6 ms·

This is all fine and good, but IMHO LA metro map says it all [1]. 6 lines. What a joke. This mega city should have light or heavy rail metro pretty much everywh

by crocal 7y ago

This is all fine and good, but IMHO LA metro map says it all [1]. 6 lines. What a joke. This mega city should have light or heavy rail metro pretty much everywhere. It's even better if there are parking lots in abundance. Park & Ride can be put into place more easily. So, it's obviously a political choice and I am not sure more regulation on parking will have any significant impact on this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail

emsy 7y ago
I'm from Germany and visited LA last month. I was riding the rail because we usually use public transportation when visiting other countries. We wanted to visit the walk of fame and it was a much nicer experience than hassling through the traffic in LA. The traffic is borderline insane. The diamond lane was almost empty because apparently everyone is driving in their own car. My wife and I were under the impression that only people who can't afford a car were driving the rail, but we don't know if that's true or not. The rail (and bus) was certainly a much saner choice than the car. I've never seen such a large city with such an underused public transportation. Meanwhile, you have 5 or 6 lanes running through the city, which makes the rail stops unbearably loud.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  I don't live in LA but the complaints I've heard from LA people is that the rail there only goes to places useful for tourists (they say it's a political showpiece)
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    I do live in LA, and the rail goes to places that are useful for locals, especially those who work. DTLA, K-Town, Long Beach, Hollywood, Universal City, North Hollywood, Culver City, Pasadena, and Santa Monica--i.e., the biggest job centers in the LA area--are all connected by light or heavy rail. Century City is the only major job center not currently connected by rail, but the heavy rail out to there is under construction and should be finished in 5-10 years. School-wise, USC, Cal State Long Beach, and Santa Monica College are already connected by rail; UCLA is part of the Century City rail expansion.
- NikolaNovak 7y ago
  Based on discussion with my cousin who lives in L.A. (I do not), it's a bit deceptive - public transit is great for few popular (touristy) spots; but it doesn't have a comprehensive enough grid to be that useful for locals living in distributed / random locations, going to places of work :| I live in Toronto where the subway is extremely limited in terms number of lines/paths, but at least they go to mostly the right places. Public transit is definitely a second-class-citizen, but subways going downtown are full, every day. The go-train also does a semi-passable job of enabling longer commutes... but we still have a LONG way to go. Unfortunately, each successive mayor has a completely different vision,and fights with the province to overturn the previous plan. At this point, had we picked any one option twenty years ago, even if sub-optimal, we would've had something. Ottawa seemed to do a better job with their LRT even though they had to make it through more layers of government (municipal, provincial, and national), but it's just been a lot quieter job. In Toronto, it's each mayor's main campaigning platform so it has to be a sensational proposal of "change" :-/
  - benj111 7y ago
    Talk of a grid seems to misunderstand how its usually done. Its normally a hub and spoke model. It could well be that the city is set up to require a grid type network, but that type of network may well be more expensive and may be the reason why there isn't good transit.
    - apendleton 7y ago
      Both kinds of layouts exist. Hub and spoke systems seem to be best suited to moving commuters from residential areas to commercial/employment areas and back, but aren't as good for city dwellers who want to get from one part of the city to another. Washington, DC has this problem in a pretty serious way: the Metro was built for suburban commuters, and lots of common origin/destination pairs within the city that are pretty inconvenient by metro because they involve circuitously passing through downtown. The system just wasn't designed with this use in mind. Contrast with Manhattan, which has multiple north/south and east/west lines and could reasonably be described as a grid. This is a system that's designed for people who will mostly get around by transit, rather than just doing so at rush hour when their car would get stuck in traffic.
- miguelmota 7y ago
  I recently visited Berlin Germany and was impressed by how literally everyone uses bicycles there.
  - roelschroeven 7y ago
    I once visited Berlin, and the tourist guide (I mean the book, not a person) also talked about how many bicycles there were. Thing is, I didn't think the number of bicycles was all that much different from what I was used to where I live (Antwerp, Belgium) or from visiting other European cities. Wait till you see Amsterdam or Kopenhagen!
    - dna_polymerase 7y ago
      Or Utrecht, for that matter. In those cities riding the bike actually viable because there are bike lanes or closed down streets just for walking or bikes. It seems to be a cultural thing, most US cities are not that bike friendly.
    - miguelmota 7y ago
      I was coming from Los Angeles where bicycle usage is a rarity so it was something I wasn't used to seeing!
  - davedx 7y ago
