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LA's ever expanding commuter rail system is growing out of necessity, while Seattle's system, still in it's infancy stage, is growing out of convenience.
I use the Red line subway to commute to Downtown LA and it's always crowded. If ever in LA you should visit the Metro Center Station in downtown LA at 8AM or 5PM any weekday. At Metro Center the Red and Purple subway lines converge with the Expo and Blue line light rail trains. With the mass of commuters coming in and out of that station, it has a very New York City hustle and bustle feel to it.
I made this point earlier and it didn't seem to have any effect on Seattle's lopsided dominance of this poll.
Not uncommon at all for the Red and Expo lines to be so crowded that you can't board a car. I"ve rode the Link all over Seattle and never saw anything close. I don't think I ever even had to sit next to anyone on the Link.
In terms of rail, blowing past SF should be easy. I don’t know what San Franciscans are smoking when they say they have better public transit than LA. I think they just assume LA doesn’t have any, so by default San Francisco’s must be better. But at least LA is rapidly expanding and gets you to a wealth of cultural/sightseeing sites that most cities could only dream of having.
The rail system in SF is neither extensive enough to get you to where you need to go, while at the same time, it’s impossibly inconvenient to have a car. So you get to the vicinity of any area and then you need to uber the rest of the way. There’s bus, but then it gets confusing and slow.
I think a claim that living without a car is easier in the LA/Greater LA than the Bay Area, even if we're going by a more tightly delineated urban core boundary, is a bit early right now.
I made this point earlier and it didn't seem to have any effect on Seattle's lopsided dominance of this poll.
Not uncommon at all for the Red and Expo lines to be so crowded that you can't board a car. I"ve rode the Link all over Seattle and never saw anything close. I don't think I ever even had to sit next to anyone on the Link.
Link is packed consistently at rush hour, to the point of people not being able to get on sometimes. Limits to capacity are a significant problem, as the needed additional cars aren't going to be online for several months. You must have ridden at off-hours.
In fact that's a central theme on our buses too...crush loads during rush hours, and stops bypassed due to lack of capacity.
I made this point earlier and it didn't seem to have any effect on Seattle's lopsided dominance of this poll.
Not uncommon at all for the Red and Expo lines to be so crowded that you can't board a car. I"ve rode the Link all over Seattle and never saw anything close. I don't think I ever even had to sit next to anyone on the Link.
You must have ridden during very off hours since Link is frequently at crush load as well, as are the RapidRide buses.
LA's ever expanding commuter rail system is growing out of necessity, while Seattle's system, still in it's infancy stage, is growing out of convenience.
That's a strange misread of transportation planning in the Seattle area. While Seattle is much smaller than LA it has huge traffic and transportation issues due to its geography. High capacity transit is actually necessary for downtown's continued growth and the same goes for the region at large. Even the current concentration downtown (300k) would not be possible if a much larger percentage of workers actually drove a single occupancy car.
That's true. Every main aspect of Seattle's transportation system is over capacity...roads, rail, buses. Rail and buses are where we're adding capacity.
The result is that central Seattle is handling its massive increases in employment via transit and people living close to work.
That's augmented by the regional planning concept (and developer/tenant desire) of putting residential and office growth in dozens of denser, transit-served nodes throughout the region. This is enhanced by State law regarding all major employers working to reduce their SOV impacts.
Other than the federal government, nobody is building offices with surface parking and few are building it with structured above-grade parking, or suburban-volumes of parking at all even if in the suburbs.
In terms of cleanliness, efficiency, coverage and dependability, I would honestly rank Seattle highest of any city in which I have lived(Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, NYC, Washington DC).
Yeah, only because its light rail is brand new. Wait 50 years and it'll look as ghetto as the NYC subway.
For all Seattle and Portland's talk of being this tree-hugging, transit-oriented, well-planned, high density wonderland, Vancouver, BC would just laugh at Seattle and Portland. 500,000 riders per weekday on the Vancouver Skytrain, in a metro area with a population no more than Portland's. Portland's light rail has only a quarter of the ridership.
Oh, let's not forget that the Skytrain is fully driverless and has trains every 2-5 minutes during rush hours.
I've never heard anyone describe us as a "wonderland." I won't speak for Portland, but Seattle is struggling to catch up on transit, and only starting to grow in a dense pattern.
Only against our US peers do we score well.
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