San Francisco-Oakland Metro Area has worst non-peak traffic delays in the nation? (Los Angeles: real estate, 2013)

[sav858]

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

Your premise is flawed. It doesn't prove anything about the quality of the transit.

If you had posted average travel times, or something it might be worth a look, but as it is, your post makes no sense in the context of the debate.

See the thing is you always try to dismiss statistics when they aren't in your favor with the most asinine reasons. Cities that are known to have great public transit typically have high percentage of people using mass transit like NYC, DC, Boston, Chicago, and SAN FRANCISCO. LA doesn't fall nor does it belong anywhere in the same tier as LA. If it had a quality public transit system like the Bay Area then far more than a mere 6% of workers would use it.

[DocGoldstein]

Originally Posted by sav858

When you have to play catch up of course you're going to be investing a lot.

Anyone whose actually experienced public transit in places like the Bay Area, LA, NYC, Chicago, Dc, etc.. knows what a joke LA is compared to them and is a tier or two below.

Not according to USNEWS:

3: LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana

11. San Francisco, Oakland

Womp womp....

[sav858]

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

Not according to USNEWS:

3: LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana

11. San Francisco, Oakland

Womp womp....

Denver is investing billions in transit as is LA. LA is playing catch up and has been for decades, that is a big reason why it's high on this list. Get it? But actual hard numbers don't lie, only 6% of workers in LA use public transit in LA compared to over 14% for the Bay Area.

[sonarrat]

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

Also Nimtz at the 101, worst bottleneck ever. Add 30-60 minutes to your commute if you ever have to go North on th 101 from the Southbay at 5-7pm.

That is a really bad bottleneck, but not in the direction you're describing. If you're on 880 southbound and merging onto 101 southbound in the evening, it's painfully slow because of the sharp ramp, short merge and the Oakland Road exit. If you're northbound on 101 through the same area at the same time, you'll fly through unless you're in the lane merging onto 880. On 880 itself, it's not a matter of bottlenecking as much as a buttload of cars all going the same way.

The worst bottleneck in the South Bay, bar none, is 680 to 101 south. Every time I come down past the Alum Rock exit, I look up and see stopped trucks all the way back to the beginning of the flyover. Not only can that ramp take up to an hour, but you're sitting on a road supported by a concrete beam a quarter-mile in the air, feeling like a stiff breeze could send you over to pancake someone's house. The 237-880 metering light crawl might be equally as miserable on a stinky day, but you can escape it by taking the express lane if you want.

And then there's the one lane you have to use to merge from 101 south to 87 south. That causes backups all the way to Palo Alto sometimes.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

Not according to USNEWS:

3: LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana

11. San Francisco, Oakland

Womp womp....

Anyone can make a study basically say anything they want by playing with the metrics and the weighting of these metrics in the scoring schemes. The key is to carefully see what metrics are being weighted and see if the weighting/scoring makes logical sense. If things seem "off" when you run the numbers (as is the case with this USNews ranking, in my opinion), there's a chance you're putting too much emphasis on a metric that isn't as important in real life as other metrics. Taken from the USNews article on their methodology (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...ansportation):

"The rankings take into account per capita spending on public transportation, number of safety incidents per million trips, and the number of trips taken per capita. All figures are for 2008, including population counts, which are from the Census' 2008 American Community Survey"

"...Cities were ranked on all metrics--cities with higher spending, fewer incidents (includes all safety incidents, injuries, and fatalities as reported in the National Transit Database), and greater ridership received better rankings in each category. Rankings were then totalled, and the cities with the lowest rankings are those in the above top 10."

"...It should also be noted that the rankings take into account cities' surrounding areas. For example, Boston data includes ridership and population in the metro area that extends into New Hampshire and Rhode Island."

To be honest, I think this study is faulty because they're putting equal emphasis on spending. It's great LA is spending a ton of money on their system (and it is definitely improving), but it's still true that getting around LA (and I mean, REALLY getting around the area) is a very difficult thing to do when all you have to rely on is the public transit system. Unfortunately for LA, a lot of the things that make taking transit in the area such a pain are really outside the control of the public transit agencies (density of the overall area, walkability of areas around transit lines), but these are still realities that you face when you take transit in LA and should be taken into account in the study.


******
If you want statistics, these ones line up much better with how useful their public transit systems are: List of United States rapid transit systems by ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

******
And, just like you can come up with a study that shows LA ahead of SF (and Chicago AND DC!?), I can show you a couple that say otherwise (I'm sure there are more, this is just from 5 minutes of internet searching):


** Huffington post article about a study done by Travel and Leisure magazine : The Best U.S. Cities For Public Transit: Portland, Chicago Outrank New York City (PHOTOS) (SF is at 4, LA isn't even in top 20, although SD is at 14)

** Walk score study on ranking transit systems. Metrics weighed: "Transit Score measures how well a location is served by public transit by assigning a “usefulness” value to nearby transit routes based on frequency, route type, and distance to the nearest stop on the route." SF comes in at 2 (NY #1), and LA is at 9.

New Ranking of Transit Systems — Walk Score Blog
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/01/...ystems-in-u-s/
Transit systems of USA's 25 biggest cities ranked by usefulness

I don't think these rankings are always spot on (if you're talking public transit systems, it's hard to not give NYC the number 1 spot always), but they make A LOT more sense than the USNews ranking you posted (where DC, SF, and Chicago weren't even in the top 10!?).

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein;

So you don't live in L.A?

