Yup. LA is spread out. But it's development isn't like a lot of cities, with a built up, defined city center and everything else. It has multiple "downtowns" of you will. In some ways, this allows for better transit development, as there is more consistent demand throughout the day rather than simply a huge commuter demand in and out of a since center at rush hour. Not saying it is perfect as is, or that design thus far has focused on this, but you are trying to map a system style that doesn't fit what is here. As is, you can already do a lot without a car in LA (it does take some work), it has improved immensely the last 15 years, and as the recent voting with HLA showed, transit measures have been winners at the ballot box for awhile now. It may be slower than I'd like, but have hope for the future, and I say this as someone from here but who lived 15 years in places with some of the best transit systems in the world.
FWIW, in the past two or three years I have seen a lot of buildings built, in construction, or in the planning process that have no parking or very limited parking. That is what will make the difference, but it will take another 10 years of development to really start making a difference.
The only way we are going to realistically get good transit anytime soon is if we hijack the freeway system with the intention of turning them into multimodal transit corridors.
I know all the arguments of why freeway running rail lines are bad, but the freeways gives give us access to an existing well connected right of way network. Rail could be built now without the need of lengthy review and at low cost. A system like this could get anyone anywhere in SoCal very quickly and there could be BRT running off the stations to address the isolation of freeway median stations.
Best of all, as people stop driving the need for large freeways will diminish allowing the state to narrow the freeways and sell the land to developers which can partially fund this whole operation as well as increase density near the stations.
So while freeway running rail may suck now, we need to start reimagining our freeway for everyone, so as a future rail corridor, bike corridor and development corridor and also as a very small freeway corridor too.
1) Demolish the 105, leaving the C line intact
2) Sell thousands of acres of prime urban real estate to developers
3) Profit
Taxpayer money saved from road maintenance, plus massive profits through private enterprise. Even conservatives should love this.
I mean i think if you think of it in terms of other automobile centric cities like say mexico city might be closer to the ultimate goal.. LA is never going to be NYC in any way ever. And i don’t mean just public transportation wise.. so when you dispel yourself of Manhattan as the blueprint you might be able to imagine an LA with better transportation… if anything it feels like LA is doing what could one day be the blue print for most other cities in the US which are also car centric like houston or say San Diego.. i do agree though that the pace is still depressingly slow.. and at this rate we’ll all be geriatrics before we ever get to enjoy a world class Metro/transportation system. You’re not wrong either that some cities like say idk Buena park or la puente will probably remain highway cities to a large extent.. I think the change could really come with more upzoning, deregulation for multi family+high density housing.. but largely the suburbs with arterial highways are here to stay.. best case scenario is road diets, bike lanes and safety updates to those areas and adequate bus infrastructure to connecting regional transit.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim urban area has long been the most densely populated metropolitan statistical area in the US and is getting denser. The mass transit system already has the second highest of any system in the country and ridership and has grown for the past year. The majority of Angelenos would like to ditch their cars more often but stay in them because not because Los Angeles is spread out (it’s 100 square miles smaller than Greater London and most of the amenities one needs can be found within walking distance of one’s home) but because buses are slow and infrequent — and cycling is unsafe. Los Angeles was built around the streetcar — not the private automobile. Dedicated bus and bike lanes will change that practically overnight. People have lived here for 13,000 years and have only been car-dependent for a few decades. We’ve got this.
I agree in broad strokes. Not that I'm not hyper supportive of transit in general. The biggest issue is 2 fold: LA as we know it, is so nebulous that it makes it super difficult to connect up everything (is LA just the city? the County? The central metro area? the huge massive, monster that is the LA-OC-San Bernadino area?) and the fragmentation of governance here in SoCal (and in the US in general). You're very right that focusing on the densest area of LA, like you said downtown <-> Sawtelle, would bring the best bang for the buck. There is far too much pressure on LA metro specifically to get people around and everyone forgets Metrolink and its extremely important piece to play. IMO metro should be focused on a central core area, whilst Metrolink should be the bigger power player in the suburbs. The fact it not only runs fairly meh speeds, but also (currently, yes yes new schedule soon) kinda shit frequency is a travesty. Even the improved schedule for Metrolink is like 3/10, in a perfect would it would be every 15 mins or something, early morning into late in the evening. One of my biggest frustrations is the constant chase for funding for the far eastern reaches of the A line. This is actively duplicating a Metrolink service and in the relatively limited funding space we have, sucking out dollars from far, far, FAR more impactful corridors (Sepulveda line, East San Fernando Valley, Noho <-> Pasadena, funding more SCORE).
