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The Expo line is a glorified streetcar in DTLA and has pretty poor station location along much of its route. The Subway to the Sea would have been far, far better in terms of connecting Santa Monica and DTLA.
A glorified streetcar that goes underground and has stations 100 feet above ground?
It takes about 45 minutes to get from Union Station to the last stop in SaMo on the Expo. Estimates I've seen show about a 27 minute ride from Union Station to UCLA on the Purple. So had that line gone all the way to SaMo, it might have been about 10 minutes faster. Not really a big deal, especially when you consider the amazing views you can take in on the Expo, with full phone service the whole trip. When the regional connector opens, taking a one seat ride from Azuza to SaMo will likely be a bigger hit than transferring to the purple downtown would have been.
A glorified streetcar that goes underground and has stations 100 feet above ground?
It takes about 45 minutes to get from Union Station to the last stop in SaMo on the Expo. Estimates I've seen show about a 27 minute ride from Union Station to UCLA on the Purple. So had that line gone all the way to SaMo, it might have been about 10 minutes faster. Not really a big deal, especially when you consider the amazing views you can take in on the Expo, with full phone service the whole trip. When the regional connector opens, taking a one seat ride from Azuza to SaMo will likely be a bigger hit than transferring to the purple downtown would have been.
The current plan wouldn’t provide service between Azusa and Santa Monica. They would link up with the current blue line and become the A line. East LA would get service to Santa Monica or wherever they end up extending that to.
Most of the red line has cell service now. I’m sure the extension to UCLA will as well.
I wouldn’t call it a streetcar as it doesn’t have that many stops. But Expo is LA’s slowest light rail line. It only averages 17 mph and that’s primarily because of street running heading into downtown and also into Santa Monica.
Extending the purple line to Santa Monica would have been better but it wasn’t a choice between one or the other. It was to have expo or nothing at all. And when expo was built it seems that there wasn’t funding to build it right, which would have included putting it underground heading into downtown. That still may happen though and metro and LA are actively pursuing it. They are looking at a way to fund it, perhaps using funds generated in the South Park BID.
Regarding the purple line even as is that is expected to get in excess of 10,000 riders per mile. The Crenshaw line extension through West Hollywood is projected to get 12,000 per mile and that’s light rail. Nearly triple what Expo currently has.
I wonder if Seattle lines would approach these numbers? You had called 3rd ave the busiest Transit corridor, but I don’t think that it really is a transit corridor. It’s a long bus terminal. People mostly don’t go there to catch a bus don 3rd Street. They go there to catch a bus to somewhere else. So if you ran a bus down 3rd ave it wouldn’t get 52,000 riders whereas a bus down Wilshire would get that and then some.
Well, for starters right now Seattle’s light rail has higher ridership per mile than LA’s (3500 vs 2500).
It is worth noting that Seattle nearly doubled its rail ridership a couple of years ago by opening 2 new subway station. In early 2021 two more are opening, along with an elevated station at Northgate. I think that corridor between downtown and Northgate, with trains running every 90 seconds, is very much capable of getting to 10K. Then a couple of years later East Link, which has already completed tunneling, connecting DT Seattle, DT Bellevue, Microsoft and DT Redmond will also be a game changer and could appreoch those numbers.
Arguably the best line in the system will be the subway connecting DT Seattle to Queen Anne and Ballard, and then West Seattle on the other end. That line is projected to get 140K riders per day on its own. Unfortunately it opens in two stages in 2030 and 2035.
The current plan wouldn’t provide service between Azusa and Santa Monica. They would link up with the current blue line and become the A line. East LA would get service to Santa Monica or wherever they end up extending that to.
Most of the red line has cell service now. I’m sure the extension to UCLA will as well.
Ok correction, east LA to SaMo. The ratio in this thread is hilarious. People nitpicking the L.A. system to death and outright making things up to knock them down a notch, while acting like Seattle's lone rail line is some kind of international transit juggernaut.
The truth is that I could make a similar case that even San Diego is "more of a transit city", as we had the first modern light rail in America almost 40 years ago while Seattle entered the 21st century having the same "should we build a streetcar" discussion that the Nashville's and Columbus's of the world are having now.
The Expo line is a glorified streetcar in DTLA and has pretty poor station location along much of its route. The Subway to the Sea would have been far, far better in terms of connecting Santa Monica and DTLA.
You're right that the downtown portion of the Expo line (and Blue Line) has some pretty bad issues with bunching up, slowing down, and creating cascading delays in the schedule. Essentially, there are a bunch of grade crossings downtown (South Park) on Flower Street from where the Expo and Blue line join to just past Pico station is particularly bad and that segment specific junction where the two lines join is especially bad. It's been bad enough that Metro has been studying how to improve it so perhaps that part will be addressed.
