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Living in Los Angeles, it’s almost impossible not to own a car, and spend countless hours sitting in traffic. Once upon a time, we had a streetcar system with almost 600 miles of operating track laid down, but that’s a story for another day. Currently, public transportation consists of buses that move only at the speed of often-gridlocked traffic, and the subway system that has been painstakingly slow in its development since the opening of the first line in 1990. There are a handful of places you can go on the subway, but not enough to rely upon it exclusively. And rail service ends at midnight, making it less than a viable option for going out at night.
| The underwhelming breadth of the current subway system is visible in the map to the right. Expansion is on everyone’s minds right now, as in the past week, there has been news of progress on the proposed “Subway to the Sea”– a line that would run from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica, hopefully alleviating some of the outrageous everyday traffic on the west side. But funding is still an issue, so who knows when I’ll be able to make it out to the beach just by hopping on the Gold Line.
While city hall inches forward, the Internet is rife with more ambitious ideas. The map at the top of this post is a small section of a proposed transportation project called Get L.A. Moving. It’s a brilliant plan that imagines Los Angeles with a subway system that goes everywhere, much like New York, Paris, and many of the other well-planned cities of the world. |
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The current L.A. subway system. Click for a larger view. |
Others think we need streetcars downtown, or a monorail to the sea– even Ray Bradbury thinks so! Something’s got to happen, that’s for sure… by 2050, the Southern California population is supposed to have increased by 60%. Check out MetroRiderLA for everything you could possibly want to know about public transportaion issues in L.A. LAist also has consistently great coverage on the ever-changing developments.
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That proposed map has me fuckin’ DROOLING.
nice.
The problem has always been about the money. Of course L.A. can’t make a decent return on major investments in it’s public transport, because they never address the primary reasons why folks don’t ride in the first place.
The average Angelino loves their private space. We move in cliques, and generally keep to ourselves when we’re alone. Compare that to an average New Yorker, where the population is dence and people learn how to move as one. Having said that, the worst and most important reason as to why people don’t use it is because of the perception that they’ll have to sit next to a smelly poor/crazy person. Angelinos love their little automotive pod environment. Angelinos need to learn how to use public transportation, in order for them to start using it.
But what incentive is there when, as mentioned, when it mostly moves at the speed of traffic or slower? People will really want to ride the damn train when they can beat their auto-bound co-workers to the office. But… ugh!
Say, today, you lived in Burbank and wanted to use the Metro to go to Santa Monica for work. Thr trip would be something like… Wait 10 minutes at 6:30am, arrive at metrolink station at 7. 7:15, you hop on the metrolink to downtown. 7:45, arrive. Walk to the bus stop and take the 333 at 8… oopps, you missed it… 8:20, take the bus to Santa Monica… Bus is over crowed…. Get to Santa Monica at 9:15… walk in to work at 9:30. That trip took you 3 hours. A car would take an hour durring traffic. I shit you not! That’s exactly how it would be!
Smelly and slow moving IS NOT an incentive for most people.
You bring up good points John. One major problem is that people live in Burbank and work in Santa Monica! That’s a distance of about 26 miles! No where on earth, even New York City, is a 26 mile trip on a mass transit bus going to be anything but slow. Los Angeles needs to densify and develop a true core where you don’t have to travel 26 miles each way to go to work. Did you know that in New York to go from NYU to Central Park, both on Manhattan, takes 17 minutes on the subway? That’s a distance of 3.5 miles. To go from Downtown Los Angeles to Hollywood/Highland on the Red Line takes 12 minutes, for a distance of over 9 miles. Our trains are fast and effective, we just need to bring density in both jobs and residences to our urban core served by rapid transit. Burbank to Santa Monica is never going to work. And sure it’s takes long by bus now, but in 10 years the car commute is going to be dreadfully long as well (not that going 26mph is really a great speed in car anyhow).