I think the premise of the article is nonsense. If I'm reading the chart correctly, rail trips have steadily increased since the city started building it. And

I think the premise of the article is nonsense. If I'm reading the chart correctly, rail trips have steadily increased since the city started building it. And that's with only 110 miles of track, which seems absurd for a city the size of LA. For comparison, Denver's RTD has 90 miles of track, and I know from living there that it's not nearly enough. People would love to take it, but it's such a limited deployment most of the time they can't. We've even voted for tax increases to build track between Denver and Boulder, but RTD and the other government agencies are dragging their feet. So the voter behavior seems completely logical to me. People want to use transit, but they can't until it's built up.