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Yeah. No way will LA metro come close to WMATA’s DC metro. Maybe if their system was heavy rail like the Red & Purple Line and was mostly underground.
Comparing light rail trains that have to wait on red lights at vehicle intersections and seemingly travel much slower than heavy rail is a Choice. It’s a shame LA couldn’t do mostly heavy rail.
I personally think DC Metro is better than the L and the transfers between the lines and I think DC metro has incredible TOD. Seemingly every station (in Virginia, DC & Montgomery County MD) is like a walkable downtown with there being a quite a few “major” downtowns such as Bethesda, etc. PG County could’ve done better with TOD.
I chose Denver for this poll. LA is my 2nd choice and MARTA 3
I don't disagree with your logic, but wanted to point out that light rail doesn't necessarily mean slower. The average speeds of LA rail compare fairly well with DC. LA's C line (fully grade separated light rail) is the fastest of them all.
LA
A line (former blue) - 22.4 mph (LR)
B line (former red) - 30.3 mph (HR)
C line (former green) - 34.4 mph (LR)
D line (former purple) - 22.6 mph (HR)
E line (former Expo) - 17.1 mph (LR) (this is the really slow line for LA that everyone complains about)
L line (former gold) - 25.8 mph (LR)
DC
Yellow line - 25.9 mph
Blue line - 27.9 mph
Green line - 29.3 mph
Red line - 31.4 mph
Orange line - 32.9 mph
Yeah. No way will LA metro come close to WMATA’s DC metro. Maybe if their system was heavy rail like the Red & Purple Line and was mostly underground.
Comparing light rail trains that have to wait on red lights at vehicle intersections and seemingly travel much slower than heavy rail is a Choice. It’s a shame LA couldn’t do mostly heavy rail.
I personally think DC Metro is better than the L and the transfers between the lines and I think DC metro has incredible TOD. Seemingly every station (in Virginia, DC & Montgomery County MD) is like a walkable downtown with there being a quite a few “major” downtowns such as Bethesda, etc. PG County could’ve done better with TOD.
I chose Denver for this poll. LA is my 2nd choice and MARTA 3
LA's LRT + subway network is planned to exceed 200+ miles by the 2030s just with Measure M (not even factoring in the likelihood of future tax measures beyond Measure M that will support currently unfunded but planned rail projects).
Sure, not all of it will be subway, but it doesn't have to be; as another poster has shown, LA Metro LRT lines have comparable average speeds to Washington Metro's heavy rail lines. This is because, unlike alot of other cities' LRT lines, LA's LRT lines are almost always in their own special ROW isolated from the road, where they'll always have signal priority. In the short segments where they have to go on roads, the LRT trains will have ROW along median strips of roads with signal priority almost of the time except for 2 or 3 specific bottlenecks.
This isn't even to mention the extensive use of grade-separation that LA Metro embraces for its light rail lines; 100% of the Green Line is grade separated (and might as well be a light metro if they ran 3-car consists on frequent headways, but that's unnecessary right now), and substantial portions of the Gold and Expo Lines are grade-separated over the most busiest bottlenecks. Further LRT projects all involve substantial grade separation: the Regional Connector is obviously 100% underground, the West Santa Ana line is being built over 50% grade-separated, the way things are trending Crenshaw North extension to the Red Line will be likely be completely underground, and likely further grade separations of the Flower St. Junction of the Blue/Expo Lines, and of the Crenshaw Line over Centinela Ave.
Overall, LA doesn't do 100% heavy rail construction everywhere, because A) having done so from the outset would mean a rail system a fraction of the size of the one that currently exists, and B) LA is predominantly low-to-medium density urbanization spread out everywhere, with ample amount of disused interurban ROWs that are perfect for light rail. One point A): Purple Line extension costs about a billion dollars per mile to construct, whereas the Crenshaw Line is costing a mere quarter of that. Imagine if Metro built all the planned light rail lines as heavy rail instead. You're looking at, at best, maybe 25 miles of subway in exchange for 84 miles of light rail which currently exists. Meanwhile, on point B), precisely because LA is mostly uniform low-medium density throughout, it can get away with running at-grade sections of LRT, because it can afford to run 100% signal priority almost all of the time and make cars wait, and almost always on ROW. mostly separate from road traffic. The low-medium density also means building a subway would be overkill, when passenger volumes haven't even hit LRT lines' max capacity. They only built Red Line and ongoing Purple Line extensions as subways since those lines service the highest-density parts of LA.