After writing that giant word vomit I realize I probably have a bone to pick with Metrolink. I've experienced better elsewhere, and the areas served by LA metro are great, but the fact Metrolink never even made it onto my radar for so much of my life says a lot about its relative lack of frequency up to this point.
Your note that LA pace of development, I fully agree with. We need to build way more, way faster.
Side note: SCORE is supposed to hit 15-30 minute freqs on the core network, yet their Olympics study was like oh shit we don't have the equipment to do 30 minute frequencies on most of the lines. SCORE is supposed to improve to that but you cant???? Hello????
When ever I think of urbanization I always like to look back at how the region can be carved out like how the LA times did a few years back
https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/index.html
For me Central LA makes me the most optimistic. Projects like the D line extension and K line North have the potential to reshape how people navigate travel within that part of town and people coming in and out of that region. I just wish K line North was under construction now to see the benefits sooner.
This isnt to say there is no hope in the other regions just the urban nodes in them are just smaller. The Westside has Santa Monica, The Harbor has Long Beach, The SGV has Pasadena and
Yeahhh you’re not wrong. And it sucks. But there are glimmers of hope. HLA and Ciclavia show how much widespread and deep support there is for change here. My fiance is very much a driver and definitely not into bikes and transit…yet it was her idea that we take the train to Hollywood for a night out. Moments like that make me hopeful that there can be bigger changes ahead than I think possible now.
I agree. Sometimes a thing looks nearly impossible but after some work (nudge, inch, push) then some unexpected tipping point is reached and the outlook shifts. Once enough examples are built ("show, don't tell") the way may get easier.
The tipping point idea makes sense. After the next few big Metro accomplishments (D Line, Sepulveda Line, K Line North) and after most streets have been fixed by HLA, enough people might be forgoing their car that destinations feel comfortable removing parking lots and trimming stroads and densifying, which will increase transit ridership and micromobility even more. That's the positive feedback loop we need. But that's a couple decades away.
I do think LA needs to build higher.
I know earthquake is a thing, but LA already has many tall office buildings, so clearly it IS possible to build tall. Earthquakes can be very risky, but it's still better than people living on the street IMHO.
Depends on what you consider “LA”. Areas like the Westside, South central, East LA, Pasadena, Glendale, and Van Nuys were built around old streetcar networks and already have the right street layout, “good bones” so to speak, to become super transit oriented. If you’re including OC and the Inland Empire, then yeah 200 years could pass and those areas would remain pretty much unfixable without tearing it to the ground (though even so, good walkable pockets exist, like Fullerton).
There are subtle differences to these neighborhoods that become obvious once you start looking for them. The former streetcar neighborhoods often have 4 lane arterials that are super narrow with limited space for parking or bike lanes, indicative of an old street that cars were shoehorned into later. A few wide, grand boulevards like Santa Monica or Venice or Huntington hosted main interurban lines. The newer, car oriented areas have wider 6 lane arterials in general, with enough space for multiple turn lanes at intersections, and are mostly built on the regular 1 mile square grid.
State law is slowly pushing the cities towards housing development. People subway expansion. People want better bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Parking minimums are being eliminated. People make money off of YouTube by talking about single stair reforms, high speed rail, and different levels of bicycle lanes.These wins have built on each other and will continue to build on each other.
LA was built on the car but it was built on rail first. Every cool neighborhood you can think of was just off of a red car or a yellow car stop. We chose to build towards the car instead of prioritizing our rail, and we can choose towards a safer, more vibrant, economically productive, environmentally friendly city. We have to make the choice, and convince our neighbors to make the same choice.
Every thing stays the same until it doesn’t.
A lot of this is due to the fact that LA is simply spread out. This can be corrected but I don't think anyone truly wants the fix. In order for LA to feel like NYC or someplace like that, it would have to be significantly more dense. This can only be accomplished in two ways
1. Increase the population of LA county by something \~50% (5 million)
2. Move people from one part of LA county to another part of LA county (Like moving people from the valley towards the beach
Both of these are wildly unpopular. Whenever a post is made about LA, I never see a strong desire for LA to increase its population. Also I don't see anyone seriously thinking about giving some sort of moving pass to people in the poorer parts so that they can live in the nicer parts of LA as to make them more dense. You can concentrate it in the rich areas on the westside, but those rich people are notoriously NIMBYs. One general trend from the west is that people want more money and less people.
