6 ms·

LA is getting better with mass transit. The problem is it's not running 24 hours. It shuts down around 1am so you it's not really good for doing things at nigh

LA is getting better with mass transit. The problem is it's not running 24 hours. It shuts down around 1am so you it's not really good for doing things at night like in NYC. Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people, or kind of thuggish people. There needs to be some sort of loitering code enforcement on the train along with more security. I feel uncomfortable as a dude, I bet women feel even more so. Also need more train tracks! Fix those problems people will ride transit way more. Thats the way to solve the traffic problem.

ghaff 10y ago
Almost no cities have 24 hour mass transit including many that are considered to have good transit systems. That's a very high bar you're setting.
- _-__--- 10y ago
  24hr service would be very expensive, but it seems that they should run the transit services until a little after the majority of bars and clubs close. It was nice here in Boston when they ran the T until a little past 2AM; they've since pulled that back to 12:30 or so. It can be kind of a pain, but Uber/Lyft are well established here.
  - Rebelgecko 10y ago
    It's certainly usable for that in LA, where last call is also 2am. I believe every train runs until 2 or 3 AM (on Fridays/Saturdays), and starts back up again by 5. Not quite 24 hours(except on NYE, when they don't stop), but still very usable.
- sampo 10y ago
  It's pretty much enough to run some lines till 4am on Fridays and Saturdays, so people can go and party.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Because it's much more important to address the needs of late night partiers than nurses, convenience store clerks, and so forth who have work shifts at odd hours.
Apocryphon 10y ago
From a NorCal perspective, that is sad because BART stops around 12:30, seven days a week. But I suppose there are MUNI lines that run all night, which is slightly better.
vkou 10y ago
> Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people, or kind of thuggish people. There needs to be some sort of loitering code enforcement on the train along with more security. I feel uncomfortable as a dude, I bet women feel even more so. One of the ways to improve the public transit, as a whole, is to make people of all socioeconomic classes take transit. Consider New York, for instance, where millionaires are shoulder-to-shoulder with waiters, and homeless people on their commute... And it works surprisingly well. Until politically wealthy people have to deal with the problem, they won't support any solutions.
- duderific 10y ago
  Driving and parking in New York is so incredibly difficult and expensive compared to mass transit, especially the subway. In the cities where that is the case, there isn't the same class division between those who drive and those who take mass transit. In LA, it is exactly the opposite: mass transit is incredibly difficult, slow, and in some cases more expensive than driving. How can you "make people of all socioeconomic classes take transit" in that scenario?
  - vkou 10y ago
    Tear up all the parking lots, and half the roads. Or, actually, just tear up the parking lots. You can do it by taxing under-utilized land. It's obviously never going to happen, so people will keep spending ~$3-5,000/year on vehicles, and ~$1,000-2000/year on parking, for the dubious privilege of spending up to two hours a day in traffic. On the bright side, if you live that far from work, your housing is probably cheap.
    - majormajor 10y ago
      > On the bright side, if you live that far from work, your housing is probably cheap. Yeah, your house probably cost ONLY 500k-1mil!
    - xienze 10y ago
      > On the bright side, if you live that far from work, your housing is probably cheap. And that's exactly why things are the way they are. Shockingly, given the choice, most people would happily trade a long commute for the ability to spread out and not pay through the nose for the privilege of being crammed on top of other people.
virmundi 10y ago
Better enforcement is a good idea. Seems to be worth the money. Or carry concealed permits. You'll have to repeal California's action that requires all new semi-auto's to have a unique firing pin. But then you don't have to worry traveling. I carry. I keep odd hours in a small town. I walk every night .25 miles to my office at 8 PM and then back again around 2 AM. Never had any problem (probably the same as most people on the train). If I do, I've got protection.
- bsder 10y ago
  > Or carry concealed permits. Um, no. The crazy people won't care, the gangbangers will be better armed and generally in a group, and the single mugger will now take your wallet AND gun AND may shoot you if he gets the drop on you instead of just taking your wallet. > in a small town It shows. Your assessment of the probability of crime and how you will interact with it is completely wrong.
  - virmundi 10y ago
    Actually for the small town I'm in, muggings occur at night between 12 AM and 3AM. My office is down an unlit blind alley. As a result I carry a flashlight and a gun. Should be fairly good at defense. Also train to draw quickly for both. Light stuns; shot stops. For the gangbangers, they don't really like to involve civilians in a gun fight. They save that for only the most extreme circumstances in territory protection/expansion. Honestly, not too afraid of them. A woman would benefit from a revolver in that situation. That's what my wife carries: Ruger LCR. No hammer so easy to pull from a purse (which is carried crossed over her). If she can't pull from the purse, she'll fire within it (taking the flash burn over rape, for example). In this instance the revolver will operate without catching the purse like a semi-auto would. At that point, they'd most likely run given the noise and possible loss of their friend. As for the crazies, the point isn't to prevent them from being crazy by themselves. That's their right. It's to defend yourself if they turn that on you. When we go hiking, I carry a gun knowing the gators don't care. Doesn't mean it's useless.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    'bsder you seem pretty confident here, despite the fact that everything you've said contradicts what I've heard from LEOs and other trained firearms users.
uberduber 10y ago
This. The homeless crazy problem has gotten much worse with the introduction of spice. They were much more harmless before but now you don't know when one will just start stabbing you without warning. Also doesn't help that now everyone has expensive cell phones which attract thieves. Once I was telling my friend about how I saw a woman pass out and start seizing on the subway at 5pm on a weekday. I pressed the emergency call button and people were all staring daggers at me, how dare I delay the train. My friend then said he had the same experience at 11pm at night and he was worried about physical violence. It also doesn't help that the sheriffs only bother to stand at the turnstiles checking tickets and if you want to evade the fare, you just can just run.
- MrLeap 10y ago
  What's spice? I'm assuming you're not talking about the substance from Dune, but following up with knife combat makes me wonder a little. Quick googling says it can refer to synthetic weed. I struggle to imagine something like that turning people violent.
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    It's soaked in essentially arbitrary chemicals that really have nothing to do with weed and its negative correlation with violence.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  @MrLeap "Synthetic weed" is a misnomer. Spice/K2/etc. are plant material that has been soaked with one or more "research chemicals" in clandestine manufacturing facilities. The research chemicals are drawn from a pool of partially identified but poorly understood substances that have very little in common with cannabinoids. It's a crapshoot what chemical a spice user will end up ingesting and it may be a completely different compound than the last time they used the stuff.
wwweston 10y ago
> Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people This is pretty true. I'm an occasional metro/bus rider, and I'd guess I've been on more rides where there's someone with a clear mental health issue than rides without. And while most of those occasions it's benign, something everyone can ignore... for enough of them it's been intense enough people on the car/bus have been clearly uncomfortable and it wasn't clear confrontational behavior wasn't going to escalate into violence. I could imagine some people would decide never to ride again. Enforcement is probably only part of the puzzle, though. We have the same problem with other public spaces (say, libraries) because we don't have any coherent or effective policy for dealing with people who are suffering from mental illness. Perhaps not coincidentally, there's no straightforward market-based solution to that problem (to an even higher degree than traffic).
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  When the system is used mainly by society's outliers, this is what you see. When most everyone uses the bus/train/library, this problem - while still existing - is greatly reduced by having a very much lower outlier ratio.
piplgobde 10y ago
I have to agree with the homeless bit, ride on the red line and after a certain point it becomes a mobile homeless shelter. Have heard stories of the blue line, and I'm just glad I don't need to ride that one often at all. Sympathetic to those without a home, but it almost makes one want to never ride on the metro or bus again. Which is especially hard since I have no other means of transportation.

