He is not being serious. Just repeating the line of many that building rail (often at the expense of bus service) is the solution.

Elsewhere, he has strongly stated the opposite. Rail service needs to be fed by excellent bus service. Rail should not be built if bus ridership is not already high on the corridor.

Do you have the stats for this? I'm not disputing you I just want to see at what thresholds HRT is necessary and where in LA that is. It seems like most cities are shifting to LRT, as it's much cheaper to build and, if you have long enough trains and frequent service, it can be not unlike HRT. The Paris Metro is known for being narrow, while the Calgary C-Train has higher ridership than a lot of American heavy rail.

Well, yeah, of course. Cities are cash-trapped and transit has undergone decades of austerity, which has produced councils and planning departments that want to pursue gentrification as a means for getting more tax revenue. All this means is that there's a focus on big projects that serve affluent areas or areas primed to be gentrified and also there's a desire to have one project do 3 things with mediocrity rather than one thing well. This is a perfect example of that. Rather than continue Crenshaw right up Western or La Brea, there's proposals to do ridiculously inefficient zig-zags to hit West Hollywood. Having a Red Line spur go under SMB into WeHo and then meet up with the Purple Line makes more sense. And for north-south connectivity, add another LRT line under La Cienega would be more costly, sure, but would produce a more comprehensive rapid transit system for that part of the Westside, which would give riders far more options (because, especially in a polycentric city like LA, people aren't all going to the same place) and more efficient routing.

Public transit is a public service so I truly don't get why it's being run like a business. It's point isn't to run a profit from a combination of high ridership and appropriately priced fares, it's supposed to provide the public with good access to their city. We don't do this with police or the military, which eat billions upon billions of dollars every year. It's just ideology governing why cities like LA are pursuing mediocre one-size-fits-all approaches to transit.

You don't need to run public transit as a profitable business but you still should look at getting the best bang for your buck, so you can maximize ridership per dollar.

Otherwise you end up with white elephant American systems that barely get 25% fare box recovery ratio because they were built with little regard to ridership. From the perspective of a Canadian, American transit agencies are often well-funded and get revenue powers that few Canadian cities get (sales taxes, fuel taxes, selling bonds) but they mostly have wasted it.

Light rail is in fact best in reasonably high density areas where it's frequent stops and street level running are best suited. Many parts of inner LA are perfectly suited for this. Longer distances should be covered by Metro's and (European style) regional rail systems that connect suburban hubs to central cities and major inter changes.

In reality it should be light rail and metro and regional rail, not or. But US building costs and poor funding environments mean it's often light rail or nothing.

I don't see why longer distances can't be covered by light rail. If a light rail line has its own ROW and is either fully or substantially grade-separated with near 100% signal priority, light rail can go just as fast if not faster than heavy rail lines. This applies to LA Metro's LRVs in particular, which not only far more resemble traditional heavy rail rolling stock compared to traditional trams that LRVs are based on, but are also much faster than other systems' LRVs. For example, of LA Metro's LRV rolling stock, Kinki Sharyo P3010 LRVs can go at 65 mph, Siemens P2000 LRVs can go at 70 mph, and the AnsaldoBreda P2550 LRVs can go at 77 mph. This is compared to the maximum speeds of around 55 mph in most other light rail systems in the US. These trainsets coincidentally happen to be much wider and taller than Paris Metro rolling stock, coincidentally.

Metro's LRT speeds actually compare pretty well against the speeds of other heavy rail lines both in LA and in other networks. For example, the list below compared speeds on all LA Metro rail lines vs the DC Metro's lines:

LA Metro
A line (former Blue) - 24.9 mph (LRT)
B line (former Red) - 30.3 mph (HRT)
C line (former Green) - 34.4 mph (LRT)
D line (former Purple) - 22.6 mph (HRT)
E line (former Expo) - 19.8 mph (LRT) (this is the really slow line for LA that everyone complains about)
L line (former Gold) - 26.2 mph (LRT)