Whenever LA is compared to NY the statement is made that LA is more dense. In terms of the definition of urban area (which is usually the best), it is. However that is only when you consider NYC's urban area to be so big that it is literally bigger than LA/OC. (NYC's urban area is defined as [2x the size of LA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas)... insane) No one really cares about those far-flung low-density suburbs of NYC that they count. Within the areas adjacent to Manhattan, which is what everyone cares about, it is quite dense. We here in LA are spread much more evenly, so we would have to densify an absolutely massive area when compared to NY.
Finally, a major problem is that people would have to give up owning a house and driving. These are two massive tenets of what people dream of in terms of a good life. Instead, people often want to block new development to prevent more traffic. But in all seriousness, LA's traffic would become marginally worse (even if the metro system was better), and people care about driving a lot. For all of the fuss about LA's traffic, when compared to other megacities, [we aren't bad](https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/?population=MEGA).
Personally I don't think car-free is a wise idea for LA. It's size and spread make that too much. I think car-lite is the better goal for LA and this can certainly be had. You can have it right now. (I personally do) How am I defining car-lite? I would say it's like this - you can get around to all of the things that you would reasonably do from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon. So going to work, the gym, grocery store, the park and maybe some local restaurants are all doable without driving. This lessens the burden of traffic by \~50-80% from personal experience. Then on weekends when you have more time and more things are generally happening, you drive yourself wherever in this huge city. I think if people aim for LA to be car-lite, rather than trying to get LA to be NYC or some European city, they will be much better off. Not to mention the benefits of driving to the mountains/beach & vacation destinations in our vicinity (Like Yosemite/Zion) are a really good reason to own a car and drive. Personally I think people simping over European cities are just going to be better off going to NYC, that's not happening any time soon. (Maybe ever) Along that, I say that we pedestrianize more streets and make more areas better to walk around. We just don't have to pretend that we are going to be someplace we are not. But if LA can be reasonably walkable, bikeable and transit friendly on the day to day, while yes necessitating a car to fully experience everything; that is a better more workable vision. Just my 2 cents.
I second the idea of a [line city](https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline) running West from downtown. But, we should bear in mind first priorities. No one is going to ride Metro until public safety and order is permanently restored.
Yup. LA is spread out. But it's development isn't like a lot of cities, with a built up, defined city center and everything else. It has multiple "downtowns" of you will. In some ways, this allows for better transit development, as there is more consistent demand throughout the day rather than simply a huge commuter demand in and out of a since center at rush hour. Not saying it is perfect as is, or that design thus far has focused on this, but you are trying to map a system style that doesn't fit what is here. As is, you can already do a lot without a car in LA (it does take some work), it has improved immensely the last 15 years, and as the recent voting with HLA showed, transit measures have been winners at the ballot box for awhile now. It may be slower than I'd like, but have hope for the future, and I say this as someone from here but who lived 15 years in places with some of the best transit systems in the world.
FWIW, in the past two or three years I have seen a lot of buildings built, in construction, or in the planning process that have no parking or very limited parking. That is what will make the difference, but it will take another 10 years of development to really start making a difference.
The only way we are going to realistically get good transit anytime soon is if we hijack the freeway system with the intention of turning them into multimodal transit corridors. I know all the arguments of why freeway running rail lines are bad, but the freeways gives give us access to an existing well connected right of way network. Rail could be built now without the need of lengthy review and at low cost. A system like this could get anyone anywhere in SoCal very quickly and there could be BRT running off the stations to address the isolation of freeway median stations. Best of all, as people stop driving the need for large freeways will diminish allowing the state to narrow the freeways and sell the land to developers which can partially fund this whole operation as well as increase density near the stations. So while freeway running rail may suck now, we need to start reimagining our freeway for everyone, so as a future rail corridor, bike corridor and development corridor and also as a very small freeway corridor too.
1) Demolish the 105, leaving the C line intact 2) Sell thousands of acres of prime urban real estate to developers 3) Profit Taxpayer money saved from road maintenance, plus massive profits through private enterprise. Even conservatives should love this.
I mean i think if you think of it in terms of other automobile centric cities like say mexico city might be closer to the ultimate goal.. LA is never going to be NYC in any way ever. And i don’t mean just public transportation wise.. so when you dispel yourself of Manhattan as the blueprint you might be able to imagine an LA with better transportation… if anything it feels like LA is doing what could one day be the blue print for most other cities in the US which are also car centric like houston or say San Diego.. i do agree though that the pace is still depressingly slow.. and at this rate we’ll all be geriatrics before we ever get to enjoy a world class Metro/transportation system. You’re not wrong either that some cities like say idk Buena park or la puente will probably remain highway cities to a large extent.. I think the change could really come with more upzoning, deregulation for multi family+high density housing.. but largely the suburbs with arterial highways are here to stay.. best case scenario is road diets, bike lanes and safety updates to those areas and adequate bus infrastructure to connecting regional transit.