    I visited Berlin this year and was disappointed at how we encountered 0 cycle lanes in the city. I work in Amsterdam so I'm spoiled, but my impression is that even London is better than Berlin for cycling. Maybe this is incorrect though, it's only based on one visit. The metro in Berlin was pretty decent though.
    - carlob 7y ago
      > The metro in Berlin was pretty decent though. Crazy expensive compared to the cost of living though. One subway ride costs almost as much as a cheap meal (döner for example) and often more than a pint of beer. Contrast that with Paris where a subway ticket hardly gets you a coffee at the counter.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I am German living in LA. When I lived in Munich and Stuttgart usually travel times with S-Bahn or U-Bahn were pretty competitive and I could get to most places without problems. In LA the network is not dense enough so for a lot of places you have to choose between one hour in the car or 3 hours on 5 different buses. It also doesn't help that the houses are very spread out so distances are much longer compared to Munich for example. But in the end Americans on average don't believe in spending money on public services in a systematic way. They build a light rail here, a high speed train there, at great expense but without any kind of systems thinking. Then they are surprised that the system doesn't get used which confirms the view that public spending is a waste. I have no idea how to get out of that cycle other than a much more wide spread adoption of remote work maybe. Self driving cars will make things just worse because they make even longer commutes possible and sitting in traffic won't be as stressful for the driver.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >They build a light rail here, a high speed train there, at great expense but without any kind of systems thinking. This isn't exactly true. It's true if you take the "high speed" out; we don't actually have any high-speed trains in America, not really. We have some pretty lame and slow trains, and that's about it. But that's a nit-pick; your post is mostly spot-on about Americans. I've been to Munich, BTW, and the public transit there is fantastic. All the elevated bike lanes are really nice too. Why on earth would you leave such a nice city for LA anyway? If I had to get a new job tomorrow, and I had my choice of working in LA or Munich, I sure as hell wouldn't pick LA!
jvanderbot 7y ago
Yes. LA has rail that will get you downtown and to Hollywood. As a commuting replacement, its abysmal. To get to work, the rail is never quicker than just driving, even on bad days. Ive lived close and far, and it never made sense from a time or sanity perspective vs just leaving 35 minutes earlier. Abolishing parking will never happen in LA, because that would force people to get off the roads. It's a car culture here. Also, its a good idea .. everyone in my building seems to buy their porche or audi and park it in the middle of their allocated two parking spots in the ramp below the apartments.
- NPMaxwell 7y ago
  Culture changes. One day when I was growing up, someone said, "Hey dog owners, pick up your dog's poop." Insane. No is going to wrap their hand around a bag of hot poop. That's just not who we are. It was crazy. It's still crazy.
  - cj 7y ago
    In case anyone else is interested, I did some quick googling and found this article: http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/the-messy-history-of-poop-scooping http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/the-messy-history-o... Apparently picking up your dog's poop (at least in New York City) was not a well known concept until the 1970's.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      In Munich it was pretty unknown in the 90s.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
CalRobert 7y ago
LA has a good rail system on top of a crappy city. You could put the Tube in LA and it wouldn't go where you needed to go because everything in LA is ten times further away than it should be. It's mostly asphalt.
gamblor956 7y ago
LA has bus lines covering nearly the entire county. With the exception of a few bus lines, usage is not heavy enough to justify the billions it would cost to build light or heavy rail along those lines. Where bus use is sufficiently heavy, Metro is planning (or is already building) rail lines to be constructed over the next 40 years as funding permits.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Buses are unbelievably slow. Every where I've ever lived, I've looked at the commute difference by car, bike and bus. Buses are universally the slowest option. In the most egregious case I recall, my commute from home to my university (in SoCal, but not LA) was 20-40 minutes by car depending on traffic and ~3 HOURS by bus.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I don't live in a big city like LA, but that's basically in line with my experience - buses go most of the places I want to go, but a 15 minute drive equates to about an hour on the bus. In theory, that 10 mile trip that's $3 by bus, costs over $6 by car, based on the IRS rate, but a lot of the cost of a car is fixed even if I were to ride the bus 90% of the time.
summerlight 7y ago
https://imgur.com/a/1PrSPw9 https://imgur.com/a/1PrSPw9 (1985's Seoul metro) https://imgur.com/a/7YHMAZa https://imgur.com/a/7YHMAZa (2015's Seoul metro) Compared to 80's Seoul, LA metro's coverage doesn't seem very bad. Give it some time while heavily disincentivizing use of cars. At least, LA has a central public authority on mass transit for 10 millions, which is a much better situation than bay.

