San Francisco. The demand is already more than high enough for heavy rail to be viable in coastal California's dense urban neighborhoods. That crush load ten-mile stretch of BART in San Francisco-Oakland and the Red Line subway in LA prove this. The population densities speak for themselves. California has made the mistake of providing too much service to suburban areas, which promotes sprawl at the expense of existing dense urban neighborhoods much better served by mass transit.

 

A 50-mile system of heavy rail subways at the urban core is far more effective than a 200-mile network of rail servicing far flung suburban areas. Case in point, Toronto and Montreal. Toronto and Montreal obliterate the transit ridership of any American cities besides NYC. That's how you build transit systems. In terms of track mileage, they're "small" systems, but their transit ridership is through the roof because they serve the densest urban areas. Suburban areas don't get anywhere near the same level of service in Canada that they do in LA, the Bay, Seattle, and Portland. We screwed up big time on the West Coast. It's the result of a combination of NIMBY's and low voter turnout among young people. There is an opening right now for a young person to get on a transit board and really shake things up. I've thought about it myself...

Canadian laws also feature stricter regional and neighborhood-level land-use controls compared to the USA. Montreal and especially Toronto were able to require and incentivize the construction of high-density developments to promote greater utilization of their rail transit lines.

 

While an American city like LA can't enforce the types of land controls that Canada has, LA is trying to shape the physical form of the basin with rail transit combined with planning and market forces such as continued population growth and housing rents.

Well unfortunately LA's system is a bit of a mess considering its mix of old-technology rolling stock.  The circa-1990 heavy rail trains are of course high platform and totally incompatible with the light rail lines, which are second-generation light rail.  Much better than Buffalo's, but not as nice as Seattle's true low-platform trains.  So If the red line subway were Seattle-type light rail, branches of surface-running lines could funnel into the existing Hollywood or future Wilshire Blvd. tunnel. 

 

For example, the Orange Line BRT is 18 miles long and feeds into the red line subway's northernmost station.  If the red line had been light rail, the line could have been extended relatively inexpensively onto the BRT ROW.  Instead, there will always be a mode change there, since the heavy rail can't travel at-grade and building 18 miles in a trench or cut-and-cover tunnel along that already operational busway makes no sense.

 

The most exciting project is the possible tunnel connecting the San Fernando Valley and the future Wilshire Blvd subway at UCLA.  There would be a 6-mile tunnel under the mountains that would completely bypass the 405 congestion through the pass. 

Well, the Red Line has much higher per mile ridership than any other rail line on the West Coast outside of that short stretch of BART between the urban cores of San Francisco and Oakland. LA was smart to build the Red Line as fully subway, big city heavy rail with that much-needed capacity. Neighborhoods on the Red Line and future Purple line are 20,000 to 50,000 people per square mile. The Red Line would be over capacity as light rail, creating a San Francisco Muni situation. Though it doesn't look as visually dense, the Red Line is not that far off of San Francisco's density on BART since BART avoids the densest neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland (Which get to 100,000 people per square mile).

 

In terms of light rail stock, say what you will about its age, but LA's light rail vehicles obliterate SF Muni's light rail stock by magnitudes of order. At least the light rail in LA is reliable, can move at a reasonable speed that's faster than biking, has some capacity, and doesn't constantly break down when at crush load. But Muni is still mostly a trolleybus system that moves slow enough for New Yorkers and SF alpha females to outwalk it. LA's light rail system is better than most of Portland's system too. LA now has the best light rail system in America. But the question we need to ask is why did we build so much light rail at the expense of heavy rail subways and commuter rail? Why was this such a pronounced issue in California and other major West Coast cities? Why did we spend so much money building metro rail lines to suburban areas where population density isn't high enough to support it? Coastal California is still far too supportive of suburban development even if those suburbs are technically denser and more functionally urban than suburbs in places like Ohio. All it would have taken was one trip to Toronto to see how to build out a multimodal subway, streetcar, and commuter rail system. I'm now thinking transit planners and politicians on the West Coast didn't travel anywhere. This has resulted in a lot of wasted money which gives ammunition to the transit haters around America who rip apart LA's light rail lines and SF Muni Metro. They're starting to tear apart Portland too as a throwback hipster light rail system with a bunch of empty trains. And in the case of Portland, they're right. Much of Portland's system is empty for most of the day since so damn much of it is in low density suburban areas. But luckily in Portland's case, the urban core is served well too.

 

*Heavy rail to light rail transfers aren't a big deal as long as stations make it easy. The transfer market is where Toronto really shines as people can easily go from heavy rail subway to streetcar or commuter rail. San Francisco's BART to Muni light rail transfer is also painless. The pain comes later once Muni emerges from its subway portions...

 

The problem is most cities don't integrate their different transit modes very well. Toronto is one of the few places that did it right with seamless transfers between heavy rail subway, light rail streetcars, and commuter rail. New York City also did a fantastic job integrating heavy rail subway and commuter rail.

 

LA made the same transit mistakes that San Francisco made. The Purple line should have been completed right after the Red Line. It would have changed the whole game, and Willshire would be twice as developed today had the Purple line been fully built-out in the 90's. Instead of transit haters attacking some of LA's low density light rail lines, they'd be lauding the Purple Line as this efficient, cost-effective way of moving people around that's cheaper per person than highways. They'd promote it as the gold standard of TOD since all of Wilshire would be lined in skyscrapers. Landlords and developers would be making all sorts of money. Hell, it could have ended up as the densest urban corridor in the United States outside of New York City and San Francisco.

 

At least LA is fixing some of its mistakes today. I bet the Purple line ridership ends up being double the Red Line ridership...