DC Metro
Yellow line - 25.9 mph (HRT)
Blue line - 27.9 mph (HRT)
Green line - 29.3 mph (HRT)
Red line - 31.4 mph (HRT)
Orange line - 32.9 mph (HRT)

Stats for DC Metro speeds: https://ggwash.org/view/4524/average...-metro-compare

The C Line is completely grade separated, even though its a LRT, so it is faster than any of DC Metro's heavy rail lines or the B and D heavy rail lines in its own network. The A and L Line (which will eventually be split into portions for the A and E Lines) have comparable same speeds as the DC Yellow/Blue Lines. The only real slow light rail line is the E Line, due to its lack of signal priority in downtown sections. This could be rectified in the future through increased grade separation (Metro is already studying grade separating the Flower St. Junction and bury tracks from the junction to 7th Metro, which would solve a major portion of the delays encountered on the A/E Lines)

For me this (not homelessness, druggies, crime, etc.) is the biggest reason I refrain from using road-sharing transit out here… it SHARES THE ROAD. If you had more bus-only lanes with signal priority I’d definitely take it more often.

Not to say commute time is the biggest concern (it shouldn’t be if you’re trying any form of alternatives to driving), but unless there’s a SIG alert-scale slowdown on the freeways, more often than not I find it beats the bus most of the time.

What is the average distance of commutes in Los Angeles? Maybe that is the real problem. Los Angeles is the densest US urban area, but it's still huge, and if people aren't living near where they work, or their workplaces are not concentrated in particular locations, it is going to be hard for transit to serve them effectively and efficiently. You can build more rail lines and bus lanes to increase speeds slightly, add more buses and trains to reduce wait times and reduce the travel times further, but transit ultimately is not for long distances. That is for the car. Transit is about medium distances, especially in a polycentric urban area, with no strong hub for a hub-and-spoke system such as commuter rail. But even commuter rail stations are surrounded by huge parking lots, aren't they?

Walking, then cycling, then transit, then car, each progressively longer distances. Distance is the number one factor in what mode people choose. That's what TOD is all about, isn't it? Increase the density near bus and rail corridors, build pedestrian walkways to bus stops and train stations to allow people to walk in a straight line, reduce the average walking distances to and from transit. So a problem of car dependence is really a problem of long distances, and the long distances is really what Los Angeles should be looking at.

You can see the massive rail system in the Chicago area didn't stop CTA, Metra and Pace from losing 8.5% of their ridership from 2011 to 2019. Even such a rail network can't solve the problem of ever-increasing distances in an ever-expanding urban area.

If they can reduce the distances enough to get people onto transit, then maybe they can try to reduce the distances further to get people onto bikes, then even further to get them walking. One step at a time.

I think what makes LA different from Chicago, is that LA is choking on traffic. And it always has.

Chicago has new high rise construction caused by young professionals migrating from the suburbs and smaller towns in the region to live downtown, but otherwise it is stagnant and there's not a lot of pressure.

I have this theory that Southern California represents the upper limits to how big a city can get and still be mostly reliant on cars. It's also built out. I mean, we are talking about 23.8 million people living on every last square inch of flat land surrounded by mountains. At some point roads don't scale up in capacity like transit does, but like you said the killer is the distance. By now LA is just so massive that there is no cheap land that can be developed into new homes that are affordable to the middle class within an acceptable commute distance even assuming the absolute best case scenario of the route being entirely freeway from start to finish and zero traffic congestion with the ability to drive 75 mph unencumbered by speed limits.

Eventually the big Texas cities are going to hit this limit too. For Houston there's still the 288 corridor south to Manvel and West Fort Worth is still close in, but otherwise you are talking about all new growth being suburbs of suburbs(I think by now, LA is suburbs of suburbs or suburbs).. If you worked or wanted to be in the city proper you either have money or settle for older areas.

There's literally any new sprawl to the south and east in Dallas. Definitely less popular than the north and west, where the sprawl has gone a lot further, to places like Denton, but as commutes become too long, they could provide cheap new tract housing for commuters into the City of Dallas. Somewhere like Wilmer or Forner are as close in as Plano is.

