[ardecila]

Originally Posted by hughfb3

Guangzhou's line 5 with the same type technology as Alt 4/5 saw 1.485 million daily riders on 19 miles of route in 2019. Out of their 14 Metro rail lines, 3 of them use this technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_5_(Guangzhou_Metro)

Tokyo's Toei Ōedo Metro line on 25 miles of track did 933,621 daily riders in 2016.

Los Angeles' entire system of bus and rail did 1.096 million daily riders in December 2019
https://isotp.metro.net/MetroRidership/

The technology isn't the issue, but the platform length and the number of cars per train. If the trains are automated you can run them 2 minutes apart for a very high capacity even with short trains and platforms (assuming the signals can support it) but if you have drivers, then I doubt Metro can afford the labor costs to run trains that often. And LA is still a pretty "pro-labor" city so I have to imagine there will be strong opposition to any driverless systems.

Personally I think capacity is kind of a red herring issue; LA is still an extremely car-oriented city and the anchors along Sepulveda don't have strongly peaked traffic like a CBD office district. Students and faculty arrive at UCLA at various times. I think even a low-capacity technology will not get maxed out within my lifetime. But if people want to attack the BYD monorail options based on capacity issues, then the Bechtel subway may have similar issues in practice (even if not in theory).