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LA is doing what NYC city did in the 1900's. It is building new lines that will eventually change the landscape of entire areas.
All New York City is doing is extending service to few areas for the purpose of 1) reducing crowding on other lines and 2) redistributing people across the system. Only the #7 line extension actually places rail transit in an area that never had it. LA is building there second system, the one NYC forgot to do in the 1930's.
You're missing the Q train extension up 2nd Avenue which takes Q train service to an existing station with a possible transfer to the F train and three new stations in some of the densest census tracts in the country. It's likely the single station added to the 7 and the four stations Q train service will be extended to will service more passengers than all the LA heavy rail stations combined even after the Purple Line extension gets to Westwood (at which point, it's possible another phase or two of the Second Avenue Subway will have been completed).
LA is building light rail lines. There is one subway line.
There are two, with one light rail subway(regional connector) currently under construction.
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The Light rail has the same capacity as bus service
If you're comparing one bus to one train, yes. Three trains running every six minutes during peak hours--no, the bus service does not compare.
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, and you aren't going to rebuild a city based on light rail alone. Transit share in LA hasn't budged since the 1970's, before there was any rail, so this isn't likely to change.
The Los Angeles MSA added 4.4 million people since 1970. Assuming you're correct, the sheer number of transit riders has risen dramatically since the 70's.
Who wants to rebuild the city anyway?
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LA isn't even building as much as other cities in the U.S. Both NYC and DC have built more heavy rail in recent years.
You're cherrypicking now, omitting light rail. That's a losing argument right off the bat. Besides, in terms of total track coverage, no one is building more than Los Angeles right now.
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Just to illustrate, more people will ride the Second Avenue subway than will ride all of LA rail combined (light rail, metro and commuter rail).
Apples to oranges. New York's rail system is fully complete. LA's is just barely expanding. You're making his point. Besides, LA doesn't need NYC ridership to have a viable, effective system.
There are two, with one light rail subway(regional connector) currently under construction.
If you're comparing one bus to one train, yes. Three trains running every six minutes during peak hours--no, the bus service does not compare.
The Los Angeles MSA added 4.4 million people since 1970. Assuming you're correct, the sheer number of transit riders has risen dramatically since the 70's.
Who wants to rebuild the city anyway?
You're cherrypicking now, omitting light rail. That's a losing argument right off the bat. Besides, in terms of total track coverage, no one is building more than Los Angeles right now.
Apples to oranges. New York's rail system is fully complete. LA's is just barely expanding. You're making his point. Besides, LA doesn't need NYC ridership to have a viable, effective system.
I think even when you add in the light rail expansion, NYC and DC's expansions are going to end up netting higher riderships simply because heavy rail in most incarnations allow for much higher riderships/throughput than light rail in most incarnations. If you go by total track coverage, that also then gets into the problem of commuter rail extensions--as soon as some rail path starts a commuter rail service, then does all that trackage get added to this count?
This is crucial if you're going to take away the point of level of service or ridership, but going solely for total track cover as then the addition of commuter rail lines can often blow away the numbers for light rail service additions (like, a single deal with a company in Florida and a fairly minor budget addition would mean "adding" 85 miles of rail service to South Florida in a very short amount of time which trumps something like the Regional Connector which adds a puny number of miles--however, the Regional Connector will do a hell of a lot more and will provide a much higher frequency/level of service).
I'm also pretty sure you understood what he meant with saying subway in place of heavy rail, right?
I think there's a point to be taken with NOLA's post. LA's transit expansion recently and for the near future simply isn't very impressive for a city of its size in a global or historical context--but it's good for current era US. That's not really pointing out that LA is doing great so much that the US just doesn't really invest in this sort of thing that much.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 07-24-2015 at 04:00 PM..
I think even when you add in the light rail expansion, NYC and DC's expansions are going to end up netting higher riderships simply because heavy rail in most incarnations allow for much higher riderships/throughput than light rail in most incarnations. If you go by total track coverage, that also then gets into the problem of commuter rail extensions--as soon as some rail path starts a commuter rail service, then does all that trackage get added to this count?
This is crucial if you're going to take away the point of level of service or ridership, but going solely for total track cover as then the addition of commuter rail lines can often blow away the numbers for light rail service additions (like, a single deal with a company in Florida and a fairly minor budget addition would mean "adding" 85 miles of rail service to South Florida in a very short amount of time which trumps something like the Regional Connector which adds a puny number of miles--however, the Regional Connector will do a hell of a lot more and will provide a much higher frequency/level of service).
I'm also pretty sure you understood what he meant with saying subway in place of heavy rail, right?
I think there's a point to be taken with NOLA's post. LA's transit expansion recently and for the near future simply isn't very impressive for a city of its size in a global or historical context--but it's good for current era US. That's not really pointing out that LA is doing great so much that the US just doesn't really invest in this sort of thing that much.
