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Mmmm I think you're being overly and ineffectively critical. LA is a gigantic sprawl, digging is complicated by things like, say, the La Brea Tar pits and NIMBY-like stuff, and most of the new rail IS on a grade-seperated medium. San Fernando Valley has dedicated streets for busses, the LAX connector is a serious and immediate part of the plan, and if memory serves the connection to Santa Monica was ultimately finished years ahead of schedule.

Yes, the lack of express lines is a serious issue.

Quite frankly, the LA metro system is admirable failing at a nearly impossible task. It's just too spread out here for the usual set ups to work.

Ironically, part of the spread comes from the original LA transit system. You should look up a map sometime, it's really illuminating.

Decentralization is a good thing for a comprehensive transit system. One major issue that most cities have is that everybody goes to the same place every morning and leaves in the evening. That means you have incredible amounts of crowding for four hours per day in only one direction. It leads to an immense amount of overcapacity. If you have multiple job centers, it allows better use of existing stock.

Additionally, LA is the densest metro area in the US.

What's your definition of "densest" here? What's the actual metric?

Also, what's the definition of "LA metro area"? Los Angeles County? Ignoring, say, Orange County, and the parts of San Bernardino County and Riverside County that are relevant to solving the actual commuter problems of the LA basin?

LA is not the densest metro area in the US. It is New York City by far.

But this comment got me curious, maybe I'm missing something. This article shows that LA is pretty close to NYC in terms of average density. But NYC is still more dense.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/10/americas-truly-denses...

Even that analysis is flawed as they base things on distance from city hall. In LA, that would be in a low population area.

Anyhow, it’s always good to remember that NYC is not just Manhattan.

One issue is that "Los Angeles" in the popular mind is far larger than the literal city. A lot of the actual city, like Downtown and K-town are extremely dense and are quite walkable as well as covered well by public transit. It's just that a lot of the outlying areas and suburbs aren't.

> They tell people to use public transit, but fail to recognize that it takes 2 to 3 hours to get anywhere useful with it.

I used to live in Los Angeles (Westside) and I found this to be true. The bus system has excellent coverage but that often meant that buses stop frequently. A relatively short 7 mile trip could take 35 minutes or more at times. That's 5 minutes per mile, which is a good running pace but a rather poor pace if you must travel a longer distance.

I used the light rail occasionally (the Expo Line) and I too found it underwhelming. The headways were long, often 15 or 30 minutes. The trains had only 2 cars and were often crowded. Heavy rail moves a lot more people much more quickly, with its own right-of-way too. I would have preferred LA going the heavy rail option, but they appear to be mostly investing in light rail (with the exception of the much needed Purple line extension).

Light rail can work; many European tram systems are very effective. Needs proper planning, tho. I was amazed by the article saying that a station is under 1k passengers per day. Dublin doesn’t exactly have a well-regarded transport system, but I don’t think any of our tram stops do that few.

> I used the light rail occasionally (the Expo Line) and I too found it underwhelming. The headways were long, often 15 or 30 minutes. The trains had only 2 cars and were often crowded.

This was the case in the past. Expo line trains are now typically 3 cars, and come every 6-12 minutes.

It can still get crowded during rush hour, but otherwise has plenty of room.

There’s actually a lot of NIMBYism around public transit in LA as well though. Before I moved out of Eagle Rock, the transit authority was looking at putting in an express bus lane. On apps like Nextdoor and at development meetings, there were hordes of wealthy homeowners screaming about how it would destroy the “character of the neighborhood,” bring in too many poor people, and somehow, strangely, worsen traffic.

I imagine it’s hard to do transit well in a city where a lot of people are trying to use their single family homes as an outsized, speculative investment asset.

“where a lot of people are trying to use their single family homes as an outsized, speculative investment asset”

Wouldn’t that be pretty much every city in America with a sizable middle class?

Key word being “outsized.” Prop 13 (among other issues) has turned real estate in LA to sheer insanity relative to the age and quality of the housing stock.

So much easier to gentrify a neighborhood when you price it up and cause the original residents to pay the same tax as the new neighbors.

yes, which is why building housing and transit has become a nationwide failure

I still live there. My 14 year old daughter was one of the ones arguing against these NIMBY homeowners at those meetings, because that bus line would connect directly to her high school.

My view is that it will take time on the order of 1-3 decades for housing to densify around major arterials where this mass transit will run. At that point, it will “go somewhere people want to go.” You can see it happening in Pasadena.

It’s too many compromises. Metro refuses to build subway stations by anything other than cut-and-cover, which means we end up with this massive stations with 20’ ceilings that cost way too much.

There’s also too much backlash from the population for any kind of transit. The local zeitgeist still hasn’t accepted the need.

I agree that Metro has been making lots of mistakes. But I also am grateful that they are at least TRYING despite the incredible opposition they face. And while right now the train lines are still kind of useless, they also recognize the need to improve the last mile infrastructure; Metro is generally favorable of scooters and bike docks for example, and they are revamping the bus lines.

Who knows, maybe it was a lost cause. I hope they can figure it out!

> Metro refuses to build subway stations by anything other than cut-and-cover, which means we end up with this massive stations with 20’ ceilings that cost way too much.

Isn't this the cheapest way to build stations?

Yes, it is less than half the cost of alternative methods.

> it takes 2 to 3 hours to get anywhere useful with it

Everyone's definition of "useful" is different. I personally run into far fewer last-mile issues with Metro Rail than I did with BART when I lived up north. Heck, BART had to run a bus service to OAK until just a few years ago, and they've had a lot more time to sort this out.

> They squandered a huge opportunity to do it right, to dig subways and put the rail on a grade-separated medium. Instead they opt for light-rail that shares the same surface roads as cars, thereby ensuring that the system is a failure.

No, they did dig subways where needed (and where geologically feasible). And they opted to use existing right-of-ways in other areas, so that the thing could actually get built. Look at the Gold Line going through South Pasadena; it cuts diagonally through a fairly dense, wealthy residential area, which it can do because the neighborhood was built up around tracks that were there long ago. Without that existing right-of-way, the whole line would have gone the way of the 710 connector.

Pretty much everything you just said is wrong.

2 hours is more than the transit time from Santa Monica to Pasadena, including worst case wait for a transfer. For comparison, most of the day that same trip by car is 2 hours, and 3 to 4 hours during rush hour.

The Expo Line (E line) already exceeds expected ridership. Tens of thousands use the E, red, gold, and purple lines for their daily commutes.

Light rail was chosen for the 3 longest lines because it is literally less than a tenth of the cost that subways along the same routes would have cost (you're talking almost 100 miles of tunneling, not including the costs of underground stations, or the years of work moving utility lines so you can even start digging.

Quite frankly, the system works as well as it can in a city dominated by cars. And it's getting better all the time.

> They built light rail that nobody can use, because it doesn’t go to where people need to go.

A friend of mine spent some time in LA. He remarked that transit took you to other transit and not much else. Having only flown through LA once, I have no other direct context.

Is his assessment fair?