I never said you had to live in a city to get a feel for its usefullness (I think you might be confusing me with someone else?), so I'm not sure why me not living there discounts any of my personal experiences. You stated your opinion of Denver's system based on limited visits, so I'm doing the same with LA. I actually think one can make a decently-informed opinion of the usefulness of the system assuming you're there for more than a day (I've had around 5 multi-day trips down there without a car, and it's always difficult) and try to explore most of the transit system.

As for this comment:

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein;

Never made a strong claim about Denver's system one way or the other, that's why I only showed what the data and studies say.

I can point to many studies that back up my experience in LA. It is an utter pain to get around there if you do not have a car and public transit is all you have to rely on, and many studies/statistics bear out this point. This point is also supported by people who do live in/have traveled to LA car-free.


Mayorhaggar, as I stated in my previous post, has lived in LA car free and can attest to how difficult it is (just read his posts):

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

Public transit in LA would be nice except that due to the size of the urban area, local bus routes with a stop on every corner basically provide the same role that BART does in the Bay Area. Also many routes in LA only run about every 20 minutes, which is pretty crappy. Some run really frequently like the Rapid buses but they're on busy corridors that literally take 2 hours to go 15 miles in the middle of the day, even on the rapid buses.

When you ride the bus or train in LA, all the passengers look about $20 away from being homeless. In the Bay Area when you ride public transit, it's usually a bunch of people from all walks of life going to work.

I think a lot of people see LAMTA's shiny new transit lines like the Gold Line and see that it has more new buses than Muni, and assume that means that LAMTA is really great. But they're clearly not riding the buses or trains, because they don't know what a massive pain in the ass it is to get around on public transit in LA. They're not talking about how scruffy and ghetto the Blue Line is, how ridiculously illogical the Green Line's route is, how it takes 2 hours to get from downtown LA to Santa Monica on an express bus in the middle of the day. If you're going 2 miles on certain routes in LA then arguably the service is better than Muni, but again most buses run only every 20 minutes (the major Muni routes are more like 3 to 8), and most importantly, most trips are going to be way longer than 2 miles because of how spread out everything is in LA.

sav858 also had an entire week's experience where he had to rely on transit and definitely wasn't that impressed with a lot of the system:

Originally Posted by sav858

I spent a whole week riding LA's trains for at least 10 hours a day at my old job when my company did a fare evasion study. The Red/Purple Line is somewhat nice but the Blue Line is a joke. You want to talk crap about the people and how dirty BART is, try spending some time on the blue line. And seeing as we did a fare evasion study it was quite the spectacle with the people you have to deal with on LA's system. We went around with the LA's sheriffs as well as the MTA's security of course. The people on MTA are much trashier overall than what you see on BART or even Muni. Every day at least several people were arrested right in front of me no matter what line it was. Fights, drugs, vandalism, etc..quite rampant on the Green and Blue lines.

Your argument doesn't seem to hold much water when you look at the reality of the transit systems.

[DocGoldstein]

Originally Posted by HockeyMac18

To be honest, I think this study is faulty because they're putting equal emphasis on spending

I didn't read the rest of your post because, honestly, it was like 2 pages and from what I could tell you were making your platform based on anecdotal opinions from guys like sav858 (not exactly unbiased sources)), but this part stuck out to me. If capital expenditures isn't in your criteria, perhaps it's YOUR own criteria that is flawed. I think the USNEWS study hit it spot on with its rankings.

3: LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana

11. San Francisco, Oakland

Biggest myth ever, finally debunked.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

I didn't read the rest of your post because, honestly, it was like 2 pages and from what I could tell you were making your platform based on anecdotal opinions from guys like sav858 (not exactly unbiased sources)), but this part stuck out to me. If capital expenditures isn't in your criteria, perhaps it's YOUR own criteria that is flawed. I think the USNEWS study hit it spot on with its rankings.

Wow...I would really hate to be your patient...

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

3: LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana

11. San Francisco, Oakland

Biggest myth ever, finally debunked.

Here are two studies (with much more logical metrics) that say otherwise:

Huffington post article about a study done by Travel and Leisure magazine : The Best U.S. Cities For Public Transit: Portland, Chicago Outrank New York City (PHOTOS)

SF #4
LA isn't even in top 20 (SD is at 14)


Walk score study on ranking transit systems. Metrics weighed: "Transit Score measures how well a location is served by public transit by assigning a “usefulness” value to nearby transit routes based on frequency, route type, and distance to the nearest stop on the route."

SF # 2
LA # 9

New Ranking of Transit Systems — Walk Score Blog
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/01/...ystems-in-u-s/
Transit systems of USA's 25 biggest cities ranked by usefulness

[18Montclair]

Yeah, that US News ranking is very strange. LOL

Originally Posted by US News

Other major cities that came close to making the cut were the Washington, D.C., metro area, at No. 11; San Francisco, Calif., at No. 13; and Chicago, Illinois, at No. 14. Though all three of these systems had relatively high ridership and public investment, they all also experienced far more safety incidents--such as collisions, derailments, and fires--per million trips than the cities in the top 10.

[DocGoldstein]

"Usefulness" isn't really a metric. That's an opinion. That's not really a study I would give much attention based simply on that.

Things like capital expenditures, safety, and ridership are real metrics that can be measured without bias, unlike "usefulness".

3: LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana

11. San Francisco, Oakland

Biggest myth ever, finally debunked.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by HockeyMac18

Walk score study on ranking transit systems. Metrics weighed: "Transit Score measures how well a location is served by public transit by assigning a “usefulness” value to nearby transit routes based on frequency, route type, and distance to the nearest stop on the route."

SF # 2
LA # 9

This is not a surprise really. As far as transit being integrated into everyday living, SF takes it by a very wide margin over LA. Everyone in SF takes transit, rich, poor, educated and uneducated alike..