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Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

theguardian.com

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Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#31

Post by mmooss »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #25
bradchris wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this was covered in the article, but it’s not actually Los Angeles’ leadership’s fault (rare praise for a city I love and call home), it was shovel-ready and funded to be built in the 80s. Then there was a ballot measure due to ongoing construction problems of a separate line in the 80s that banned tunneling in Los Angeles. This wasn’t overturned until 2007! Then Beverly Hills (which is also not part of Los A…

Glad to hear it. An underground K-Line extension was recently approved to go through my neighborhood. This is after a small handful of 2-3 homeowners caused it to be delayed by 18 months over objections that seismic activity from drilling would be noticeable under their homes. The city spent a year doing a study and report to appease the concerns of these residents, who - when presented with this extensive report sho…

> West Hollywood had put up several billion

West Hollywood has several billion dollars? To spare?

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#32

Post by bradchris »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #25
bradchris wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this was covered in the article, but it’s not actually Los Angeles’ leadership’s fault (rare praise for a city I love and call home), it was shovel-ready and funded to be built in the 80s. Then there was a ballot measure due to ongoing construction problems of a separate line in the 80s that banned tunneling in Los Angeles. This wasn’t overturned until 2007! Then Beverly Hills (which is also not part of Los A…

Glad to hear it. An underground K-Line extension was recently approved to go through my neighborhood. This is after a small handful of 2-3 homeowners caused it to be delayed by 18 months over objections that seismic activity from drilling would be noticeable under their homes. The city spent a year doing a study and report to appease the concerns of these residents, who - when presented with this extensive report sho…

Exactly. This line was actually planned for in the approved Measure M Ballot Measure in 2016 to be “shovel ready” [environmentally cleared, funding identified, etc] by 2022, with optimistic projections hoping construction would be finished by 2028. Clearly, we’re at least 6 years behind schedule, considering the final funding votes and route design specifics won’t be set until then, much less construction. It was not a surprise, so I consider any further delays on that front by detractors to be in bad faith, and I am happy that Metro has started to put its foot down and force progress, albeit I wish they would have done so sooner.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a good sign of government inertia that we won’t run into a 60 year delay ever again, especially as Metro prepares to finalize approval of the Sepulveda Pass Subway from LAX to the Valley.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#33

Post by bradchris »

mmooss wrote: post #31
Slow_Hand wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear it. An underground K-Line extension was recently approved to go through my neighborhood. This is after a small handful of 2-3 homeowners caused it to be delayed by 18 months over objections that seismic activity from drilling would be noticeable under their homes. The city spent a year doing a study and report to appease the concerns of these residents, who - when presented with this extensive report sho…

> West Hollywood had put up several billion West Hollywood has several billion dollars? To spare?

via a 75-year EIFD, which the city successfully lobbied the state to change California law to allow them to enact. Talk about city support!

It may not look like it, but most residents in LA are literally begging for an option to navigate the city that is not car-bound. Cost isn’t even a concern at this point, for better or worse, it’s just the current situation of 30 min traffic to drive 3 miles at rush hour is untenable in a region that is about 50 miles in each direction. And WeHo has no direct highway access anywhere, so they’re really feeling the brunt of it.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#34

Post by aworks »

vinckr wrote: post #21

Coming from Germany I found it funny how tiny the subway lines are in major cities in the US compared to medium-sized cities here. I always thought Germany was a country centered a lot around cars but it was so much more extreme in the states; seemed not possible to live in a city(!) without a car.

I lived in Silicon Valley without a car for 2 years. Commuted between Palo Alto and Santa Clara by Caltrain commuter rail. Took the local bus system frequently. Rented a car occasionally. It can be done but it's not easy.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#35

Post by JLO64 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #18
percentcer wrote: post #16

Los Angeles just needs buses that come through frequently enough to obviate the need to check the schedule. Also dynamic bus routing, which would reduce the total number of buses required for this.

Buses have a fundamental speed issue that subways do not because subways do not stop at intersections for cross traffic. At LA's vast scale you need a subway, possibly even express subways.

You need both, but it's not exactly realistic to have metro lines everywhere. The west side is pretty dense and has a lot of commercial/business activity so the value per dollar is high. By comparison the east side is super spread out and has a low(er) residential density so the value is far lower. Not to mention a good chunk of the residents on the east side aren't in favor of metro lines in their neighborhood (the stalled Whittier extension of the E line).