ghaff 10y ago

Almost no cities have 24 hour mass transit including many that are considered to have good transit systems. That's a very high bar you're setting.

_-__--- 10y ago
24hr service would be very expensive, but it seems that they should run the transit services until a little after the majority of bars and clubs close. It was nice here in Boston when they ran the T until a little past 2AM; they've since pulled that back to 12:30 or so. It can be kind of a pain, but Uber/Lyft are well established here.
- Rebelgecko 10y ago
  It's certainly usable for that in LA, where last call is also 2am. I believe every train runs until 2 or 3 AM (on Fridays/Saturdays), and starts back up again by 5. Not quite 24 hours(except on NYE, when they don't stop), but still very usable.
sampo 10y ago
It's pretty much enough to run some lines till 4am on Fridays and Saturdays, so people can go and party.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Because it's much more important to address the needs of late night partiers than nurses, convenience store clerks, and so forth who have work shifts at odd hours.

Apocryphon 10y ago

From a NorCal perspective, that is sad because BART stops around 12:30, seven days a week. But I suppose there are MUNI lines that run all night, which is slightly better.

vkou 10y ago

> Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people, or kind of thuggish people. There needs to be some sort of loitering code enforcement on the train along with more security. I feel uncomfortable as a dude, I bet women feel even more so. One of the ways to improve the public transit, as a whole, is to make people of all socioeconomic classes take transit. Consider New York, for instance, where millionaires are shoulder-to-shoulder with waiters, and homeless people on their commute... And it works surprisingly well. Until politically wealthy people have to deal with the problem, they won't support any solutions.

duderific 10y ago
Driving and parking in New York is so incredibly difficult and expensive compared to mass transit, especially the subway. In the cities where that is the case, there isn't the same class division between those who drive and those who take mass transit. In LA, it is exactly the opposite: mass transit is incredibly difficult, slow, and in some cases more expensive than driving. How can you "make people of all socioeconomic classes take transit" in that scenario?
- vkou 10y ago
  Tear up all the parking lots, and half the roads. Or, actually, just tear up the parking lots. You can do it by taxing under-utilized land. It's obviously never going to happen, so people will keep spending ~$3-5,000/year on vehicles, and ~$1,000-2000/year on parking, for the dubious privilege of spending up to two hours a day in traffic. On the bright side, if you live that far from work, your housing is probably cheap.
  - majormajor 10y ago
    > On the bright side, if you live that far from work, your housing is probably cheap. Yeah, your house probably cost ONLY 500k-1mil!
  - xienze 10y ago
    > On the bright side, if you live that far from work, your housing is probably cheap. And that's exactly why things are the way they are. Shockingly, given the choice, most people would happily trade a long commute for the ability to spread out and not pay through the nose for the privilege of being crammed on top of other people.