If you're implying that LA is somehow building "trains to nowhere", you couldn't be more wrong. Outside of the Gold Line Extension into the foothills (which will run trains far more frequently than commuter rail anyway), I'm not seeing that at all. The Expo and Crenshaw lines are very important, to say nothing of the Purple Line Extension and Regional Corridor.
Also, I have no interest in seeing where LA's expansion projects stack up in a historical sense. LA is much younger city that came of age in a different era. It doesn't predate Christ like many European cities. It needs to do its own thing and not worry about urbanizing the way older cities did.
L.A is a mess of a city, building an effective transit system that could make it easy for people to rely on it and live without a car is next to impossible. L.A first problem is not its transit system (which is bad) but its city layout. You would need 100 lines to cover L.A effectively. Which isn't feasible. What L.A is doing right now is a step in the right direction, but what you would need to do to "fix" L.A is pretty much destroy the entire city except downtown and rebuild it in a dense way. 4M people should fit easily in 150 sq miles
some of the best cities in the world were destroyed in parts (intentionally or not) and rebuilt: Paris, San Francisco, London
I know it's not gonna happen but there is no way L.A is going to ever have a efficient transit system with its layout, it's impossible
L.A is a mess of a city, building an effective transit system that could make it easy for people to rely on it and live without a car is next to impossible. L.A first problem is not its transit system (which is bad) but its city layout. You would need 100 lines to cover L.A effectively. Which isn't feasible. What L.A is doing right now is a step in the right direction, but what you would need to do to "fix" L.A is pretty much destroy the entire city except downtown and rebuild it in a dense way. 4M people should fit easily in 150 sq miles
some of the best cities in the world were destroyed in parts (intentionally or not) and rebuilt: Paris, San Francisco, London
I know it's not gonna happen but there is no way L.A is going to ever have a efficient transit system with its layout, it's impossible
I doubt even London has that many people living in 150 sq miles.
LA doesn't have NYC density, that's why it can get away with building Light Rail lines. Beside, LA is building it second system in 10 years, while NYC is working on a few project extensions.
If you're implying that LA is somehow building "trains to nowhere", you couldn't be more wrong. Outside of the Gold Line Extension into the foothills (which will run trains far more frequently than commuter rail anyway), I'm not seeing that at all. The Expo and Crenshaw lines are very important, to say nothing of the Purple Line Extension and Regional Corridor.
Also, I have no interest in seeing where LA's expansion projects stack up in a historical sense. LA is much younger city that came of age in a different era. It doesn't predate Christ like many European cities. It needs to do its own thing and not worry about urbanizing the way older cities did.
No, actually, I haven't implied that it goes nowhere at all. I'm not sure where you got that idea. I did say that relying on the total trackage numbers aren't a great comparison if you're disregarding what kind of rail is being built, because then some of the commuter rail expansions would be massive but without really giving commensurate amount of service for each of those miles. Maybe that's where you got confused?
Many if not most of the European cities, and certainly the Asian cities, built much of their systems in the automobile era and the current era. Historically, LA looks bad. Globally, LA looks bad. Historically and globally, LA looks bad. However, contemporarily and domestically, LA's doing pretty alright with itself. Overall, I think DC has gone through and is still going through the largest modern expansion in the US as much of it is completely grade-separate heavy rail at high frequencies and extending well out to the corners of the metro.
L.A is a mess of a city, building an effective transit system that could make it easy for people to rely on it and live without a car is next to impossible. L.A first problem is not its transit system (which is bad) but its city layout. You would need 100 lines to cover L.A effectively. Which isn't feasible. What L.A is doing right now is a step in the right direction, but what you would need to do to "fix" L.A is pretty much destroy the entire city except downtown and rebuild it in a dense way. 4M people should fit easily in 150 sq miles
some of the best cities in the world were destroyed in parts (intentionally or not) and rebuilt: Paris, San Francisco, London
I know it's not gonna happen but there is no way L.A is going to ever have a efficient transit system with its layout, it's impossible
Nah, you can do it with far fewer lines than a 100. LA has some pretty strong nodes along linear paths. The light rail thing is effective, but it would be nicer as heavy rail. Some of the original plans for the LA subway if kept intact would have been great. LA would actually have a very efficient transit system due to it having multiple nodes meaning that peak direction/peak travel wouldn't be heavily skewed towards a certain direction. LA has the density and the job nodes to support heavy rail in many parts--it just doesn't have the funding.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 07-25-2015 at 09:02 AM..
Nah, you can do it with far fewer lines than a 100. LA has some pretty strong nodes along linear paths. The light rail thing is effective, but it would be nicer as heavy rail. Some of the original plans for the LA subway if kept intact would have been great. LA would actually have a very efficient transit system due to it having multiple nodes meaning that peak direction/peak travel wouldn't be heavily skewed towards a certain direction. LA has the density and the job nodes to support heavy rail in many parts--it just doesn't have the funding.
for a system to be efficient and popular, you need to have stations close where people live. People won't take the bus and then the train. And they won't walk more than 15min. I think they're building light rail because they know their system will never be that popular anyway and that building heavy rail would be a waste of money
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Density