Here in Chicago the only way to get me out of my car is to travel downtown. Parking is insanely high, so I end up walking (10-20 minutes) or taking the train. Otherwise, its driving. Almost anywhere I wanna go in Chicago can be done by car. LA will also be this way for the foreseeable future.

It's actually amazing that L.A. has gotten to this point as basically a car-only metro. But the warning lights are blinking bright red. Heck, they were blinking 30 years ago.

Improving Metrolink/commuter rail I think would help forward sprawl, not combat it. For example, if Metrolink was able to offer frequent 1.5 hours or less travel times between Union Station and Victorville or the Coachella Valley, that would accelerate urban sprawl in these regions as these regions become much more closely linked to LA's commuter shed.

This is actually a big debate, usually between environmental groups and transit advocates. The environmental groups claim extending commuter rail outwards and increasing frequency drives sprawl. The transit advocates claim the sprawl already exists, the upgraded rail manages the sprawl around transit.

I definitely side with the transit advocates. Sprawl isn't fed from rail investments.

You see this debate playing out in the Hudson Valley, where for decades Metro North and rail advocates have been trying to extend the Hudson line north of Poughkeepsie, but the environmental groups say this will just encourage development of scenic areas. I suspect the environmentals are being a bit disingenuous, and know that sprawl is controlled by zoning rules, not transit investments. They don't want the rail bc it will change the character of towns (which is accurate; the towns will be more prosperous and expensive) not bc of sprawl.

I'm not sure what the future holds for LA, but the "cheapest" way to add growth without having to spend a fortune on infrastructure seems to be to further densify the already densest areas of downtown LA + Westlake + Koreatown into a proper walking city.

This is obviously politically contentious, because to become a walking city you have to actually remove traffic lanes, and somehow convince Angelenos that you are going to double or even triple the density along a road like Wilshire boulevard while simulatenously removing a lane of traffic in each direction and giving it over to either enhanced public transit, or enhanced active transport. But LA desperately needs to hand over space to much more efficient forms of mobility if it can grow.

I have heard this argument before. Improving rail service increases sprawl. But generally speaking, it is freeway construction that promoted sprawl in the first place. Almost always, rapid transit follows sprawl, a reaction to congestion on the roads that created the sprawl in the first place.

In a better world, we would build rapid transit as new communities develop instead of freeways. Yes, rapid transit would then be blamed for the sprawl, but at least the built form would be better and these new communities would not be so car dependent.

Has any North American city ever put rapid transit before freeways at least after World War II?

I would not so concerned about sprawl created by rapid transit. At least, what is built is more sustainable.

Isn't this what used to happen? Places like Shaker Square in Cleveland were built out alongside the new rail lines that were constructed, often by the same company. The same company that developed the neighborhood also created the Shaker Heights Rapid.

You cut sprawl by putting limits on it directly through land use codes.

Limiting transit is just trying to keep a place undesirable so people won't move there.

Angelenos and Southern Californians become wealthier during the last 30 years? If we had less disposable income and were much poorer, we would see higher transit share numbers?

The two wealthiest metros in the country have pretty high transit share, while all of the not-so-wealthy metros are nearly 100% car dependent.

People view LA area very differently from other cities.
From a car driving perspective, traveling distances aren't too long in time and distance often because there are no stops to pick up and drop passengers. For transit riders, it's a long process of many stops and transfers. Short distances 7 miles or 20km is fine and ideal, but greater distances isn't so great.

In LA driving 20 miles or less isn't bad, but many drive 30 40 to 70 miles like south bay to Downtown. Or the valley to long beach or Pomona to Westwood. There are those from Irvine into LA, Palmdale to LA, San bern to LA. Yes there are so many who use public transportation these distance. I often read why people don't use public transit for those commutes. Duh .... it's insane.

The thing with public transit is who should it benefit? The people who live in near suburbs, middle suburbs, far a uburbs, exurbs?
Chicago is 250 square miles, new york is 305 square miles, Los Angeles city is 472. But the CTA and MTA system covers primarily the city limits that converge in the central areas of the loop or Manhattan. LA county metro system covering an area 3 times the size of LA city based on the map. That's 5 new york cities, 7 Chicago's. Nyc, Chicago are efficient because people are going to a central highly dense core area and it's rail system follows that.