Originally the Wilshire subway was to have been built before any of the light rail lines with the exception of the Blue Line to Long Beach and the Green Line in the middle of the Century Freeway. If Henry Waxman hadn't intervened in the early 90s, the Wilshire subway would be here already, possibly all the way to UCLA.  It would probably be getting 100,000 riders in 10 route miles...so the LA heavy rail subway would be getting about 250,000 riders per day.  That's pretty significant. 

 

With the Wilshire extension to UCLA now funded and preliminary construction underway, attention has already shifted away from LA proper to the peripheral outer "boroughs" like San Fernando Valley, Santa Ana, etc.  But another heavy rail subway line under Santa Monica Blvd. from DTLA to Santa Monica would be a huge deal.  There would be few spots between DTLA and the Pacific Coast more than 1 mile from a subway station.  That would encourage further densification of an area that is already pretty dense, but still inexplicably has tons of single-family houses. 

 

 

Yeah, a Santa Monica Boulevard subway would be pretty amazing! The entire West LA to Downtown area would be served by heavy rail and it'd open up all sorts of development possibilities.

 

Santa Ana should be better connected to LA since it has high population density, but Orange County should not get priority over denser parts of LA. Though of course Santa Ana has the most potential for transit since it's older and denser than the rest of Orange County.

I don't know why we've never seen a Santa Monica Blvd. subway proposed.  I think they're just under too much pressure there to get lines on all parts of the LA area map, even when the ROI is lower. 

 

The thing that's really confusing about LA's layout is the way Santa Monica and Wishire cross each other.  But if you look at it from a transit perspective, there would actually be the opportunity to build the express tracks under Santa Monica that didn't get built under Wilshire.  What I mean is they could do four tracks under Santa Monica and have trains from the future Wilshire extension to UCLA divert to express tracks under Santa Monica and then either rejoin the Wilshire line near downtown or get to downtown with the local tracks from Santa Monica. 

 

The thing that's really confusing about LA's layout is the way Santa Monica and Wishire cross each other. 

 

 

This weirdness may be a leftover from when Santa Monica's really wide median hosted redcar trains - wishire was always streetcar free so maybe that's part of the reason for this...

This is interesting, I had very low expectations for this line:

 

http://la.curbed.com/2016/4/11/11411796/gold-line-foothill-extension-ridership

 

I guess LAs traffic is bad enough that even a less than ideal transit line is still getting ridership as people are sick of being stuck in traffic.

Slick ad produced by LA Metro showing off where the Expo Line extension will go:

 

Its probably the closest I've seen to footage of the whole line.

Im from California so I can say having lived in Cleveland for 8 years, I have never been jealous of LA.  But this makes me jealous.  Haha

I'm from Cleveland, but have friends living around LA and visit every 5 or so years.  I'm thrilled with every new rail transit line LA puts into service.  This is a city that is remaking itself every day.  It was the ultimate car-dependent, no transit sprawl city until, a couple decades ago, they decided to develop rapid transit lines and engage in smart growth around rail nodes.  Now it has one of the largest combined rail transit networks in the nation. 

 

Actually, I am jealous of LA in that, at least there, they have transit and city leadership geared toward building and developing a mass transit system geared toward the 21st Century as opposed to here in Cleveland, where officials are building highways and deconstructing transit while gearing it for the 1950s.

^Where in Cleveland is transit being deconstructed?

 

LA also has horrendous traffic, which probably is a big incentive for spending on transit. We all know Cleveland's rail lines need to be lengthened to the new job/ population centers of the area to be more useful.

^Where in Cleveland is transit being deconstructed?

 

I think he's referring to the shrinking GCRTA bus system, which lost the most service of any big city from 2005-2010.

 

LA also has horrendous traffic, which probably is a big incentive for spending on transit. We all know Cleveland's rail lines need to be lengthened to the new job/ population centers of the area to be more useful.

 

Or, more cost-effectively, jobs and housing need to be moved to near rail stations.

 

LA could have done what highway lobbyists once advocated -- double-decking the region's freeways -- until the Loma Prieta earthquake pancaked the double-deck I-80 in 1989. It was no longer seriously considered after that, and rail became a more serious alternative. Fear is often a more powerful motivator than hopeful visions of the future, sadly.

Y8o_A5Ng7to

^I've taken that line from downtown LA to Culver City and am excited to take it the rest of the way to Santa Monica.

 

 

Or, more cost-effectively, jobs and housing need to be moved to near rail stations.

 

LA could have done what highway lobbyists once advocated -- double-decking the region's freeways -- until the Loma Prieta earthquake pancaked the double-deck I-80 in 1989. It was no longer seriously considered after that, and rail became a more serious alternative. Fear is often a more powerful motivator than hopeful visions of the future, sadly.

 

Makes sense in response to the earthquake... LA is building/has built scores of TOD.

^I've taken that line from downtown LA to Culver City and am excited to take it the rest of the way to Santa Monica.

 

It looks nice for what it is but many of the station locations are not ideal.  They are not in the center of commercial areas.  A lot of them are in random, mostly residential areas.  And I find it a bit odd that the terminal station in Santa Monica is in a somewhat random spot and they didn't decide to turn the line northward and get one more station in another part of the densest area of Santa Monica. 

Why the Expo Line to Santa Monica marks a rare kind of progress in American cities

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-expo-line-hawthorne-20160518-snap-htmlstory.html

Drunk driver crashes onto Expo Line extension at 5:30am PDT, service delayed until 7:30:

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Expo-Line-Metro-Train-Commute-Santa-Monica-380499601.html