If we're comparing directly to WMATA metro, current Measure R and M's plans for LA's Metro Rail network involve up to 70-80 miles of heavy rail transit existing under construction, or planned at the moment. This factors in the existing Red Line subway, the under construction Purple Line extension to Westwood/VA Hospital, the planned Sepulveda Line which Metro is trying to finish by the Olympics between Van Nuys and the Expo Line, and a future planned subway line down Vermont Avenue from the Red/Purple Lines as far south as PCH, extension of the Sepulveda Line to LAX, and extension of the Purple/Red Lines to Arts District (if we factor in strategic unfunded projects that are to be funded in the next transit tax measure, the heavy rail network portion reaches 80-90 miles). DC Metro, if I remember correctly, has about 100 miles of heavy rail, and is not expanding anywhere near the pace of LA Metro (TBF, no North American metro is).
Hence, even comparing apples-to-apples, this difference isn't that large. And if we are to be cheeky and count the Green Line as a light metro (which Wikipedia makes an argument for, saying "The fully grade-separated route (essentially a light metro) runs mostly in the median of the Century Freeway (Interstate 105) for its eastern portion, and on an elevated viaduct for its western portion.)", this would bring LA's future total heavy rail network to over 100 miles, comparable with WMATA and the Chicago Loop.
Yeah. No way will LA metro come close to WMATA’s DC metro. Maybe if their system was heavy rail like the Red & Purple Line and was mostly underground.
Comparing light rail trains that have to wait on red lights at vehicle intersections and seemingly travel much slower than heavy rail is a Choice. It’s a shame LA couldn’t do mostly heavy rail.
I personally think DC Metro is better than the L and the transfers between the lines and I think DC metro has incredible TOD. Seemingly every station (in Virginia, DC & Montgomery County MD) is like a walkable downtown with there being a quite a few “major” downtowns such as Bethesda, etc. PG County could’ve done better with TOD.
I chose Denver for this poll. LA is my 2nd choice and MARTA 3
I don't fault the LA Metro for its extensive LRT system; some with in-street/streetcar running and others, at street level stopping at lights. LA adapted to the type of city it is: overall lower density but with high density in corridors; the latter is being attacked with HRT, most notably the Wilshire Blvd corridor to Westwood/Beverly Hills where the Purple line extension is well underway. And downtown which has had explosive growth, where the lines are almost entirely underground including the regional connector LRT subway extension. I didn't find LA's LRT surface portions overly slow. For example, the Gold Line to Pasadena is extremely fast: 18-20 mins from Union Station, even with several surface sections and a few traffic light stops.
Probably the slowest/worst LRT surface section is the Expo Line (then Expo-Blue Line) south of downtown (northbound) along Flower Street to the Pico station before trains dive underground for the 1 stop terminal (for now) at 7th St.-Metro Center. In that short corridor, trains creep along across driveways and through several traffic lights. I've heard MTA is studying burying this stretch in a subway under Flower -- let's hope they follow through.
Otherwise, I'm very impressed with what LA is doing. The expanding LRT/HRT rail system is supplemented by the very extensive Metro Link commuter rail where the 2 systems meet and beautiful/historic Union Station which has the commuter buzz of an East Coast metropolis, ie DC Union Station or Philly's 30th Street. The fact that LA was a sprawling city the built up this system in the course of 3 decades is all the more decade. And yes, high-speed, electrified intercity rail to SF and Vegas is on its way.
While ATL does have a noticeable poverty rate and transit does serve the needs of these folks (very adequately I might add - and being realistic there aren't many major cities in the U.S. where transit does not serve this function), there are ALSO plenty of Millennials seeking places such as Midtown, Buckhead, Downtown Decatur as well as the gentrifying western intown areas whom are seeking to be near transit. Some of those folks come from transit orientated cities (Chicago, NYC, Boston, D.C., ect) and do not want to make a commitment to a car as it is a major lifestyle change. MARTA does a great job a providing seamless connectivity between residential nodes and business districts along its corridors in the areas that it does serve (pretty much all of ITP ATL) where one does not necessarily need a vehicle if they live / work along its path.
There are very few places that can match MARTA's direct connectivity into HJIA where someone living along MARTA does not have to drive / pay for parking to catch a flight. Add onto the fact that MARTA rail hits every major business hub in Atlanta outside of Alpharetta and one can see why people will prefer it over sitting in ATL traffic given the chance.