virmundi 10y ago

Better enforcement is a good idea. Seems to be worth the money. Or carry concealed permits. You'll have to repeal California's action that requires all new semi-auto's to have a unique firing pin. But then you don't have to worry traveling. I carry. I keep odd hours in a small town. I walk every night .25 miles to my office at 8 PM and then back again around 2 AM. Never had any problem (probably the same as most people on the train). If I do, I've got protection.

bsder 10y ago
> Or carry concealed permits. Um, no. The crazy people won't care, the gangbangers will be better armed and generally in a group, and the single mugger will now take your wallet AND gun AND may shoot you if he gets the drop on you instead of just taking your wallet. > in a small town It shows. Your assessment of the probability of crime and how you will interact with it is completely wrong.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Actually for the small town I'm in, muggings occur at night between 12 AM and 3AM. My office is down an unlit blind alley. As a result I carry a flashlight and a gun. Should be fairly good at defense. Also train to draw quickly for both. Light stuns; shot stops. For the gangbangers, they don't really like to involve civilians in a gun fight. They save that for only the most extreme circumstances in territory protection/expansion. Honestly, not too afraid of them. A woman would benefit from a revolver in that situation. That's what my wife carries: Ruger LCR. No hammer so easy to pull from a purse (which is carried crossed over her). If she can't pull from the purse, she'll fire within it (taking the flash burn over rape, for example). In this instance the revolver will operate without catching the purse like a semi-auto would. At that point, they'd most likely run given the noise and possible loss of their friend. As for the crazies, the point isn't to prevent them from being crazy by themselves. That's their right. It's to defend yourself if they turn that on you. When we go hiking, I carry a gun knowing the gators don't care. Doesn't mean it's useless.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  'bsder you seem pretty confident here, despite the fact that everything you've said contradicts what I've heard from LEOs and other trained firearms users.

uberduber 10y ago

This. The homeless crazy problem has gotten much worse with the introduction of spice. They were much more harmless before but now you don't know when one will just start stabbing you without warning. Also doesn't help that now everyone has expensive cell phones which attract thieves. Once I was telling my friend about how I saw a woman pass out and start seizing on the subway at 5pm on a weekday. I pressed the emergency call button and people were all staring daggers at me, how dare I delay the train. My friend then said he had the same experience at 11pm at night and he was worried about physical violence. It also doesn't help that the sheriffs only bother to stand at the turnstiles checking tickets and if you want to evade the fare, you just can just run.

MrLeap 10y ago
What's spice? I'm assuming you're not talking about the substance from Dune, but following up with knife combat makes me wonder a little. Quick googling says it can refer to synthetic weed. I struggle to imagine something like that turning people violent.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  It's soaked in essentially arbitrary chemicals that really have nothing to do with weed and its negative correlation with violence.
wavefunction 10y ago
@MrLeap "Synthetic weed" is a misnomer. Spice/K2/etc. are plant material that has been soaked with one or more "research chemicals" in clandestine manufacturing facilities. The research chemicals are drawn from a pool of partially identified but poorly understood substances that have very little in common with cannabinoids. It's a crapshoot what chemical a spice user will end up ingesting and it may be a completely different compound than the last time they used the stuff.

wwweston 10y ago

> Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people This is pretty true. I'm an occasional metro/bus rider, and I'd guess I've been on more rides where there's someone with a clear mental health issue than rides without. And while most of those occasions it's benign, something everyone can ignore... for enough of them it's been intense enough people on the car/bus have been clearly uncomfortable and it wasn't clear confrontational behavior wasn't going to escalate into violence. I could imagine some people would decide never to ride again. Enforcement is probably only part of the puzzle, though. We have the same problem with other public spaces (say, libraries) because we don't have any coherent or effective policy for dealing with people who are suffering from mental illness. Perhaps not coincidentally, there's no straightforward market-based solution to that problem (to an even higher degree than traffic).

robotresearcher 10y ago
When the system is used mainly by society's outliers, this is what you see. When most everyone uses the bus/train/library, this problem - while still existing - is greatly reduced by having a very much lower outlier ratio.

piplgobde 10y ago

I have to agree with the homeless bit, ride on the red line and after a certain point it becomes a mobile homeless shelter. Have heard stories of the blue line, and I'm just glad I don't need to ride that one often at all. Sympathetic to those without a home, but it almost makes one want to never ride on the metro or bus again. Which is especially hard since I have no other means of transportation.