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Check that Seattle station out in 2030...the topic of this thread. It won't be cute, but it'll be heavily populated.
I like San Diego, but if LA and Portland have bad transit commute stats SD is utterly horrific based on 2019, like the worst Sunbelt sprawlers. New rail will help but only incrementally.
Check that Seattle station out in 2030...the topic of this thread. It won't be cute, but it'll be heavily populated.
I like San Diego, but if LA and Portland have bad transit commute stats SD is utterly horrific based on 2019, like the worst Sunbelt sprawlers. New rail will help but only incrementally.
Bringing up byzantine transit share stats (what an unexpected surprise!) can't whitewash Seattle's downtown adjacent suburban transit stops. The fact is that Seattle had to be dragged kicking and screaming just to get into the light rail game in the 2000's. The funniest thing about all this is that they now shout from the rooftops of what an urban/transit mecca they are, something San Diego has never done despite being a national pioneer in next generation light rail.
In 2030, Seattle's Link will still be five miles shorter than the San Diego Trolley, despite it's task of serving a 20% larger metro area.
Anyhow, back on the fact of how ridiculous it is that Seattle would be anywhere close to Los Angeles:
Did I say it was in Los Angeles? Is "metro areas" part of the thread title? The third link is Long Beach, a "Metro Los Angeles Blue Line Station", just like the SaMo stop has "Los Angeles Metro" in the name.
CoStar shows that linked Wilshire intersection having affordable housing at a decent 0.45 parking ratio, but market rate buildings at 1.29 and (UC) at 1.91! Dense but massively car oriented. (No link)
Development isn't close. The Seattle market is building 9.7 msf of offices per CoStar, vs. 6.0 msf for their LA County, OC, and IE market breakouts combined. The Seattle area projects are almost universally transit-dependent with less parking than their LA equivalents. We're building vastly more office TOD. (No link)
Seattle's apartment construction market totals 22,733 units UC, the vast majority in TOD or downtown locations. The three LA markets total 37,000 combined, with 27,500 in LA County. Even just LA County has well under half of the Seattle metro's per capita volume. Break out King County (analogous to LA County) and the difference would be more stark...I took a quick crack at a hand-drawn map and got 21,668 apartments UC in a county less than 1/4 LA County's population.
Since most people don't have CoStar and it omits condos, permits are easier. The LA metro awarded permits for 18,085 new housing units in buildings of 5+ units in 2021. Seattle did 20,500. Go here and click on Dec 2021 for a full year. 2022 is playing to form, with 10,021 for Seattle and 9,091 for LA. https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/msamonthly.html
Now let’s assume that next year the ridership per miles will be something in between 2019 and 2021 here is how things will look (sorry ahead of time if San Diego or Portland are also opening new lines next year)
And then in 2024 we have the Federal Way and Lynwood extensions.
Seattle: 177,410 / 56.5 / 3,140
Which would give it the highest ridership of any light rail system in the US
Whether residents of Mercer Island and Redmond take an interest in light rail remains to be seen.
Keep in mind, while Seattle opens light rail that travels to 2000-4000 ppsm suburbs, Los Angeles will be opening a rapid transit subway that travels under 20,000-40,000 ppsm neighborhoods.
They already take buses. Here are examples from the Census Dept. five-year commute stats, based entirely on buses for the Seattle area examples. These are places that will get rail by 2024:
Pasadena: 5.9%
Long Beach: 5.3%
Compton: 4.8%
Santa Monica: 3.6%
Anaheim: 2.8%
I tried to pick high-use areas for LA...NOT cherrypicking.
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