Now even if they don't fix that, the general statement will be rendered untrue in the near-ish future when the subway connecting the Blue and Expo lines to the Gold Line is finished as that means there's a significant portion of the DTLA stretch that is a grade-separated subway. Unfortunately, if they don't address the issue the Blue and Expo lines are having now, then this means the delays will cascade to the current Gold Line legs when they become linked. Hopefully they make figuring this out a priority.
As for the pretty poor station location--well, yes and no. It's a "yes" because there wasn't all that much dense, even medium density, development in terms of retail, jobs, or residences in some of the places where the Expo line stations are. However, it's also a "no" in that also meant that there were a lot of fairly underdeveloped lots along the line and with the TOD zoning changes that LA has passed in recent years, this means that those stations were pretty well placed for future development along quite a few stations and could be pretty densely developed without a huge amount of blowback as there weren't a huge number of retail, commercial, and residential stakeholders along its route. It's also a "no" in that the Expo line does have some pretty key stations that were already good stops from the beginning like the residentially dense stops in Palms, the burgeoning downtown stations, the station next to a major collection of museums and a major university in University Park, and the stations in the secondary downtowns of Culver City and Santa Monica.
They really do need to fix that DTLA (South Park) stretch though. It seems crazy to put so much money into the very necessary regional connector, but not spring for a solution to something that will very much affect it.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-16-2018 at 02:20 PM..
Ok correction, east LA to SaMo. The ratio in this thread is hilarious. People nitpicking the L.A. system to death and outright making things up to knock them down a notch, while acting like Seattle's lone rail line is some kind of international transit juggernaut.
The truth is that I could make a similar case that even San Diego is "more of a transit city", as we had the first modern light rail in America almost 40 years ago while Seattle entered the 21st century having the same "should we build a streetcar" discussion that the Nashville's and Columbus's of the world are having now.
That of course, would be for a different thread.
Seattle has nearly double San Diego’s rail ridership per mile - Seattle gets 80K with about 20 miles while San Diego gets 110K with over 50 miles. Seattle’s aggressive rail expansion plans mean that even within a few years Seattle’s rail system will dramatically dwarf San Diego’s. Also unlike San Diego Seattle has a subway through dense areas with another one on the way. In terms of transit commute share Seattle’s is exponentially higher than San Diego’s and bus ridership is far higher.
Basically, it’s not even close. Seattle already handily beats San Diego as a public transit city and will demolish it within a few years.
Ok correction, east LA to SaMo. The ratio in this thread is hilarious. People nitpicking the L.A. system to death and outright making things up to knock them down a notch, while acting like Seattle's lone rail line is some kind of international transit juggernaut.
The truth is that I could make a similar case that even San Diego is "more of a transit city", as we had the first modern light rail in America almost 40 years ago while Seattle entered the 21st century having the same "should we build a streetcar" discussion that the Nashville's and Columbus's of the world are having now.
That of course, would be for a different thread.
As it is, the extensiveness of the San Diego Trolley does make a difference, but I think that's a short-sighted way of looking at the topic though. Being the first doesn't mean much if city planning doesn't make better use of that transit system. Seattle may have started later than San Diego, but it also zoned and built itself to support that light rail line fairly well which is another important factor and is currently supporting a pretty long slate of enhancements and enhancements compared to what San Diego Trolley has under construction and funded.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-16-2018 at 02:38 PM..
I’m excited for Seattle’s plans and continued growth. I’m making my first trip to Seattle this winter and I’m looking forward to riding Link. I won’t be there long enough to make any comparisons with LA unless it’s just obviously better.
Seattle has one light rail line with a ridership of 3,483 average daily boardings per mile. Notice, that's one line.
LA's Expo Line has an average daily boarding of 61,957 with a length of 15.2 miles, equating to 4,076 average daily boardings per mile. So not only does LA have MORE light rails, plus one of the busiest subway lines, plus is expanding its second subway line, but it also has a light rail line that is more used per mile than Seattle's single light rail line. It wins on basically every front.
No, most of the trunk routes have HOV lanes, as well as many routes within Downtown. Many are new since you left.
Our transit commute share doesn't dominate LA's for nothing.
Seward Park, Mt Baker, Leschi, Madrona, Montlake, Laurelhurst, Madison Valley, the Central District, Madison Park are some of the neighborhoods with bus stops at every other corner. And what if you wanted to go across town to Ballard or Greenlake? What if you wanted to hang out at Shilshoe Bay? What if you lived in the Central District and commuted to Bellevue Square on the weekends like me? I caught the bus on 23rd Ave. It traveled down Montlake Blvd. I got off at the 520 and many times my connecting bus was already turning on the ramp and I had to wait 30 minutes. And many times the weather was not in my favor. This was my deciding factor on buying a car. It's great that Seattle's public transportation is improving greatly. I'm happy. But honestly, now that I live in LA I think the public transportation here right now is on a couple of levels above Seattle's.
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