Quote:
Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan
couldnt agree more. They are great at getting in their way. You want more usage? Add more service and much shorter headways. Clear out the bums as well. Instead, they cut headways and are exploring adding bathrooms for the bums. Ridiculous
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This. It's great that we are building more rail lines throughout the city and county, but the experience for the actual current transit riders continues to be maddening. I take public transit from my apartment in Los Feliz to downtown, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify doing so over driving. I take a DASH bus to the Vermont/Sunset station, and it's incredibly unreliable and doesn't stick to the schedule at all in the mornings. They actually just eliminated the Los Feliz Dash this week! Now, we have the Observatory bus, but it no longer serves the eastern part of Los Feliz, unless you want to go all the way up to the Observatory and come back down. They eliminated the service and changed the Observatory route without so much as telling riders a change was being considered. Just woke up on Monday and the bus route had been eliminated. Even when it was around, it stopped running at 7PM and had no weekend service.
When I do finally get to the station, morning headways during rush hour are 12 minutes!!! When I tell people this from out of town they honestly can't believe it. Off peak is what, 22 minutes? Who does that work for? No one who has to be places. On top of that, there are constantly outbursts and bad behavior on the trains and at the stations. I've seen people pissing right on the platform, fights, guys rolling blunts and throwing the tobacco onto the floor of the train, really aggressive pan handling, some of the worst smells I've ever encountered... I routinely ask myself why I still use transit here.
We're building more and more of a network, but paying less than zero attention to current riders. There's a reason ridership continues to fall and fall.