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denfromoakvillemilton

denfromoakvillemilton

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ded-los-angeles-built-transit/article2388661/

Denny Zane can pinpoint the moment when the famously heavy traffic in Los Angeles changed from slushy to solid. It was the summer of 2007, and the back-ups on the I-10, through the city’s west side, snaked back over 20 kilometres and reappeared day after day after day, with no obvious cause.

“Not just bad,” recalled Mr. Zane, an activist and a former local councillor, “but, like, ‘wow!’ It was the talk of the town. We’d crossed the threshold.”
Click to expand...

kkgg7 and I were talking about this. Los Angeles the ultimate car city, is building LRT, while Toronto just had a year long fight to approve something that had been started in 2007.
 
Don't just stop at 2007. The Sheppard line was stubified, and the Eglinton West line cancelled in the mid 90's. Transit experts have been in agreement for a long time that a relief is needed for Yonge/Bloor station yet has been ignored for years. Etc etc.
 
Los Angeles already has 5 operating lines, with a new expo line starting operating on April 28th. They have 79 stations, we have 69. Three more lines will be completed before 2016 and four more by 2020.
Their fare is $1.5, day pass $6, weekly pass $20, monthly $75.
It also seems Los Angeles treats students and the disabled a LOT better than we do here. Student monthly pass for $24 and disabled $14, while we only give 10% discount, almost nothing.

We can keep bloasting about "the third largest public transit in North America", which we all know is increasingly becoming a joke. I think it will be only a matter of time Toronto will be famous for having the worst AND most expensive transit sytem among major North Amercan cities and lose the position to laugh at LA when it comes to traffic (if we haven't already).
 
kkgg7 said:
Los Angeles already has 5 operating lines, with a new expo line starting operating on April 28th. They have 79 stations, we have 69. Three more lines will be completed before 2016 and four more by 2020.
Their fare is $1.5, day pass $6, weekly pass $20, monthly $75.
It also seems Los Angeles treats students and the disabled a LOT better than we do here. Student monthly pass for $24 and disabled $14, while we only give 10% discount, almost nothing.

We can keep bloasting about "the third largest public transit in North America", which we all know is increasingly becoming a joke. I think it will be only a matter of time Toronto will be famous for having the worst AND most expensive transit sytem among major North Amercan cities and lose the position to laugh at LA when it comes to traffic (if we haven't already).
Click to expand...

We lost the position last year. Imagine that. traffic in an area with 18 million people is not as bad as one with 6 million.

And Los Angeles only has 1 million people more in a spread out city proper area.
 
Los Angeles is far from ideal when it comes to transit expansion, but, by North American standards, they are doing impressive things. Foremost, the idiotic debate about what transit technology to use - which plagues Toronto and also plagues this discussion forum - is not something Angeleno transit planners waste their time with. LACMTA has utilized all transit modes wherever the demand warrants it:

- Express Buses with Premium Marketing (eg. Metro Rapid routes)
- True BRT (eg. Orange Line)
- Light Rail in the road median for medium-distance routes (eg. eastern leg of Gold Line, Expo line)
- Light Rail in grade separated ROW. or along rail corridor for long-distance routes (eg. Blue line, Green Line, northern extension of Gold line to Pasadena)
- Heavy Rail subway (along Wilshire corridor - LA's Yonge street - eventually expanding to Century City)

It also should be noted that LA Metro are better marketers. For example, they have the "15 minute service map", which may seem funny to Torontonians used to 5 minute service, but is a big deal in a city like LA, and it benefits from being separately mapped and identified. Their Metro Rapid bus is also separately marketed, like Viva or Zum.

---

One thing I've noticed lately is that the transit agencies making the biggest strides to improve service and expand rapid transit are located in Western Canada and the United States. When people talk about innovative transit operators in books and conferences, they usually cite Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Denver, Salt Lake City, etc. The traditional transit cities of Eastern Canada and the US Northeast are mired in incompetence, labour problems, organizational inertia, political interference and cost overruns.
 
Practically everywhere on this planet has adopted some sort of fare card, only we Torontonians are still stuck with our ancient tokens, debating forever about presto vs the stupid open payment. Who in the world need to pay fare using a cellphone? Many of us are on fixed-fee plans nowadays. When will presto be adopted system wide? Please don't tell me we need to wait until something like 2015 or 2020. Don't understand why such a simple thing takes so many years.