If you live/work ITP/Perimeter area, MARTA is entirely workable. The main issue with MARTA is the constant stereotyping and frequent pushback against expanding it into outlying areas to improve their connectivity into the city proper to give people an alternative to driving. There's plenty of people whom by choice would choose to take transit to bypass congested corridors such as I-75, I-85, GA-400 if it were faster than driving and they had the opportunity to. The interregional commuter rail systems ranging between D.C. and Boston give us a very generic example of how willing people will be to use transit if it effectively serves their goals..
..so to reiterate, transit in America has been largely discriminated into 'social classes' (a whole 'nother animal which I won't dwelve into in this topic) where in truth.. ..the real math to the equation is, which method of transit gets me there faster or more reliably... ...when rail does that or even comes close to it considering the added expenses of car ownership and maintenance, people are more than willing to use it over driving. There are plenty of instances where MARTA rail especially does achieve this.
Good post. But it also does not hit Cumberland.
But...MARTA goes to four of the five largest business districts in Metro Atlanta - plus the Airport:
I don't disagree with your logic, but wanted to point out that light rail doesn't necessarily mean slower. The average speeds of LA rail compare fairly well with DC. LA's C line (fully grade separated light rail) is the fastest of them all.
LA
A line (former blue) - 22.4 mph (LR)
B line (former red) - 30.3 mph (HR)
C line (former green) - 34.4 mph (LR)
D line (former purple) - 22.6 mph (HR)
E line (former Expo) - 17.1 mph (LR) (this is the really slow line for LA that everyone complains about)
L line (former gold) - 25.8 mph (LR)
DC
Yellow line - 25.9 mph
Blue line - 27.9 mph
Green line - 29.3 mph
Red line - 31.4 mph
Orange line - 32.9 mph
This thread topic comes with the built in assumption that heavy rail automatically means a better system than light rail.
Here we learn that a light rail line in Los Angeles exceeds the top average speed of any heavy line in D.C.
So that assumption is flawed.
The Expo line is undoubtedly the slowest, but I'd love to hear some anecdotes on how driving the 10 from SaMo to DTLA (and parking in both places) was a more pleasant experience than the Expo.
The existence of MARTA is a source of embarrassment for some metros in Atlanta's orbit, as it was built when Atlanta was much less populated and not dense by any standard. The common refrain for America's new generation of growing metros is that they can't build anything yet because they haven't reached some imaginary baseline of population/density.
At the time this thread started, L.A. wouldn't have had a very credible case, but as of today, its extremely debatable that LA Metro is any less of a system than BART, CTA or DC Metro.
But...MARTA goes to four of the five largest business districts in Metro Atlanta - plus the Airport:
1. Downtown
2. Midtown
3. Buckhead
4. Perimeter
(#5 is Cumberland - MARTA does not go here)
I knew I was missing one. MARTA to Cumberland and now Truist Park (and realistically, the rest of Marietta, including Downtown Marietta) is like completing a large puzzle and observing a glaring large missing piece of the puzzle after you have it all put together but cannot find those last few pieces.
If even they could just build a commuter rail given the adjacency of the freight rails between Marietta, Cumberland, Vinings, ATL .. .. it would still do alot better than what is there now.. ..ART busses and prioritized walking nodes could atleast complete trips between the commuter rail and Cumberland / Truist Park.
MARTA looks good on paper, but thats it. Let's be real, nobody who isn't impoverished is taking MARTA (unless for sports, airport, or to the malls). The way the system is laid out is impratical for everyday use. Most of the stations are dead zones with miles of surface parking. I live in Atlanta any nobody I know takes MARTA as an everyday thing.
You must live in the suburbs. If you live in midtown or downtown (like I used to), taking Marta every day car-free is very viable and what I used to do. Now that I live in northern Gwinnett county, I have a car and don't use Marta as much. You only have that mindset if you're not in the Marta network. But if you're living in-town, I know a lot of people who take MARTA as a daily thing.
You must live in the suburbs. If you live in midtown or downtown (like I used to), taking Marta every day car-free is very viable and what I used to do. Now that I live in northern Gwinnett county, I have a car and don't use Marta as much. You only have that mindset if you're not in the Marta network. But if you're living in-town, I know a lot of people who take MARTA as a daily thing.
I used to use it regularly when I lived in Sandy Springs and worked in Downtown (right by Peachtree Center), but haven't since moving to North Marietta.
Dallas' DART is one of the largest rail networks in the US, at 93+ miles total.
The "but" being that they built it through the areas easiest to access and not especially where people want to go. That's my understanding anyway. I've ridden it and like it a lot, but it has one of the lowest ridership levels per mile in the US.
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