Combined, Washington-Baltimore now outsizes Chicago as America’s 3rd largest CSA

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by craigs

Except the facts show that, for the purposes of determining things like the "real numbers for LA," Lancaster and Palmdale are not truly disconnected from greater Los Angeles.

It is true that the Sierra Pelona Ridge physically separates that area from the Valley and the Basin beyond, but it is also true that (pre-pandemic), the annual average daily traffic on the 14 at Sierra Highway, which consists of traffic moving between the growing Lancaster/Palmdale area and the rest of greater LA, was 210,000 vehicles. The calculation includes weekend days, so it's likely that more than 105,000 commuters made workday round trips between Lancaster/Palmdale and the job centers in the Valley and beyond. And that is out of a total Lancaster/Palmdale population of roughly 342,966. I don't know the number of working-age adults out of that population, but it is certain that a very high ratio of employed adults in Lancaster/Palmdale commute to work in the rest of greater LA. Alternatively, a lot of those trips are big rigs moving goods between the harbor and inland distribution centers--which, combined with frequent cargo rail service along the same route, indicates another inseverable economic link between Lancaster/Palmdale and the rest of greater LA.

Meanwhile, MetroLink provides 14 daily trains in each direction between Lancaster/Palmdale and Los Angeles Union Station--and those are one-seat trips. Would a truly "disconnected" area have such a frequent, one-seat commuter rail connection to downtown LA? I don't think so.

Anecdotally, over the years at different jobs I've had, I've had coworkers commuting from Lancaster/Palmdale. And even at my current job, I know of 3 coworkers who commute from the Victorville area in San Bernardino County. So yes, people do commute from those areas into LA (County and City).

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

What could be imaginable is poaching Racine County from the Milwaukee CSA to the Chicago CSA. (Not that Racine County people would commute to downtown Chicago, but to Kenosha County and Lake County). Still, it's only 200k people.

What I've never fully understood is why Racine county isn't already a part of Milwaukee's MSA.

I mean, it's right there, the first county immediately south of Milwaukee county. All of the other counties that directly abut Milwaukee county are in the MSA (Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington), but not Racine County. Why?

[westak]

DC-Baltimore is just two metros that border each other while Chicago(whether MSA/CSA) is about Chicago as the center of that region. Baltimore and DC feel like two seperate cities and imho don't feel combined in a lived out/cultural sense.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by westak

Baltimore and DC feel like two seperate cities and imho don't feel combined in a lived out/cultural sense.

They're pretty integrated. The two cities share commuting corridors and commuter rail systems.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by craigs

Meanwhile, MetroLink provides 14 daily trains in each direction between Lancaster/Palmdale and Los Angeles Union Station--and those are one-seat trips. Would a truly "disconnected" area have such a frequent, one-seat commuter rail connection to downtown LA? I don't think so.

Honestly, that sounds like terrible connectivity for major centers within a single metro area. NYC and Philadelphia probably have 2-3x as many trains per day between the two cities.

[ChrisLA]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Honestly, that sounds like terrible connectivity for major centers within a single metro area. NYC and Philadelphia probably have 2-3x as many trains per day between the two cities.

Are you serious, Lancaster/Palmdale is nowhere near the size of Philadelphia not even close. Why would they have train service that matches the frequency between two very large cities like NYC and Philadelphia.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Honestly, that sounds like terrible connectivity for major centers within a single metro area. NYC and Philadelphia probably have 2-3x as many trains per day between the two cities.

It’s not surprising that rail connectivity between the Antelope Valley and the LA Basin falls short of that in the Northeast Corridor. After all, the NE Corridor is as good as it gets in the US. But it’s the Antelope Valley Freeway, of course, that most AV commuters use to get to LA.

When I worked in El Segundo (near LAX) in the late ‘80s, I had colleagues who commuted in from the AV. One winter we had one of those unusual cold winter storms that resulted in snow in the mountain pass between the AV and Santa Clarita. One co-worker loaded up his station wagon with sacks of flour and rice to provide more traction on the icy roadway. I thought it was wild that here in balmy SoCal I had colleagues who were battling snow and ice to get to work.


The Antelope Valley boomed in the ‘80s and ‘90s because it provided a relatively inexpensive supply of single family housing. It got hit hard by the foreclosure crisis after 2008, however, and home building there never fully recovered. Job opportunities there never took off either. The aerospace industry was the major source of local decent paying jobs in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but many of those jobs went away in the ‘90s. So for the foreseeable future, many AV residents will have to continue the commute to LA for better paying jobs.

[tablemtn]

Originally Posted by craigs

Except the facts show that, for the purposes of determining things like the "real numbers for LA," Lancaster and Palmdale are not truly disconnected from greater Los Angeles.

They are disconnected because they are physically disconnected. It simply doesn't matter how many people travel between the areas each day. As a thought experiment, imagine if all of Omaha's population traveled to LA every day on some kind of futuristic airship, and millions in LA made the opposite trip. LA and Omaha would still not be part of the same contiguous metro area.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

Are you serious, Lancaster/Palmdale is nowhere near the size of Philadelphia not even close. Why would they have train service that matches the frequency between two very large cities like NYC and Philadelphia.

