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.
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" :-/
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.
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.
If your city grew up around the car, there was never a need to centralise, so now you need a grid to service that.
Manhattan may well be a special case where the density and numbers would allow anything to work, if you were designing from scratch for mass transit I don't think grid would be the way to go though.
LA is so spread out it really needs a grid.
Bus lines going to/from major job centers like K-town, Century City, DTLA, Hollywood, Culver City, and Long Beach are also packed during the commute.
Wait till you see Amsterdam or Kopenhagen!
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.
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.
Copenhagen and Amsterdam are much more impressive IMHO.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Apparently picking up your dog's poop (at least in New York City) was not a well known concept until the 1970's.