I’m in the Los Angeles area for a bit and I got the chance to ride the LA Metro A Line. It was kinda good but it also sucks.
Los Angeles is a driving city. But having options to get around without driving makes cities great. So it’s a good thing that LA has been building new public transit over the last 35 years (and is still building, apparently).
I rode the A Line between Los Angeles Union Station and Long Beach three times. I’m glad it exists! It got me where I needed to go. But there were some frustrating aspects that I think were really holding it back.
The A Line is a tram that runs in multiple settings (underground/elevated/street-running), and during the street-running segments it felt like we wasted so much time waiting at red lights, especially near the Pacific Coast Highway stop. A four-car tram filled with a hundred or more riders should never have to wait for individual cars carrying at most 4 people each, aside from the time that it would take for the cars to get a yellow and then red light. As is, Metro riders’ time matters less than that of car owners.
I was also surprised how sparsely developed many of the stops were. At both ends of my rides (Long Beach/Downtown LA), there were lots of destinations within walking distance of the stations. But many of the stops between were surrounded by wide streets and single-family homes. About the best destinations along that portion of the line were various strip malls. People won’t take transit if it doesn’t take them where they need to go. Good transit needs destinations (restaurants, offices, libraries, parks) and housing (apartments/condos) concentrated near the stops.
I realize that the sprawl and endless roads, rather than being just an LA Metro problem, are an LA problem. But LA and its Metro are entangled; one’s prosperity is the other’s.
Of course, I’m not from Los Angeles. I haven’t spent a lot of time here. So I know that there’s a lot of context and history that I’m missing. But I think my impression still matters because it indicates why people do (or don’t) ride transit in LA. It would be silly to visit Manhattan and not take the subway, but today it feels like the general impression is that it would be silly to take the LA Metro.
The LA Metro A Line was certainly not all bad. The fact that it exists at all is excellent. Los Angeles could have not built anything and continued to rely exclusively on driving. The wayfinding and announcements were good. The vehicles had high top speeds (when we were moving).
The headways as scheduled were pretty good! Ten minutes between trains one weekdays is certainly not the best, but it’s a lot better than the 15–30 minutes headways on BART.
And! The fares are great! Each ride cost $1.75 (and it was easy to set up a card and pay in the Wallet app). But my third ride of the day cost only $1.50 because the system implements a $5/day fare cap! I think automatic fare-capping is a very rider-friendly feature, and one that encourages people to use transit for personal trips after work. A per-day fare cap (as opposed to New York’s per-week cap) is especially friendly to travelers.
Coming from Chicago, a city that has its own set of transit and urban design problems, I was still surprised how far behind the transit system of a major world city like Los Angeles could be. I’m glad they’re still building, because they have a long way to go.