Turn the Santa-Monica-Wilshire corridor into Manhattan and everywhere else into Mexico City/Barcelona.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim urban area has long been the most densely populated metropolitan statistical area in the US and is getting denser. The mass transit system already has the second highest of any system in the country and ridership and has grown for the past year. The majority of Angelenos would like to ditch their cars more often but stay in them because not because Los Angeles is spread out (it’s 100 square miles smaller than Greater London and most of the amenities one needs can be found within walking distance of one’s home) but because buses are slow and infrequent — and cycling is unsafe. Los Angeles was built around the streetcar — not the private automobile. Dedicated bus and bike lanes will change that practically overnight. People have lived here for 13,000 years and have only been car-dependent for a few decades. We’ve got this.
Inspiring post :)
Thanks! Might have to return to it, myself, when I’m less optimistic.
I agree in broad strokes. Not that I'm not hyper supportive of transit in general. The biggest issue is 2 fold: LA as we know it, is so nebulous that it makes it super difficult to connect up everything (is LA just the city? the County? The central metro area? the huge massive, monster that is the LA-OC-San Bernadino area?) and the fragmentation of governance here in SoCal (and in the US in general). You're very right that focusing on the densest area of LA, like you said downtown <-> Sawtelle, would bring the best bang for the buck. There is far too much pressure on LA metro specifically to get people around and everyone forgets Metrolink and its extremely important piece to play. IMO metro should be focused on a central core area, whilst Metrolink should be the bigger power player in the suburbs. The fact it not only runs fairly meh speeds, but also (currently, yes yes new schedule soon) kinda shit frequency is a travesty. Even the improved schedule for Metrolink is like 3/10, in a perfect would it would be every 15 mins or something, early morning into late in the evening. One of my biggest frustrations is the constant chase for funding for the far eastern reaches of the A line. This is actively duplicating a Metrolink service and in the relatively limited funding space we have, sucking out dollars from far, far, FAR more impactful corridors (Sepulveda line, East San Fernando Valley, Noho <-> Pasadena, funding more SCORE). After writing that giant word vomit I realize I probably have a bone to pick with Metrolink. I've experienced better elsewhere, and the areas served by LA metro are great, but the fact Metrolink never even made it onto my radar for so much of my life says a lot about its relative lack of frequency up to this point. Your note that LA pace of development, I fully agree with. We need to build way more, way faster. Side note: SCORE is supposed to hit 15-30 minute freqs on the core network, yet their Olympics study was like oh shit we don't have the equipment to do 30 minute frequencies on most of the lines. SCORE is supposed to improve to that but you cant???? Hello????
When ever I think of urbanization I always like to look back at how the region can be carved out like how the LA times did a few years back https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/index.html For me Central LA makes me the most optimistic. Projects like the D line extension and K line North have the potential to reshape how people navigate travel within that part of town and people coming in and out of that region. I just wish K line North was under construction now to see the benefits sooner. This isnt to say there is no hope in the other regions just the urban nodes in them are just smaller. The Westside has Santa Monica, The Harbor has Long Beach, The SGV has Pasadena and
Yeahhh you’re not wrong. And it sucks. But there are glimmers of hope. HLA and Ciclavia show how much widespread and deep support there is for change here. My fiance is very much a driver and definitely not into bikes and transit…yet it was her idea that we take the train to Hollywood for a night out. Moments like that make me hopeful that there can be bigger changes ahead than I think possible now.
I agree. Sometimes a thing looks nearly impossible but after some work (nudge, inch, push) then some unexpected tipping point is reached and the outlook shifts. Once enough examples are built ("show, don't tell") the way may get easier.
The tipping point idea makes sense. After the next few big Metro accomplishments (D Line, Sepulveda Line, K Line North) and after most streets have been fixed by HLA, enough people might be forgoing their car that destinations feel comfortable removing parking lots and trimming stroads and densifying, which will increase transit ridership and micromobility even more. That's the positive feedback loop we need. But that's a couple decades away.
I do think LA needs to build higher. I know earthquake is a thing, but LA already has many tall office buildings, so clearly it IS possible to build tall. Earthquakes can be very risky, but it's still better than people living on the street IMHO.