It's a pain for me personally since a group I'm involved with is active in the San Gabriel Valley and since I don't have a car I have to rely on buses. It's not an exaggeration when I say a trip for me that's 5 miles west would take double the amount of time east. I'm just glad the planned subway to Van Nuys and the San Fernando Valley up north seems to be going well.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#36

Post by bradchris »

lapetitejort wrote: post #12
bradchris wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this was covered in the article, but it’s not actually Los Angeles’ leadership’s fault (rare praise for a city I love and call home), it was shovel-ready and funded to be built in the 80s. Then there was a ballot measure due to ongoing construction problems of a separate line in the 80s that banned tunneling in Los Angeles. This wasn’t overturned until 2007! Then Beverly Hills (which is also not part of Los A…

While all of this in happening, Metrolink, the rail service that connects LA, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, is having their own budget crisis manifesting in "temporary" reductions in service. More info: https://calelectricrail.org/metrolink-is-facing-service-cuts...

Metrolink’s multi-county governance structure bums me out, as a majority of them are actively against expanding it, improving it, or even funding it. At least Metro has Los Angeles in control of a majority of the votes to squash any anti-transit shenanigans on what is supposed to be an organization tasked with expanding transit. Metrolink has no such mechanism to protect itself from the inside.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#37

Post by rayiner »

bradchris wrote: post #5
ETlol wrote: post #3

God it's frustrating how slow making these rail transits has been. The D line was literally planned out back in the 1960s and it took this long? I understand the plethora of problems the engineers faced when completing this. But I find it funny that once the World Cup was planned to be in LA, that's when LA leadership expedited all the legal and corporate hurdles in order to make sure we don't have another carmagetto…

Some of this was covered in the article, but it’s not actually Los Angeles’ leadership’s fault (rare praise for a city I love and call home), it was shovel-ready and funded to be built in the 80s. Then there was a ballot measure due to ongoing construction problems of a separate line in the 80s that banned tunneling in Los Angeles. This wasn’t overturned until 2007! Then Beverly Hills (which is also not part of Los A…

In Spain and France, once the legislature approves a transit project, it preempts all other laws and is very difficult to litigate out of existence. Lawsuits cripple our ability to build infrastructure.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#38

Post by ignoramous »

otterley wrote: post #29

Author delivers the lolz: “Friday’s grand opening was full of fanfare and big D energy.”

> lolz

Well:

  "Ride the D" is a T-shirt and crop top design sold by the Los Angeles Metro ... "D" set inside a purple circle ... The slogan is a sexual innuendo, as "the D" is also slang for "the dick" ... The shirts ... have quickly gone viral ... sold out on February 27, 2026, just a day after launch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_the_D

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#39

Post by jhbadger »

danielhep wrote: post #24
vinckr wrote: post #21

Coming from Germany I found it funny how tiny the subway lines are in major cities in the US compared to medium-sized cities here. I always thought Germany was a country centered a lot around cars but it was so much more extreme in the states; seemed not possible to live in a city(!) without a car.

Depends on the city. In LA, yes it’s very hard to live without a car. I live in Seattle and I live car free as well as many of my friends. It’s not that we can’t afford it, we’ve just built our lives around transit and biking and the city is pretty good for it. Then of course there’s NYC, which is likely better than most European cities for transit. But you’re right that the average here is far far worse when it come…

Even in LA it's quite possible to live without a car if you live in the right neigbhorhoods like K-Town or any other centrally located one where both the Metro and buses are plentiful. LA's a huge place with varying amounts of density.

Re: Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer

#40

Post by bobthepanda »

JLO64 wrote: post #35
bobthepanda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses have a fundamental speed issue that subways do not because subways do not stop at intersections for cross traffic. At LA's vast scale you need a subway, possibly even express subways.

You need both, but it's not exactly realistic to have metro lines everywhere. The west side is pretty dense and has a lot of commercial/business activity so the value per dollar is high. By comparison the east side is super spread out and has a low(er) residential density so the value is far lower. Not to mention a good chunk of the residents on the east side aren't in favor of metro lines in their neighborhood (the…

Metros can work with good feeder bus links; and Los Angeles has fairly frequent, if slow buses.

LA has pretty much exhausted what it can do with good bus networks though.

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