I think LA needs to focus more on its core areas. I think the core area is huge already the size of 3 Manhattans. From Santa Monica to Beverly Hills Hollywood to downtown 15 miles long and 4 miles wide from Hollywood to 10 freeway. You can't fix that. So you make do with with the things gs you have.

LA should have a network of streetcar trams. On sunset blvd from downtown to echo park, east Hollywood, West Hollywood. Tram on Santa Monica Blvd, , melrose, 3rd st, Olympic, pico, North south trams on Vermont, Western, la brea, Westwood Blvd, bundy, Lincoln.

In Downtown streetcars should go down to historic south central, on Olympic to Koreatown and Westlake, Beverly thru historic filipinotown and rampart, Cypress Park, Lincoln heights El Sereno, south boule heights. These wouldn't duplicate existing lines of expo, blue, red or purple lines. The nearest metro station would be half mile or more away.. streetcars should focus on getting people around locally neighborhood to neighborhood with stops every 1/4 to 1/2 mile, while metro gets them region to region of the county. With most stops from 1/2 mile toMelrose,

The most dense parts of LA are in the core already. Job rich, tourism rich. Shopping, culturem attractions, etc. Allow for more density and development. Allow for more walkable amenities, road diets, tree shade, beautiful street art. Honestly people say LA is not walkable but many parts have mostly connected walkable areas. Often time not enough places of interest within them. I think downtown to Koreatown on Olympic, wilshire , Beverly, are interesting but I doubt someone on the Westside think ethnic shops and good eating places in Westlake or Koreatown are good. Maybe su set Blvd through hipsters cafes, restaurants neighborhoods is more appealing.

While obiously not on the scale you are talking about, some street space in critical areas is being carved out from car traffic.

Per Streetsblog LA, 2021 saw the following new bus-only lanes open:

• 1.2 miles two-ways on Alvarado Street in Westlake/MacArthur Park
• 1.3 miles one-way on Grand Avenue in downtown L.A.
• 1 mile one-way on Olive Street in downtown L.A.
• New bus lane red pavement markings in West L.A. and downtown L.A.
• Also in 2021, Culver City installed 1.3 miles of two-way bus lanes as part of its MOVE Culver City project, which also included pedestrian and cyclist improvements.

Click the link for additional links to the listed projects.

Clearly we need more, but it's a start.

If I were in charge, I would probably end the Purple Line at La Brea and refocus transit dollars on a subway line to East LA and El Monte.

I guess that's why I'm not in charge haha and exiled in the Pacific Northwest.

Yeah, that's a terrible idea. Ridership on the D Line (formerly Purple) into the Westside will absolutely justify the expense of the extension, and will exceed anything we could reasonably expect to generate by expanding into East LA/El Monte instead.

Downtown Beverly Hills is a major destination, with its touristy shopping district, and merits a heavy rail connection. So does Century City, with its 50,000 office workers. And then there's Westwood, where office and residential towers line Wilshire--not to mention UCLA, which not only has some 45,000 students, but is also Los Angeles' fifth largest employer with some 42,000 jobs. Trust me, parking at UCLA is one of the circles of hell.

Build it and they will come.

I do wonder if a sort of linear downtown or "Manhattanization" could happen along the Wilshire Corridor where the Purple Line is being extended under. Pretty soon LA and other communities will be forced by the HCD to accommodate hundreds of thousands of new housing units, which could logically be handled by upzoning around new Purple Line stations.

Densification is almost certainly on the table, but 'Manhattanization,' as in a thicket of skyscrapers? I don't know. I can easily see a gradual increase in the number of skyscrapers in Century City, and an even faster upzoning in Mid-Wilshire/Miracle Mile, but I wouldn't expect a lot of new skyscrapers in Beverly Hills or Westwood proper (both of which are currently underserved and merit heavy rail as they exist today). I can definitely imagine some significant highrise development in the vicinity of the big VA Hospital campus--that's a strangely underdeveloped corner of town.