It seemed that the argument being made was that Palmdale was supposed to be a major commuter feeder to L.A. I'd expect the train service to be more frequent if we're talking about two major commuting hubs in the same metro area. Having 14 trains per day means barely 1 train per hour during the day. If stretched over a 24-hour period, you're talking barely 1 train every two hours. The point I was making is that NYC and Philadelphia are the cores of two different metros that have way more rail service than L.A. & Palmdale.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It seemed that the argument being made was that Palmdale was supposed to be a major commuter feeder to L.A. I'd expect the train service to be more frequent if we're talking about two major commuting hubs in the same metro area. Having 14 trains per day means barely 1 train per hour during the day. If stretched over a 24-hour period, you're talking barely 1 train every two hours. The point I was making is that NYC and Philadelphia are the cores of two different metros that have way more rail service than L.A. & Palmdale.

Lol Palmdale is Exurb of 150,000...not a large metro

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by EastSideHBG

Ten most populous CSAs



https://ggwash.org/view/amp/84981

Out of the top five Washington-Baltimore is the only one where major population centers are in different media markets. One of them is not like the others. Also, is there an informal moniker for the Washington-Baltimore area that's equivalent to SoCal, Chicagoland, the Bay area or the Tri-state area? You never hear it referred to as a single urban entity.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

What I've never fully understood is why Racine county isn't already a part of Milwaukee's MSA.

I mean, it's right there, the first county immediately south of Milwaukee county. All of the other counties that directly abut Milwaukee county are in the MSA (Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington), but not Racine County. Why?

Yeah, it's inconsistent with how the "captured satellites" of Chicago are treated.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Out of the top five Washington-Baltimore is the only one where major population centers are in different media markets. One of them is not like the others. Also, is there an informal moniker for the Washington-Baltimore area that's equivalent to SoCal, Chicagoland, the Bay area or the Tri-state area? You never hear it referred to as a single urban entity.

I've heard Baltwash?

But I agree it's a bit of an edge case, in that it's sort of accidentally conglomerated (though you can argue the same for SF + SJ and DFW).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

Lol Palmdale is Exurb of 150,000...not a large metro

Okay, so about the same size as Stamford, CT. There are probably +80 trains per day between Manhattan and Stamford.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Out of the top five Washington-Baltimore is the only one where major population centers are in different media markets. One of them is not like the others. Also, is there an informal moniker for the Washington-Baltimore area that's equivalent to SoCal, Chicagoland, the Bay area or the Tri-state area? You never hear it referred to as a single urban entity.

That's pretty arbitrary, though. Everybody in Baltimore-Washington can pick up TV and radio stations from both markets.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by tablemtn

They are disconnected because they are physically disconnected. It simply doesn't matter how many people travel between the areas each day. As a thought experiment, imagine if all of Omaha's population traveled to LA every day on some kind of futuristic airship, and millions in LA made the opposite trip. LA and Omaha would still not be part of the same contiguous metro area.

That's a ridiculous thought experiment. Commuting patterns, physical proximity, cultural and civic identity (including a shared media market and sports fandom) all play a role in the cohesiveness of an urban region. In a place like SoCal, physical connectedness is secondary and is simply a function of topography. Even places like Santa Clarita and Simi Valley are technically "disconnected" form the metro.

[lio45]

Actually, it’s an interesting thought experiment from which I’m drawing the opposite conclusion to his: in this scenario where there’s a magic warp hole between that big city and that much smaller one, and as he says “all the people of Omaha now spend all day every day in Los Angeles, only going back to Omaha to sleep”, they would become functionally Angelenos in that experiment — hanging out with friends who are from there, shopping there, rooting for the Dodgers and Kings, going to the beach there on their free time, getting targeted by L.A. media market advertising, etc. and Omaha would be a bedroom community of L.A. in this scenario.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by lio45

Actually, it’s an interesting thought experiment from which I’m drawing the opposite conclusion to his: in this scenario where there’s a magic warp hole between that big city and that much smaller one, and as he says “all the people of Omaha now spend all day every day in Los Angeles, only going back to Omaha to sleep”, they would become functionally Angelenos in that experiment — hanging out with friends who are from there, shopping there, rooting for the Dodgers and Kings, going to the beach there on their free time, getting targeted by L.A. media market advertising, etc. and Omaha would be a bedroom community of L.A. in this scenario.

Not getting your point unless you are going for the extreem.

The USA is large in area esp the SW.

It would be 2 days to drive to LA from Omaha and the same 2 days back if your a normal human being, perhaps those under 25 could do it but I would never consider that, Time is money that's why I always fly regardless of the cost.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Honestly, that sounds like terrible connectivity for major centers within a single metro area.

First of all, Lancaster and Palmdale do not constitute a "center" of anything--they are literally the farthest northern edge of greater LA. Second, they are not a "major" anything in a county of ten million and CSA of over eighteen million. Nevertheless, they are inseparable from the greater metropolis for the reasons I have already posted.

Second, your invocation of metropolitan New York City's public transit is a non-sequitur when discussing the nature of greater Los Angeles for multiple reasons, the most salient being that New York is an outlier within the United States in just about every way--including public transit service and ridership.

[dave8721]

Houston and Atlanta leaped over Miami for #9 and #10 as well. Miami/South FL dropped from #9 to #11 despite growing by 11%. Houston grew by 19.9% and Atlanta by 14.5%