by crocal 7y ago

emsy 7y ago

I'm from Germany and visited LA last month. I was riding the rail because we usually use public transportation when visiting other countries. We wanted to visit the walk of fame and it was a much nicer experience than hassling through the traffic in LA. The traffic is borderline insane. The diamond lane was almost empty because apparently everyone is driving in their own car. My wife and I were under the impression that only people who can't afford a car were driving the rail, but we don't know if that's true or not. The rail (and bus) was certainly a much saner choice than the car. I've never seen such a large city with such an underused public transportation. Meanwhile, you have 5 or 6 lanes running through the city, which makes the rail stops unbearably loud.

kalleboo 7y ago
I don't live in LA but the complaints I've heard from LA people is that the rail there only goes to places useful for tourists (they say it's a political showpiece)
- gamblor956 7y ago
  I do live in LA, and the rail goes to places that are useful for locals, especially those who work. DTLA, K-Town, Long Beach, Hollywood, Universal City, North Hollywood, Culver City, Pasadena, and Santa Monica--i.e., the biggest job centers in the LA area--are all connected by light or heavy rail. Century City is the only major job center not currently connected by rail, but the heavy rail out to there is under construction and should be finished in 5-10 years. School-wise, USC, Cal State Long Beach, and Santa Monica College are already connected by rail; UCLA is part of the Century City rail expansion.
NikolaNovak 7y ago
Based on discussion with my cousin who lives in L.A. (I do not), it's a bit deceptive - public transit is great for few popular (touristy) spots; but it doesn't have a comprehensive enough grid to be that useful for locals living in distributed / random locations, going to places of work :| I live in Toronto where the subway is extremely limited in terms number of lines/paths, but at least they go to mostly the right places. Public transit is definitely a second-class-citizen, but subways going downtown are full, every day. The go-train also does a semi-passable job of enabling longer commutes... but we still have a LONG way to go. Unfortunately, each successive mayor has a completely different vision,and fights with the province to overturn the previous plan. At this point, had we picked any one option twenty years ago, even if sub-optimal, we would've had something. Ottawa seemed to do a better job with their LRT even though they had to make it through more layers of government (municipal, provincial, and national), but it's just been a lot quieter job. In Toronto, it's each mayor's main campaigning platform so it has to be a sensational proposal of "change" :-/
- benj111 7y ago
  Talk of a grid seems to misunderstand how its usually done. Its normally a hub and spoke model. It could well be that the city is set up to require a grid type network, but that type of network may well be more expensive and may be the reason why there isn't good transit.
  - apendleton 7y ago
    Both kinds of layouts exist. Hub and spoke systems seem to be best suited to moving commuters from residential areas to commercial/employment areas and back, but aren't as good for city dwellers who want to get from one part of the city to another. Washington, DC has this problem in a pretty serious way: the Metro was built for suburban commuters, and lots of common origin/destination pairs within the city that are pretty inconvenient by metro because they involve circuitously passing through downtown. The system just wasn't designed with this use in mind. Contrast with Manhattan, which has multiple north/south and east/west lines and could reasonably be described as a grid. This is a system that's designed for people who will mostly get around by transit, rather than just doing so at rush hour when their car would get stuck in traffic.
miguelmota 7y ago
I recently visited Berlin Germany and was impressed by how literally everyone uses bicycles there.
- roelschroeven 7y ago
  I once visited Berlin, and the tourist guide (I mean the book, not a person) also talked about how many bicycles there were. Thing is, I didn't think the number of bicycles was all that much different from what I was used to where I live (Antwerp, Belgium) or from visiting other European cities. Wait till you see Amsterdam or Kopenhagen!
  - dna_polymerase 7y ago
    Or Utrecht, for that matter. In those cities riding the bike actually viable because there are bike lanes or closed down streets just for walking or bikes. It seems to be a cultural thing, most US cities are not that bike friendly.
  - miguelmota 7y ago
    I was coming from Los Angeles where bicycle usage is a rarity so it was something I wasn't used to seeing!
- davedx 7y ago
  I visited Berlin this year and was disappointed at how we encountered 0 cycle lanes in the city. I work in Amsterdam so I'm spoiled, but my impression is that even London is better than Berlin for cycling. Maybe this is incorrect though, it's only based on one visit. The metro in Berlin was pretty decent though.
  - carlob 7y ago
    > The metro in Berlin was pretty decent though. Crazy expensive compared to the cost of living though. One subway ride costs almost as much as a cheap meal (döner for example) and often more than a pint of beer. Contrast that with Paris where a subway ticket hardly gets you a coffee at the counter.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I am German living in LA. When I lived in Munich and Stuttgart usually travel times with S-Bahn or U-Bahn were pretty competitive and I could get to most places without problems. In LA the network is not dense enough so for a lot of places you have to choose between one hour in the car or 3 hours on 5 different buses. It also doesn't help that the houses are very spread out so distances are much longer compared to Munich for example. But in the end Americans on average don't believe in spending money on public services in a systematic way. They build a light rail here, a high speed train there, at great expense but without any kind of systems thinking. Then they are surprised that the system doesn't get used which confirms the view that public spending is a waste. I have no idea how to get out of that cycle other than a much more wide spread adoption of remote work maybe. Self driving cars will make things just worse because they make even longer commutes possible and sitting in traffic won't be as stressful for the driver.
- magduf 7y ago
  >They build a light rail here, a high speed train there, at great expense but without any kind of systems thinking. This isn't exactly true. It's true if you take the "high speed" out; we don't actually have any high-speed trains in America, not really. We have some pretty lame and slow trains, and that's about it. But that's a nit-pick; your post is mostly spot-on about Americans. I've been to Munich, BTW, and the public transit there is fantastic. All the elevated bike lanes are really nice too. Why on earth would you leave such a nice city for LA anyway? If I had to get a new job tomorrow, and I had my choice of working in LA or Munich, I sure as hell wouldn't pick LA!