Not to mention universities have a lot of visitors for conferences and workshops. Most of the time I'm in LA I'm either going to UCLA or Caltech.

There are no stats, although I did mention ridership density for Crenshaw North being in the 10,000+ range. At-grade LRT works for geographically smaller cities with significantly smaller populations, Calgary being a great example.

For core LA, at-grade LRT is not a viable alternative for the simple fact that most arterials aren’t wide enough. And even if you were yo have street-running rail, think about how slow and unreliable it would be. It only takes one idiot driver to ruin the commutes of hundreds of thousands of people.

The difference between HRT and LRT is grade-separation, frequency, and capacity, not the rolling stock itself.

Manila:

• Video Link

That's simply not true. LRT can be grade separated and even underground like a subway, case in point the first LRT in North America, in Edmonton:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...cember2019.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay/En...cember2019.jpg

These trains have greater frequencies than LA's D/Purple Line heavy rail subway (5 min peak vs LA's 10 min peak). Edmonton's LRT carries about 115,000 people per day compared with 135,000 on the LA Purple Line - not far off.

The difference between HRT and LRT absolutely is rolling stock (which is how it has higher capacity more easily), but not grade separation or frequency. You're confusing LRT with streetcars, which none of the LRT lines in LA are. All of LA's rail lines are separated from traffic, even if surface level LRT, allowing for speeds not much slower than max HRT speeds (which they rarely get to anyway). Meanwhile portions of HRT in other cities (like Toronto and Atlanta) are not sub-surface. Others still are above ground (as in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Vancouver), which is something that LRT has been shown to do as well (as seen in Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton).

You could easily build an extension of the L/Gold Line underground through DTLA and then down Avalon through South Central, also underground (or elevated). It would be LRT still but have similar grade separation to traditional HRT systems.

Why would they bother to grade separate a light rail system?

Light rail is often grade separated for speed, reliability, train length... It allows trains to operate like heavy rail in some ways but still cross streets sometimes.

No, it’s really not. That’s a very US-centric view of what’s heavy rail/rapid transit. You yourself brought up Paris Metro’s (one of the best in the world) mostly narrow-body trains — they’re even narrower than LA’s LRVs, which are about the same width as the NYC Subway’s A Division rolling stock. London Underground and Madrid Metro also have trains with narrower profiles, with the latter running on overhead catenary lines. Capacity comes from greater frequency, which is made possible by grade-separation in areas with lots of vehicular traffic.

LA's Kinkisharyo P3010s, which will eventually constitute the bulk of the LRT fleet, feel quite spacious inside. And this is without bench-style seating.

https://lbpost.com/wp-content/upload...6/DSC_0557.JPG
https://lbpost.com/news/place/public...ars-of-service

Absolutely agreed. Isn't this obvious, especially in terms of speed? LA's C-Line, which provided over 30,000 trips daily before the pandemic, is a fully grade separated light rail line and, unsurprisingly, is the region's fastest ride. Per wikipedia, a typical C-Line consist tops out at speeds of 65 mph and "takes only 34 minutes to travel its 19.5-mile (31 km) length, at an average speed of 34.4 mph over its length."

Yeah, the C Line is actually faster than all of Washington Metro's heavy rail lines. Only reason why its not a light metro yet is because ridership doesn't require it to have very low frequencies.

To do the same things that HRT does but for less money. Do people in HRT-centric cities like New York really think that every LRT system is basically a streetcar??

You're conflating HRT with rapid transit more broadly. Yes, HRT is rapid transit, but so is LRT. They both function similarly in their respective cities, LRT is just relatively newer technology and tends to be built in smaller and/or newer cities, like San Diego, Portland, and Ottawa.

This just further proves the greater overlap in abilities between HRVs and LRVs.

And yet, you conveniently ignore a stat in which an LRT system beats LA's heavy rail for frequency. Even within LA people subsequently have pointed out the C Line, an LRT line, is faster than all of LA's other lines, and all of the DC metro lines.

