The Yellow Cars, the city streetcars that served central LA, did eventually become an NCL property. But NCL kept streetcars on five of the lines until the system was under public ownership in 1963.
The Southland’s interurban system was the Red Cars of Pacific Electric. NCL never had anything to do with that system.
The problem is that Metrolink figured out it could have a whole bunch of money right now if it took the trains that it owned, sold them, then leased them back (and the people who did the leasing arrangement could also make a whole bunch of money). Then the economy turned and Metrolink has started missing lease payments, which means it’s started to lose its trains.
It’s great that a lot more track and stuff is going in, but we already don’t have enough money to pay for the trains we (don’t) already have (since they were stupidly sold off). More track is probably nice, but it sure seems like a waste of money if we aren’t going to be using it for enough years that it’s going to need to be replaced anyway by the time we get around to it.
The same thing is about to happen in Sacramento, where a lot of state-government-owned buildings were recently sold off then leased back.
Which problem in particular are you referring to? That’s a pretty common thing for transit companies to do, and I think stimulus money helped to avoid large service cut-backs.
Is it just me or does that chart leave out New York City’s subway system? Does that not qualify as Light Rail for some reason?
The Subway isn’t a light rail system. It’s considered a heavy rail system, and its weekday ridership is over 7,000,000 per day which blows all of the others out of the water.
A light rail system is between a street car system and a heavy rail system like a subway or El.
Light rails have their own right-of-way, but may cross streets on car level and may have pedestrians crossing their right-of-way. They tend to be single cars or double cars (not like the NY Subway which can have 10 or more cars).
The problem with public transit in LA is that the system is very confusing. Even long time residents have trouble with it. Chicago is laid out on a rigid grid system, and buses can usually do their entire run on a single street. This makes it very easy. Want to travel down 51st? Take the bus that goes down 51st street. No surprises. Not so in LA. The buses turn this way and that and seldom stay on one street for long. If you don’t know the system, you are likely to get hopelessly lost. Even the bus drivers are clueless, if you ask them where to connect to another line, they often have no idea.
Take a look at one of the routes that I use, the 94. While it does travel in one general direction, note how it zigs and zags and seldom stays on one street for long.
Add in the fact that some bus routes run quite often, while others have very infrequent service, that some lines run all night and others shut down at 8 pm, and you have a recipe for disaster. The bus that got you there in the morning might not be running when you try to make your return trip in the evening. Then you are in for an expensive cab ride, which could easily cost as much as renting a car for several days.
You are already spending a lot to get to LA, for your hotel, eating out, and other expenses, why would you want to spend your limited time on a bus that will eat up most of your day when you would rather be at Universal Studios? You can rent an economy car for $39 a day and dispense with all that. Make sure it has nav or bring your Garmin.
Probably not; most of the popular tourist areas still aren’t reachable by rapid transit of any kind–the beaches for example. When the Expo LIne is fully operable, this will change somewhat, and it will improve more when the Purple Line reaches Westwood.
On the other hand, if you’re not a beach person, you could conceivably work out a trip here and see plenty of stuff you can reach either by local rail, or by Amtrak. For instance, the San Diego Zoo is a nice day trip via Amtrak. Your experience would be a lot of fun if not exactly typical.
Stranger, the Blue line does run on shared streets for the last mile or two before it reaches 7th Street downtown.
Oddly enough I’ve been reading a historical novel set in early 19th Century New York, and it’s startling how much NYC at that time resembled early 20th Century L.A. Wealthier residents kept moving uptown into areas that had formerly been beanfields or the like. Older areas downtown, such as Cherry Street where George WAshington had lived, became filthy, overcrowded, and crime-ridden. At the end of the century, when Manhattan was mostly developed, they started building subways. Which is about where L.A. seems to be now.
And in Long Beach.
Interesting point. I think just about every large city which began before the 20th century has behaved like this. Los Angeles, however, is actually two cities in this regard. The one which developed before the dominance of cars (around downtown), and which changed in the way you describe New York (CF the Jewish population going from East L.A., to Silver Lake, and then to Fairfax) and then the rest of L.A. that expanded, developed, got filled in haphazardly and gelled together almost because of cars. (That is, the expansion of these areas was to a large degree due to the new form of transportation, and not vice versa as in New York.) Parts of Pico Union or even Wilshire Center don’t look that much different from many parts of Manhattan. On the other hand, places like Santa Monica in LA County and Ocean Beach in San Diego County started off as distinct places of refuge from “the city”–they were called “resorts.” Now they’re just the far end of one continuum which most people regard as one big city. I think–correct me if I’m wrong–Cony Island was always a diversionary day-trip. In contrast, Santa Monica and Malibu originally were developed as escapes to very separate places–often overnight.
This is correct to a point. For those with the means, it was quite common to have your main residence downtown near your business along with a summer house in Santa Monica, which might not even be a beach house, but just a nice place in that town. The early film stars followed this pattern in the 1910s and 20s, living in or around Hollywood or the Hollywood Hills, but also maintaining a separate beach house. IIRC Marion Davies, for example, had a beach place not far from where the Santa Monica Freeway turns into PCH.
On the other hand, once there was some sort of rail transit to Santa Monica and points north was available, I doubt that people in town considered it an overnight trip. Undoubtedly it took some time to ride out there, but presumably you just got up early and did it.
