Quote:
Originally Posted by ue
Honestly, no. But it will help a lot. The amount of new rail infrastructure for a contemporary US city is impressive, but only by our current standards. Almost all of New York's subway was built in a 40 year stretch, and dedicating that much of an investment in public transit (be it LRT, subway, BRT, streetcars, or buses) to really turn things over.
LA is mostly built on a grid, so that makes it easy to just run rapid transit up and down it with frequent (2-5min peak) service. It's going to need to have a good network of buses to feed into the rail projects and the rail projects actually need to go where people need/want to go (the way the Gold Line just misses CalTech is so dumb, but the US is littered with examples even more egregious). BRT will need to be done on high density roads where rail won't work. A rail network at least like this below would be necessary to get Central-West-South Central LA and the innermost parts of the SF and SG Valley to be truly transit-friendly.
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For what its worth, this is Metro's eventual full-buildout plans look like:
Measure R & M projects + Strategic Unfunded Projects:
It's definitely not bad, and I could see this map realistically being built by the 2040s if another transit tax measure or two are approved in the next 2 decades. SGV is much better served with the addition of the Silver Line, but admittedly rail transit there would be overly focused around DTLA, whereas West LA would have a more convenient grid structure.
You drew some rail lines on the Harbor Subdivision, which is eventually planned to handle a direct LAX-Union Station Metrolink line at some point. Other than that, some of the lines you drew in West LA are right now being built as BRT lines (such as the line down Venice Blvd). I think building BRT while laying the barebones of the rail network is a good strategy for Metro, as it sets up future corridors for conversion to rail when ridership necessitates it.