And tell me, if both LRT and HRT are grade-separated, how is that specifically contributing to greater frequency (which I've already debunked anyway)?

In terms of speed, the DART LRT runs at an average of 30 miles (48km) per hour while New York's HRT subway runs at an average of 17 miles (27km) per hour and Chicago's L has an average of 23 (37km) miles per hour.

So what exactly is your point about rolling stock vis-a-vis capacity? How does it represent a fundamental difference between "HRT" and "LRT" if some LRVs are wider than some of the HRVs running on three of the world's top 10 metro systems and LRT lines having the capacity to draw the same ridership as HRT lines?

You said the following:

Does that mean BART is more of a HRT system than the Paris Metro?

As for frequency, LA's two "HRT" lines are limited to 4-minute headways because they interline between Union Station and Wilshire/Vermont. More to the point, frequency/headways and ridership are correlational, not causal. And ridership is not a reflection of capacity, but rather more locally specific factors such as the nature of the corridor itself, demand, quality of service, overall transit appetite, etc.

You're painting with a very broad brush and totally ignoring important physical, cultural, and logistical differences.

The rolling stock used in HRT and LRT is generally different. You said:

Light rail vehicles and heavy rail vehicles are different. Yes, some HRT vehicles are narrower, but generally speaking, they have higher capacity per train car, and the technology is different (for one thing, it's much older).

We've already disputed your claims of grade-separation and frequency being the distinction. LRT is generally in a dedicated right of way not unlike HRT. Frequencies can be greater and trains can run faster than HRT systems (not exclusively - merely it can happen).

So what's left? The rolling stock and how that functions in terms of station design and so forth. If anyone is ignoring anything, it's you - myself and others have clearly destroyed your points and yet you still latch onto your same talking points.

Grade separation of a bus or rail corridor (including light rail or commuter rail) is to allow for increased capacity of the corridor, either increased frequency or longer vehicles or both, without that service interfering too much with the regular road traffic, either auto or pedestrians or bikes.

With light rail and commuter rail, there is also the option to combine vehicles and cars into trains to increase the headway (reduce the frequency of service), and so reduce the disruption to other traffic, or the reduce the disruption other traffic causes to the transit service.

Sometimes you will find a bus or rail crossing is grade-separated because the bus and rail service is too busy, but given the low ridership of many systems, it is because the road is too busy with cars, trucks, bikes, and/or pedestrians.

Around 10-minute frequency in each direction with trains of LRVs is good capacity. Signal priority can be applied without much disruption to other traffic. Each LRV is probably around 30m (100ft) long, so each train 60m long. But if ridership increases too much, maybe higher frequencies and/or 90m or 120m trains would be needed, and so the disruption to other traffic could be too much, and that is when grade separation is needed.

The ability to combine vehicles into trains is the main advantage of light rail vs. bus rapid transit. Articulated buses are usually only 18m (60ft) max, only 50% longer than regular buses. The capacity of BRT is less than 1/3 of light rail with 2-car trains for a given frequency. So when we talk about BRT vs. LRT, it's really a question of the capacity needed. And of course, capacity is exactly what defines heavy rail as well. High frequencies and long trains? You need grade separation for that, and that is what makes a rail line heavy rather than light, or full rapid transit. Light rail and bus rapid transit therefore can be considered as semi-rapid transit, having some features of rapid transit (all-door boarding, limited stops, exclusive ROW, grade-separation) but not all because the ridership doesn't require it, the extra capacity is not needed yet.

Capacity is why Ottawa needed to replace its grade-separated BRT with rail. The problem wasn't lack of ridership, it was too much ridership. Ottawa is one of the leaders in transit ridership, and the articulated buses could no longer handle it. The difficulty of articulated buses to operate in snow only made matters worse. Similar problem could be seen in Mississauga, with buses coming by every 3 minutes in each direction in one corridor, but buses still too full and sometimes not being able to stop and having to leave the riders stranded and continue waiting. The fact that articulated buses had to be left in the garage during periods of heavy snowfall. So the service needed to be replaced with LRT, which is now under construction.