True enough. In recent years, many of the bus routes have been realigned to reach transit stations, and in some cases to end there if the rail line in question goes where the bus used to go. It’s only sensible, but it can be confusing. Then as far as the rail lines themselves are concerned, the transfer points aren’t really that well planned or designed; but this should improve once the Regional Connector project is in place.
Or if you’re staying in Hollywood, say, at the Roosevelt, you could get to Universal Studio by subway in 20 minutes or so. Still, I agree that for most tourists, a car would be essential, and ditto the nav system. Even though I’ve lived here nearly all my life, I don’t like to drive without my Magellan. If I’m going anywhere the least bit unfamiliar, it’s just one less thing to worry about.
Moderator Tentatively Suggests:
This thread started as a comparison of LA vs Chicago in terms of mass transport. It’s now moved into many other areas. I’m going to suggest that, for this forum, we get back to LA vs Chicago.
If someone would like to start a thread (probably in General Questions, but could be almost anywhere) on mass transport in general (citing the +'s and -'s of various cities), that’d be fine, and we’ll provide a link here.
OK?
Check out:
Chicago doesn’t even make it in the top 10 mass transit systems in the US. LA is 7th.
I despair about public transportation. I live in the northern 'burbs and the bus schedules are stupid; they cut service and complain about losing ridership. My son worked part time at the UPS in Northbrook. He could to work in 20 minutes; but that route stops at 7:30pm. It took over 2 hours to get within a mile of home on a jerry-rigged system of bus routes.
Personally, I wish the Skokie Swift worked on weekends. The only real alternative is to drive west to Cumberland to use their park 'n ride to get downtown.
I haven’t used those lines in Chicago, but Cecil’s well-thought plan for the Northside demonstrates something that woefully happens all too often: The people who make the big decisions about public transit obviously don’t use it themselves. They should. They should be forced to. They should be forced to live a year in the city in question using only public transit.
Why doesn’t the Skokie Swift “work” on weekends?
Hm, according to the schedule:
http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/rail_route_schedules/Yellow_Line_Dec_2010.pdf
… the Yellow Line operates every 15 minutes in either direction from ~6 a.m. to ~ 11 p.m. Sat. and Sun.
It was pointed out to me the other day that, since the Yellow Line run averages only 8 minutes, the CTA could run trains every 12 minutes with the same number of operators and cars simply by shortening the layover at either end from 7 mins till 4. Wonder if there’s some union work rule thing going on.
Thanks for this colum, Cecil. As a long-time reader, question-asker, and former employee of the LA County MTA, it’s nice to see some kudos for what we’ve been trying to do out here.
And LA does deserve a few pats on the back. Since the opening of that first modern rail line 20 years ago, we’ve been building a… well… not extensive rail network, but at least the backbone of one. And yes, new projects are in the works.
However, let’s not get too crazy with the patting upon our West Coast backs. First, that “approved” Subway to the Sea is entirely without funding. At the moment, only studies and public meetings have been held. The alignment is still very much in question, and rather painfully predictably, NIMBYs in Beverly Hills are doing their best to hold it up. The Crenshaw line, which the NY Times characterizes as terminating at LAX, would only go about a mile from LAX, as does the existing Green Line. At the moment, you can take rail to vaguely near the airport, then you must transfer to a shuttle bus. Also, downtown connections can be a bit irritating - essentially, we have two downtown hubs. Currently there are plans underway for a “downtown connector,” but as with the rest, the funding is up in the air.
We did recently pass a sales tax increase for construction of all these things, but realistically, unless our mayor (whose abilities heretofore seem to be a talent for getting himself into photo ops) can actually get a massive loan out of the federal government based on that sales tax revenue, we’re not going to see any of this stuff finished until 2040. At least.
And in the meantime, we’ve been cutting bus services down due to massive budget shortfalls.
So… it’s not quite a transit wasteland. But we’re a long way from being a transit paradise, either.
I wouldn’t quite call Chicago a declining city. If anything, I can see it becoming even more important as the centre of the grain belt. What I’d like to see though is a direct, non-stop link between O’Hare and the Loop.
In Cecil’s article, he wrote:
I’m wondering if two things are being conflated in this discussion – the metro area and the city proper.
When the “delay per auto commuter” is discussed, is that for the Chicago metro area? Because if it is, there is a pretty good reason why this figure exists, and it’s not just that commuters looovvve their cars so very, very much that they are willing to waste tons of time in gridlock.
It’s also the fact that public transit in the Chicago suburbs completely sucks and isn’t much of an option.
Metra was designed to suit residential and work travel patterns that no longer hold true. People are no longer mainly commuting from their suburban homes to jobs in the city. They are also commuting from burb to burb, and the existing hub and spoke train system does not accommodate that. Neither are the suburban bus systems extensive enough to take up the slack.
Therefore, if you live in the suburbs, you probably commute by car and must consequently deal with horrendous traffic. Fixing the CTA (which is already pretty good) will do little to bring down the metro area’s “delay per auto commuter” figure. Fixing Metra by adding “ring” or “beltway” lines might get the job done, but I figure the expense of acquiring the real estate to do that would be astronomical, without adding in the cost of building the lines themselves.
The latest census figures, highlighted in the Tribune today, indicate the population of the city of Chicago is declining slightly, but the metro area is NOT.
The suburbs added people that more than made up for the recent decline in the city population.
Overall, the metro population is pretty stable. It’s just not experiencing explosive growth such as has been happening in places like Phoenix.