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Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer
- donkey_brains 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- DiscourseFan 5mo agoIts actually part of the official marketing campaign around the new extension.
- kitsune1 5mo ago[dead]
- ETlol 5mo agoGod it's frustrating how slow making these rail transits has been. The D line was literally planned out back in the 1960s and it took this long? I understand the plethora of problems the engineers faced when completing this. But I find it funny that once the World Cup was planned to be in LA, that's when LA leadership expedited all the legal and corporate hurdles in order to make sure we don't have another carmagetton
- bradchris 5mo agoSome of this was covered in the article, but it’s not actually Los Angeles’ leadership’s fault (rare praise for a city I love and call home), it was shovel-ready and funded to be built in the 80s. Then there was a ballot measure due to ongoing construction problems of a separate line in the 80s that banned tunneling in Los Angeles. This wasn’t overturned until 2007! Then Beverly Hills (which is also not part of Los Angeles city government) fought this line for another 10 years, again with tunneling concerns, because they didn’t want it under them (not so fun fact, Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband, represented them). It went to the California Supreme Court and then the Federal Appeals Court, and finally, in 2017 was allowed to commence construction. Then Beverly Hills decided they wanted (and got) not one but TWO stops (and the only ones outside of downtown with turnstiles). Funny. An indictment of the state legal system’s slowness, yes (see CAHSR), but the city consistently has fought many of its own nimby residents, other cities, the state, and the United States trying to claw back funding for this for those 60 years. It would not have been built without generations of support from city leadership. So there is hope! With hundreds of miles funded and planned for or already under construction in the next two decades, the city’s rail future may be the brightest in the country.
- lapetitejort 5mo agoWhile all of this in happening, Metrolink, the rail service that connects LA, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, is having their own budget crisis manifesting in "temporary" reductions in service. More info: https://calelectricrail.org/metrolink-is-facing-service-cuts-take-action-now/ https://calelectricrail.org/metrolink-is-facing-service-cuts...
- bradchris 5mo agoMetrolink’s multi-county governance structure bums me out, as a majority of them are actively against expanding it, improving it, or even funding it. At least Metro has Los Angeles in control of a majority of the votes to squash any anti-transit shenanigans on what is supposed to be an organization tasked with expanding transit. Metrolink has no such mechanism to protect itself from the inside.
- euroderf 5mo agoI've lived in LA and I've lived in Scandinavia. And car life sucks. So good luck and Godspeed, Los Angeles.
- kitsune1 5mo ago[dead]
- NDlurker 5mo agoRide the D? Wow
- cmdoptesc 5mo agoThat's actually the official slogan by LA Metro: https://shop.metro.net/collections/ride-the-d https://shop.metro.net/collections/ride-the-d And someone even created a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_the_D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_the_D It's LA.
- NDlurker 5mo agoYeah, that's ridiculous
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5mo ago[flagged]
- eowln 5mo ago[flagged]
- alvah 5mo agoThere was a similar case in Seattle with the South Lake Union Trolley, which was quickly renamed to South Lake Union Streetcar, once T-shirts pointing out the unfortunate acronym started drawing attention. This one is clearly deliberate though.
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoChanging social norms with time. The dub the dew generation is now starting to actually have some pull and/or be worth pandering to. The millennials and younger rightfully think every organization and institution is a joke, don't think their words are worth anything, results matter, etc. Since words and names are of low value they don't have a stick up their ass about being SuperSerious(TM) with them like the boomers and older did. Give it a few years and some place with a name that starts with F will name their transit system FART.
- percentcer 5mo agoLos Angeles just needs buses that come through frequently enough to obviate the need to check the schedule. Also dynamic bus routing, which would reduce the total number of buses required for this.
- bobthepanda 5mo agoBuses have a fundamental speed issue that subways do not because subways do not stop at intersections for cross traffic. At LA's vast scale you need a subway, possibly even express subways.
- JLO64 5mo agoYou need both, but it's not exactly realistic to have metro lines everywhere. The west side is pretty dense and has a lot of commercial/business activity so the value per dollar is high. By comparison the east side is super spread out and has a low(er) residential density so the value is far lower. Not to mention a good chunk of the residents on the east side aren't in favor of metro lines in their neighborhood (the stalled Whittier extension of the E line). It's a pain for me personally since a group I'm involved with is active in the San Gabriel Valley and since I don't have a car I have to rely on buses. It's not an exaggeration when I say a trip for me that's 5 miles west would take double the amount of time east. I'm just glad the planned subway to Van Nuys and the San Fernando Valley up north seems to be going well.
- bobthepanda 5mo agoMetros can work with good feeder bus links; and Los Angeles has fairly frequent, if slow buses. LA has pretty much exhausted what it can do with good bus networks though.
- testfrequency 5mo agoLike most cities around the world it really varies by what route and time of day. There’s plenty of sub every 5m routes during peak hours.
- washingupliquid 5mo ago[flagged]
- vinckr 5mo agoComing from Germany I found it funny how tiny the subway lines are in major cities in the US compared to medium-sized cities here. I always thought Germany was a country centered a lot around cars but it was so much more extreme in the states; seemed not possible to live in a city(!) without a car.
- danielhep 5mo agoDepends on the city. In LA, yes it’s very hard to live without a car. I live in Seattle and I live car free as well as many of my friends. It’s not that we can’t afford it, we’ve just built our lives around transit and biking and the city is pretty good for it. Then of course there’s NYC, which is likely better than most European cities for transit. But you’re right that the average here is far far worse when it comes to transit and living car free or car lite.
- chung8123 5mo agoIn the states if you want to live car free you can but you need to be strategic in where you live within a city. I have lived in a few from east to west coast, suburbs to urban. By selecting your place in a city carefully you can go car free or mostly car free.
- jhbadger 5mo agoEven in LA it's quite possible to live without a car if you live in the right neigbhorhoods like K-Town or any other centrally located one where both the Metro and buses are plentiful. LA's a huge place with varying amounts of density.
- testfrequency 5mo agoThis. I’ve lived in both Seattle and LA. LA was significantly faster and easier to get to destinations than it ever was in Seattle. Unless you actually live in LA and use the transit, a lot of outsiders will always default to “LA transit bad” which is far from the reality.
- 5mo ago
- otterley 5mo agoAuthor delivers the lolz: “Friday’s grand opening was full of fanfare and big D energy.”
- ignoramous 5mo ago> lolz Well: "Ride the D" is a T-shirt and crop top design sold by the Los Angeles Metro ... "D" set inside a purple circle ... The slogan is a sexual innuendo, as "the D" is also slang for "the dick" ... The shirts ... have quickly gone viral ... sold out on February 27, 2026, just a day after launch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_the_D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_the_D