The question with Los Angeles or any US system is whether their problem is too much ridership, or is it not enough ridership? Which bus corridors are becoming so crowded that they need to replaced with light rail? Which light rail corridors are becoming so crowded that they need grade separation to allow for longer and more frequent trains? That is all any city needs to think about when considering building new rail or upgrading existing rail. Canadian systems are building new rail but not because of lack of ridership, and maybe the USA needs to taking that same approach more.

What’s the fundamental difference between the two technologies? That’s not a rhetorical question… I really want to know. What extra “equipment” does an EMU have underneath and/or on top (if running on pantographs) that an LRV doesn’t?

A single LRV, at least in LA’s case, is longer (90 feet) than an HRV (75 feet, which is actually longer than most HRVs around the world) and can accommodate as many, if not more passengers. It also is “heavier” by actual weight.

HRT trains have higher capacity because as a service they tend to operate in consists of 5-10 cars — depending on the length of the individual vehicle.

HRT is ultimately about the service, not the vehicles; to me, HRT = rapid transit. As long as it’s 100% grade-separated, can accommodate around 30,000 riders per hour, and is powered by electricity, then it’s a rapid transit (HRT) line. A 900-foot, 10-car LRV train (in theory) that’s fully grade-separated train and has 4-minute headways during rush hour wouldn’t be heavy rail? Yet Cleveland’s Red Line would be?

Fully grade-separated, high-frequency trains are considered metro lines, regardless of technology — see Manila (which you ignored) and Vienna U-Bahn’s U6.

When I made the comment about grade-separation and frequency, I was thinking specifically of LA’s needs. You can’t have surface-level trains crossing a busy intersection like Santa Monica/La Brea every 2 minutes during rush hour without creating huge bottlenecks. Grade-separation avoids that problem.

Reading between the lines, when I said that LA needs more HRT lines, I didn’t necessarily exclude LRT trains running in subway configuration. But LA’s LRT lines are limited to 270-foot trains, and as mentioned, it only takes one idiot driver along the at-grade portion to disrupt service across the entire line.

It is mostly straight and has long distances between all of its stations. I seem to recall that the elevated section near Rodondo Beach ran quite a bit slower than the section in the middle of the freeway.

No matter - the green line is a total anomaly. It's a tertiary, ultra-low priority line that by an accident of history was built very early in the network's development.

The LA heavy rail subway has close stations and several curves below downtown LA that require relatively slow operation. The red line has two 90 degree curves outside of downtown. The purple line won't have any sharp curves outside of the shared downtown section, meaning the new Wilshire Blvd line might have a higher average speed than the existing red line outside of downtown.

For those who are unaware (like I was until I moved back in June), LA Metro has renamed all of its train lines. Per wikipedia:

A Line (opened 1990 as Blue Line) is a light rail line running between Downtown Los Angeles and Downtown Long Beach.

B Line (opened 1993 as Red Line) is a subway line running between Downtown Los Angeles and North Hollywood.

C Line (opened 1995 as Green Line) is a light rail line running between Redondo Beach and Norwalk, largely in the median of the 105 Freeway.

D Line (opened 2006 as Red Line, then changed to Purple Line) is a subway line running between Downtown Los Angeles and the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles.

E Line (opened 2012 as Expo Line) is a light rail line running between Downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

L Line (opened 2003 as Gold Line) is a light rail line running between East Los Angeles and Azusa via Downtown Los Angeles.

Just finished watching this video on the old streetcar system. This furthers the point that LA should continue to focus on building a public transportation system that is decentralized. The urban region of Southern California was established by the streetcar; the car followed in its footsteps.

• Video Link

Jake Berman's map of LA Metro (including busways) by 2028 under the "28 by '28" proposal:
https://i.imgur.com/xU2GwFw.png?3

Higher-res map here: https://www.reddit.com/r/lostsubways...to_expand_its/

What percentage of the actual respective populations of the “Big Six” actually live totally car-free? Even NYC clearly has sections of more auto-oriented urbanism. Staten Island, a huge chunk of Queens, and decent-sized portions of Brooklyn and the Bronx all have homes with driveways.

