Urban Mass Transit Systems Of North America

LA has dense neighborhoods, and their rail system serves some of them well. But only some -- UCLA and Santa Monica, for instance, aren't served at all.
 
Ron Newman said:
LA has dense neighborhoods, and their rail system serves some of them well. But only some -- UCLA and Santa Monica, for instance, aren't served at all.
Click to expand...

but i'm curious if there are any that truly approach back bay or berklee in density.... i know santa monica is dense, but in a small lot/small building (ie detached s.f. or two story, <10 unit apartment block) kind of way

I don't know of any, but I sure picture them when I read Chandler, so this is a pure question on my part-- I've only been to LA a handful of times and don't really know it
 
Ron Newman said:
LA has dense neighborhoods, and their rail system serves some of them well. But only some -- UCLA and Santa Monica, for instance, aren't served at all.
Click to expand...

But unlike most other cities, they actually have plans to do that.

Gold line extension opened this year
Expo line part 1 opens next year
Expo line part 1.5 opens in 2011
Orange line extension opens in 2011

After that they have:
Downtown connector
Green line extension
Expo line phase 2 to Santa Monica
Purple line extension to the coast, via UCLA
New creekshaw line

All in the next 20 years.
 
Not that I want bad things to happen and Im glad LA is expanding their subway system. But I wonder how these subway lines will fare during earthquakes. I supose earthquakes can happen anywhere but they're far more frequent there.
 
GW2500 Who said LA will become a west coast NY? I said metro had 100 million riders, comprable to BART, and that areas of it are as dense as anything in Boston.

Your comment regarding Angelenos and public transportation is ignorant, please see this and other etries from Eric Morris.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.c...les-transportation-facts-and-fiction-transit/

Pierce some areas of LA you may want to visit: Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire, Westlake, East Hollywood, Echo Park, Koreatown, Boyle Heights, Pico-Union, South-Central.
The westside of Los Angeles (what everybody knows from TV, movies, visiting), home to UCLA and santa monica is not served by rail (but will be soon by the expo line). It is however not nearly as densely populated, and not the top priority at metro.
 
On earthquakes: I think the west coast systems are built to withstand an 8.0 - I wouldnt want to be in the trans-bay tunnel when the big one hits.
 
]Not that I want bad things to happen and Im glad LA is expanding their subway system. But I wonder how these subway lines will fare during earthquakes. I supose earthquakes can happen anywhere but they're far more frequent there.
Click to expand...

The technology exists. Look at Japan, which is far more earthquake prone than California, as well as thoroughly criss-crossed by trains and subways. While I was there this summer, we had a four day stretch in which Tokyo experienced three quakes in the 6.5-7 range. As a safety measure, the shinkansen does get shut down for inspection, but the great majority of the rail network stays running. Of course you have minor delays here and there, but those are no more surprising than those caused by suicides...

Certainly nothing devastating like 880 collapsing during Loma Prieta.

And with regard to LA in general - I'm sad to say I wasted a lot of time last night reading about their metro and expansion plans. It seems that the people who deride LA's system and those who defend it are both partially right. No one can deny that the determination shown by LA and it's leadership on the transit issue is impressive. Certainly the comparisons to the other sunbelt sprawlers will be totally unwarranted in 20 years. But on the other hand, even after the expansions are complete, it will still be a pathetic system given LA's stature and size. This is supposed to be the nation's second city, whose CSA population could overtake New York's in a few years, yet it's transit situation is so dire that boosters have taken to holding Boston's Green Line ridership as the measure of success. Seriously, I think skyscraperpage, et al. will explode the day LA's light rail ridership surpasses the Green Line. And if you think about it, that's kind of sad.
 
blade_bltz said:
This is supposed to be the nation's second city, whose CSA population could overtake New York's in a few years, yet it's transit situation is so dire that boosters have taken to holding Boston's Green Line ridership as the measure of success.
Click to expand...

This analysis only holds if population is the only factor in transit demand. The second-busiest transit system after New York in the United States is in Washington D.C. Washington is nowhere near as big as Chicago, yet that city's sizable transit system falls behind it.

You have to analyze not only population, but density, history (Boston's subway is the nation's first, and the communities which grew up around it are very used to using it), and culture. LA has a spread out population with spread out employment centers, and a culture which centers around freeways as transportation corridors.

There are few analogs to LA in the world (car-centric, low-density megalopolises), so it's hard to make a good judgment of LA among its peers. Boston, DC, and New York, however, simply are not its peers.
 
Equilibria said:
There are few analogs to LA in the world (car-centric, low-density megalopolises), so it's hard to make a good judgment of LA among its peers. Boston, DC, and New York, however, simply are not its peers.
Click to expand...

Sure there are. Phoenix, Houston, Dallas....