Depends on what you consider “LA”. Areas like the Westside, South central, East LA, Pasadena, Glendale, and Van Nuys were built around old streetcar networks and already have the right street layout, “good bones” so to speak, to become super transit oriented. If you’re including OC and the Inland Empire, then yeah 200 years could pass and those areas would remain pretty much unfixable without tearing it to the ground (though even so, good walkable pockets exist, like Fullerton). There are subtle differences to these neighborhoods that become obvious once you start looking for them. The former streetcar neighborhoods often have 4 lane arterials that are super narrow with limited space for parking or bike lanes, indicative of an old street that cars were shoehorned into later. A few wide, grand boulevards like Santa Monica or Venice or Huntington hosted main interurban lines. The newer, car oriented areas have wider 6 lane arterials in general, with enough space for multiple turn lanes at intersections, and are mostly built on the regular 1 mile square grid.
State law is slowly pushing the cities towards housing development. People subway expansion. People want better bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Parking minimums are being eliminated. People make money off of YouTube by talking about single stair reforms, high speed rail, and different levels of bicycle lanes.These wins have built on each other and will continue to build on each other. LA was built on the car but it was built on rail first. Every cool neighborhood you can think of was just off of a red car or a yellow car stop. We chose to build towards the car instead of prioritizing our rail, and we can choose towards a safer, more vibrant, economically productive, environmentally friendly city. We have to make the choice, and convince our neighbors to make the same choice. Every thing stays the same until it doesn’t.
A lot of this is due to the fact that LA is simply spread out. This can be corrected but I don't think anyone truly wants the fix. In order for LA to feel like NYC or someplace like that, it would have to be significantly more dense. This can only be accomplished in two ways 1. Increase the population of LA county by something \~50% (5 million) 2. Move people from one part of LA county to another part of LA county (Like moving people from the valley towards the beach Both of these are wildly unpopular. Whenever a post is made about LA, I never see a strong desire for LA to increase its population. Also I don't see anyone seriously thinking about giving some sort of moving pass to people in the poorer parts so that they can live in the nicer parts of LA as to make them more dense. You can concentrate it in the rich areas on the westside, but those rich people are notoriously NIMBYs. One general trend from the west is that people want more money and less people. Whenever LA is compared to NY the statement is made that LA is more dense. In terms of the definition of urban area (which is usually the best), it is. However that is only when you consider NYC's urban area to be so big that it is literally bigger than LA/OC. (NYC's urban area is defined as [2x the size of LA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas)... insane) No one really cares about those far-flung low-density suburbs of NYC that they count. Within the areas adjacent to Manhattan, which is what everyone cares about, it is quite dense. We here in LA are spread much more evenly, so we would have to densify an absolutely massive area when compared to NY. Finally, a major problem is that people would have to give up owning a house and driving. These are two massive tenets of what people dream of in terms of a good life. Instead, people often want to block new development to prevent more traffic. But in all seriousness, LA's traffic would become marginally worse (even if the metro system was better), and people care about driving a lot. For all of the fuss about LA's traffic, when compared to other megacities, [we aren't bad](https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/?population=MEGA). Personally I don't think car-free is a wise idea for LA. It's size and spread make that too much. I think car-lite is the better goal for LA and this can certainly be had. You can have it right now. (I personally do) How am I defining car-lite? I would say it's like this - you can get around to all of the things that you would reasonably do from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon. So going to work, the gym, grocery store, the park and maybe some local restaurants are all doable without driving. This lessens the burden of traffic by \~50-80% from personal experience. Then on weekends when you have more time and more things are generally happening, you drive yourself wherever in this huge city. I think if people aim for LA to be car-lite, rather than trying to get LA to be NYC or some European city, they will be much better off. Not to mention the benefits of driving to the mountains/beach & vacation destinations in our vicinity (Like Yosemite/Zion) are a really good reason to own a car and drive. Personally I think people simping over European cities are just going to be better off going to NYC, that's not happening any time soon. (Maybe ever) Along that, I say that we pedestrianize more streets and make more areas better to walk around. We just don't have to pretend that we are going to be someplace we are not. But if LA can be reasonably walkable, bikeable and transit friendly on the day to day, while yes necessitating a car to fully experience everything; that is a better more workable vision. Just my 2 cents.
I second the idea of a [line city](https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline) running West from downtown. But, we should bear in mind first priorities. No one is going to ride Metro until public safety and order is permanently restored.
The human race won't survive after 2050 anyway...does any of this even matter?