SF represents less than 10% of the Bay Area population, and within those 46 square miles, only maybe 33% of it is what I would call ideally urban or unequivocally more conducive to pedestrians than automobiles.

Same goes for the other four. Half of the cities’ respective populations probably live “car-lite.”

LA’s a megalopolis of 18 million, but OC and IE are and will always be their own thing. Seems to me that if we can build a city to accommodate car-freedom for, say, 2-3 million Angelenos, then that would be enough to “shift” the culture of the city. DT alone could probably accommodate 450-500,000 or so car-free residents. East Hollywood, Hollywood, and West Hollywood could accommodate 300,000. Koreatown and Westlake (using Google Maps’ definition) together another 250-500,000. Throw in parts of South LA, the Fairfax District, Culver City, Palms, Santa Monica, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Glendale, and Inglewood for good measure.

Is it that hard to envision? The challenges aren’t urban structure but infrastructure, smart planning, and political will.

It is actually hard to envision. Getting rid of parking minimums would be a good first step. As well as adding more protected bike lanes, narrowing the streets and widening sidewalks. DTLA has added a lot of residents in the last few years, but I wonder how many of them are actually car-free, let alone car-lite. If the podiums and parking ratios are any indicator, I'd wager very, very few.

Most NYC households are car-free. That's particularly notable in the auto-crazed U.S. context, as even European transit meccas like Paris don't have higher core splits. The % of car-free households is also pretty high in urban North Jersey; comparable to % car-free in the most transit oriented U.S. city propers excepting NYC.

Yeah, there are sizable portions of NYC (and inner suburbs) with driveways, but a relatively small % of the overall population lives in those areas. Obviously those types of neighborhoods don't have density remotely comparable to the more urban enclaves. The southern half of Staten Island and the really suburban parts of Northeast Queens might have 125,000-150,000 people each. Outside of those two areas there aren't any large suburban geographies in city proper.

The other cities (DC, Boston, Philly, Chicago, SF), yes, have relatively high vehicle ownership. But they're different from LA in that they A. Have a high(er) share of non-poor choice riders; B. Have a traditional dominant core that's ideal for transit corridors; and C. Have a significant share of urban landscape built pre-auto and not particularly adapted to auto age.

It would be difficult to envision LA overcoming these factors. Doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, but it would be a fundamental rethinking of the region, which is tough when a region is mature and developed. LA Koreatown just isn't built like SF Nob Hill, even if the densities are roughly comparable, and I'm not sure how you'd make such a transition.

In articles that looked at the severe decline in bus ridership in LA pre-COVID, one of the factors that are mentioned are lower income residents who are higher transit users being pushed out of transit friendly areas by rising rents. This would imply that the higher income people moving in to replace them don't use transit as much. They may love the idea of being near a train station but don't use it very much.

This is true primarily in the sunbelt and is true in LA. Conceptually people that can afford a car, but chose transit are called "choice" riders as in they have choices/options and choose public transit. Metro used to focus on attracting such riders, but they are secondary now to serving riders that are at-risk and have been treated poorly in the past. Without going into detail choice riders have abandoned metro and the riders that remain are doing all that they can to get a car. I don't see that changing without a policy shift within metro and I don't see that happening either. Metro is a disaster right now imo.

"Choice riders" as non-car owners only is misleading. Maybe they choose not to buy a car, or they choose to live in a place where a car is not a necessity. To build a city where the car is not a necessity is the main goal to begin with. Such definition of "choice riders" means continuing to strive towards facilitating cars and satisfying the demands of car owners as the main goal.

You don't have a bus that you can take to get to the train station? As a frequent/daily metro user that can get pretty much anywhere I think that most of the first mile/last mile concerns are from people that won't consider riding a bus. Not you of course, but LA has really good bus coverage and prior to the pandemic it was pretty frequent depending on your location.

I agree that the subway frequencies are atrocious. We elect people that want our system to be the cheapest/freeest as well as the most equitable with no goal of it being the best or even good. So here we are.