LA's transit is doing quite well compared with only 10 years ago, especially considering how cheap it is to own and operate a car there vs Toronto.
 
Hipster Duck said:
Los Angeles is far from ideal when it comes to transit expansion, but, by North American standards, they are doing impressive things. Foremost, the idiotic debate about what transit technology to use - which plagues Toronto and also plagues this discussion forum - is not something Angeleno transit planners waste their time with. LACMTA has utilized all transit modes wherever the demand warrants it:

- Express Buses with Premium Marketing (eg. Metro Rapid routes)
- True BRT (eg. Orange Line)
- Light Rail in the road median for medium-distance routes (eg. eastern leg of Gold Line, Expo line)
- Light Rail in grade separated ROW. or along rail corridor for long-distance routes (eg. Blue line, Green Line, northern extension of Gold line to Pasadena)
- Heavy Rail subway (along Wilshire corridor - LA's Yonge street - eventually expanding to Century City)
Click to expand...

Let me guess: all these are located in white neighbourhoods?
 
^Hardly. Most of LA is non-white, and most of the transit lines (especially the Rapid buses) are in minority neighbourhoods.

Note: Red = White; Blue = Black; Orange = hispanic; Green = Asian.

race-map-620x620.jpg
 
Hipster:

When people talk about innovative transit operators in books and conferences, they usually cite Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Denver, Salt Lake City, etc. The traditional transit cities of Eastern Canada and the US Northeast are mired in incompetence, labour problems, organizational inertia, political interference and cost overruns.
Click to expand...

Generally smaller population, little to no legacy mass transit systems and historical operators that is set on doing things in one way, "lowest hanging fruit" that hasn't already been picked, etc.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Hipster:

Generally smaller population, little to no legacy mass transit systems and historical operators that is set on doing things in one way, "lowest hanging fruit" that hasn't already been picked, etc.
Click to expand...

It's not quite clear. Are you offering those as excuses or as examples of the old excuses we always hear? Two of those are not even true and the other one is a summary of the whole problem that Hipster laments.
 
The trouble is in Los Angeles, the light rail network is tiny and not many people use it. Los Angeles needs a much bigger network including better coverage of suburban areas like Orange County and it needs to invest heavily into Metrolink commuter rail (which like GO Transit is a joke). Also it is highly likely that if more people start using these light rail lines that they will be overcrowded, because they have such a low capacity. Los Angeles will probably have to grade separate them (fortunately, several of Los Angeles' light rail lines are in freeway medians or rail corridors). The same is true in Toronto. The above ground sections of Eglinton/Sheppard/Finch LRT will have low capacity, and the sheer volumes of car traffic going across the north side of the city make me suspect that they could become overcrowded rapidly especially if the Greater Toronto Area grows a lot. The only obvious way to relieve Eglinton would be to buy the CP main line and run trains every 5 minutes if CP is willing to sell the line to GO (big if) and if this line also becomes overcrowded then replacing the Eglinton LRT sections with subway will be the only option. If city council were not short sighted and built elevated on Eglinton this would future proof the line to accommodate future growth and capacity would be much less likely to be an issue.
 
andrewpmk said:
The trouble is in Los Angeles, the light rail network is tiny and not many people use it. Los Angeles needs a much bigger network including better coverage of suburban areas like Orange County and it needs to invest heavily into Metrolink commuter rail (which like GO Transit is a joke). Also it is highly likely that if more people start using these light rail lines that they will be overcrowded, because they have such a low capacity. Los Angeles will probably have to grade separate them (fortunately, several of Los Angeles' light rail lines are in freeway medians or rail corridors). The same is true in Toronto. The above ground sections of Eglinton/Sheppard/Finch LRT will have low capacity, and the sheer volumes of car traffic going across the north side of the city make me suspect that they could become overcrowded rapidly especially if the Greater Toronto Area grows a lot. The only obvious way to relieve Eglinton would be to buy the CP main line and run trains every 5 minutes if CP is willing to sell the line to GO (big if) and if this line also becomes overcrowded then replacing the Eglinton LRT sections with subway will be the only option. If city council were not short sighted and built elevated on Eglinton this would future proof the line to accommodate future growth and capacity would be much less likely to be an issue.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems_by_ridership

4th in Daily boardings.
 
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