jvanderbot 7y ago

Yes. LA has rail that will get you downtown and to Hollywood. As a commuting replacement, its abysmal. To get to work, the rail is never quicker than just driving, even on bad days. Ive lived close and far, and it never made sense from a time or sanity perspective vs just leaving 35 minutes earlier. Abolishing parking will never happen in LA, because that would force people to get off the roads. It's a car culture here. Also, its a good idea .. everyone in my building seems to buy their porche or audi and park it in the middle of their allocated two parking spots in the ramp below the apartments.

NPMaxwell 7y ago
Culture changes. One day when I was growing up, someone said, "Hey dog owners, pick up your dog's poop." Insane. No is going to wrap their hand around a bag of hot poop. That's just not who we are. It was crazy. It's still crazy.
- cj 7y ago
  In case anyone else is interested, I did some quick googling and found this article: http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/the-messy-history-of-poop-scooping http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/the-messy-history-o... Apparently picking up your dog's poop (at least in New York City) was not a well known concept until the 1970's.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    In Munich it was pretty unknown in the 90s.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

CalRobert 7y ago

LA has a good rail system on top of a crappy city. You could put the Tube in LA and it wouldn't go where you needed to go because everything in LA is ten times further away than it should be. It's mostly asphalt.

gamblor956 7y ago

LA has bus lines covering nearly the entire county. With the exception of a few bus lines, usage is not heavy enough to justify the billions it would cost to build light or heavy rail along those lines. Where bus use is sufficiently heavy, Metro is planning (or is already building) rail lines to be constructed over the next 40 years as funding permits.

0xffff2 7y ago
Buses are unbelievably slow. Every where I've ever lived, I've looked at the commute difference by car, bike and bus. Buses are universally the slowest option. In the most egregious case I recall, my commute from home to my university (in SoCal, but not LA) was 20-40 minutes by car depending on traffic and ~3 HOURS by bus.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I don't live in a big city like LA, but that's basically in line with my experience - buses go most of the places I want to go, but a 15 minute drive equates to about an hour on the bus. In theory, that 10 mile trip that's $3 by bus, costs over $6 by car, based on the IRS rate, but a lot of the cost of a car is fixed even if I were to ride the bus 90% of the time.

summerlight 7y ago

https://imgur.com/a/1PrSPw9 https://imgur.com/a/1PrSPw9 (1985's Seoul metro) https://imgur.com/a/7YHMAZa https://imgur.com/a/7YHMAZa (2015's Seoul metro) Compared to 80's Seoul, LA metro's coverage doesn't seem very bad. Give it some time while heavily disincentivizing use of cars. At least, LA has a central public authority on mass transit for 10 millions, which is a much better situation than bay.