(And if you want to look abroad.....the chinese cities didnt get subways until this decade, and Brasilia has a subway but the city was designed so it would be useless)
 
Quite a few cities in the developing world sprawl just as wildly, if not worse, than LA (which developed with many streetcar suburbs and hence is less paradigmatic of a sprawling sunbelt city than Houston or Phoenix anyway). Low density and a higher degree of income segregation mean they're not likely to get mass transit anytime soon, and those that do will have highly inadequate systems that will primarily serve wealthy neighborhoods despite the need lying overwhelmingly with the poor. Dubai's new metro is a case in point.
 
I agree that Boston is not its pier - the LA region is far denser than metro Boston, Dallas or Atlanta.
 
a630 said:
I agree that Boston is not its pier - the LA region is far denser than metro Boston, Dallas or Atlanta.
Click to expand...

Not to get in a pissing match, but

city limits, yo.... Boston as a city is 1.5x as dense as LA. I suspect you are looking at "Greater Boston" numbers as metro area, which includes about half of New England, west to Worcester and North to Manchester. Adjusted for scale that would be akin to including Palm Springs or Bakersfield--and everything in between.

Boston is a poor comparison too because of its odd political divisions. Other areas that function as neighborhoods are technically other cities, but are numerically even denser than the city of Boston: Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, etc.

This is not too bicker, I know that LA is dense. Its overall density is a little higher than Brookline's, which is considerable.
 
Last edited:
@Equilibria - Yes, all of that must be acknowledged in a proper analysis. It's still striking that it took world-class LA until the 21st Century to even bother building a halfway decent transit system. Can our LA forumer explain what tourists have been doing for decades? (I honestly don't know).

I've been to SoCal twice...both times having driven down from other parts of California. I've never been to Hollywood and all of that nonsense. The rent-a-car companies must make an absolute killing down there.

@a630

As we've gone over many times here, dense California sprawl is still mostly autocentric. Low density Eastern Mass, on the other hand, is pretty well covered by commuter rail. Of course, that doesn't mean people use it. Maybe if service wasn't so craptastic...

@pierce

ARGGH if only (the real) Brookline could rid itself of friggin Sobro its density would skyrocket.

And to any old farts that are wondering...kids these days actually do say Sobro and Nobro. It's a thing.
 
blade_bltz said:
@Equilibria - Yes, all of that must be acknowledged in a proper analysis. It's still striking that it took world-class LA until the 21st Century to even bother building a halfway decent transit system. Can our LA forumer explain what tourists have been doing for decades? (I honestly don't know).

I've been to SoCal twice...both times having driven down from other parts of California. I've never been to Hollywood and all of that nonsense. The rent-a-car companies must make an absolute killing down there.
Click to expand...

They had a HUGE streetcar network, just like every other american city.

Tourists have, and continue to bring their own car or rent. Even now, with 5 lines, its very hard to tour LA without a car. Everything is just too far apart, so the 5 lines dont reach everywhere. Next year, the Coliseum and USC will be reachable by train, which will be nice. Now, you can survive without a car, but youll be losing half your day transferring amongst buses to get to and from.
 
Pierce: when you're talking about transit, you are necessarily talking about a metropolitan area - I've never seen estimates of transit share by city.
Blade Blitz: I know we've been over it before and people still just can't get away from a negative image and look at the facts about southern california, or look at anything at all, some comments are just dismissive.. I do my best out here to counter the image of MA (my home for 22 years on and off) as some woods with a dull preppy theme park/college town at one end, and I try to counter the image of LA on here. Neither view is informed.
 
a630 said:
Pierce: when you're talking about transit, you are necessarily talking about a metropolitan area - I've never seen estimates of transit share by city.
Click to expand...

very true, but when "greater boston" reaches far beyond the urbanized area or the reach of the public transit network it's not a valuable comparison.....

anyway, i love both cities, and i narrowly chose boston over LA for my current job.
 
Equilibria said:
The second-busiest transit system after New York in the United States is in Washington D.C. Washington is nowhere near as big as Chicago, yet that city's sizable transit system falls behind it.
Click to expand...

Although this may be true, I think D.C.'s system is a de-facto commuter rail/subway combo (language that Van referred to earlier). If you add in Chicago's very extensive commuter rail system and it's ridership, I think you would likely find many more riding the rails on a daily basis compared to D.C.
 
commuter guy said:
Although this may be true, I think D.C.'s system is a de-facto commuter rail/subway combo (language that Van referred to earlier). If you add in Chicago's very extensive commuter rail system and it's ridership, I think you would likely find many more riding the rails on a daily basis compared to D.C.
Click to expand...

But then for DC youd have to add VRA and MARC, which are actually commuter rail systems.
 
I agree, but Chicago's commuter rail system, METRA, is quite a bit larger than Boston's and is a significant part of the transit system in Chicago. I'm guessing the two rail lines in the D.C. area comprise an insignificant piece of the transit system ridership especially given D.C. Metro system which reaches into the suburbs with its many park and ride stations (think Braintree and Alewife).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top