I know funding is gathered from many localities, and so expansions must also benefit them, but currently daily metro rail ridership is around 200k people. These two expansions alone (Sepulveda Pass and K Line Northern Extension) are expected to add something like 120k and 60k daily riders respectively, nearly doubling the entire rail ridership in two expansions, and yet are a decade or two out, at least.
Instead, some very incremental ridership increase-lines appear to be studied, funded, and opening well ahead of these major projects, e.g.:
- K Line extension to Torrance (2 stations, estimated increase in ridership by a whopping 5k or so for $ billions)
- A Line extension to the next galaxy over
- ESFV in the remarkably unwalkable east/northern SF Valley
- Probably a number of other obvious ones I'm forgetting. I mean even most of the K Line doesn't really seem to go to any sort of very transit-oriented, walkable, developed at all places?
The SP is the single busiest corridor in the USA if I recall correctly. KLNE will go to some of the highest density areas in the city. SP will connect D line and E line, which will connect large job centers. The combination of these lines will create multiple transit loops.
Overall, these lines will create a system people can immediately recognize as a functional transit system, with multiple ways to get someplace, in areas that are dense and walkable, and that make sense.
Having these lines will also drum up far more support for the system as a whole, which may have compounded positive effects.
So, why are all of these other far less consequential lines being studied, funded, prioritized, and built to such a large extent than the big dogs that are SP and KLNE?
If I might add, the Vermont Subway is my Roman Empire. The recent Nandert video on it only multiplied my obsession over it, especially if it went through Pico-Union to Glendale. It’d absolutely revolutionize transit in one of the densest, highest transit ridership areas of the city, and yet it gets crumbs.
I took the green line for years and oftened wondered…..why does it make a left at aviation instead of right to the AIRPORT!
Then I wondered….why doesn’t it start at the Norwalk Metrolink station.
Nothing makes sense when they design these things….or don’t
nimbys. norwalk stopped them from linking to the metro link station.
I’d be so happy if Metro sent the Vermont line northeast to Glendale, as nandert suggested.
Bingo! Metro is already considered racist by the Bus Rider's Union and has been sued and LOST. How would spending billions to white Weho, billions to white Westside/UCLA and white Sepulveda Corridor look? Metro would be sued again and this time would lose bigly. Possibly another consent decree would be ordered as in 1996. Personally I think that this is an impractical way of expanding a transit system. But if you're here on Reddit always talking about social and environmental justice, now's the time to live up to it.
along with the arts district station that is delayed indefinitely due to priority and funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_District/6th_Street_station
They have a problem with BNSF who they need land from to build the station. That is why it never got off the ground.
Short answer: county-wide funding measure.
“very incremental ridership increase-lines”
Haha. That’s about as generous a description as you’re going to hear for these projects. Be prepared for some pushback because stating the obvious regarding some of these lines can be controversial here.
The simple answer is that in order to get support for the sales tax measures (which are voted on at a county level) we had to spread out projects geographically and include some that have almost no useful purpose (Torrance K Line extension, for example).
Unfortunately, this also commits Metro to these projects and removes flexibility for decades at a time. There’s also an equity issue. The entire Sepulveda Pass corridor from Van Nuys to LAX is white and affluent. The K Line corridor is white and affluent north of Olympic and Mid-City is gentrifying by the day. The $10B D-Line extension already fails every diversity/equity test (for some reason these tests rarely consider who is going to ride the train) so prioritizing these other two would be extremely controversial.
It’s crazy how ass backwards this process is, and how it literally leaves no one happy. The dense central part of the city gets its projects delayed while nimbys in the suburbs fight tooth and nail against rail extensions that were prioritized to serve them.
What nobody seems to consider is that these rail lines in “white, affluent“ areas still benefit people living in low income areas, and arguably even more so. Tons of working class people in south and east LA work in central and west LA in service jobs, they literally can’t afford to live there so they have to commute. Does anyone really think a janitor working in a Beverly Hills office building lives anywhere nearby? No - but they might live near, say, Florence station on the A line. Right now this hypothetical commute takes an hour and a half on transit. The D line will knock that down to ~45 minutes.
People underestimate how transformative this project will be. With the exception of the E line connecting to Culver City and Santa Monica, this is the first Metro line connecting to any big job centers that aren’t downtown (and look at how strong E ridership is). We’ve gotten used to disappointing ridership on suburban extensions, because connecting rail to housing is not the main driver of ridership. Connecting to jobs is. People will walk, bike, bus, or drive quite a distance to a train station if it will take them directly to their job at the other end. If it doesn’t, they’ll just choose to drive the whole way.
We’re still stuck in this trap of seeing every line as its own individual entity, while in reality every line added to an interconnected system makes the whole system more useful.
Is there a study or reading piece on the D-line failing equity tests? I had a sneaking suspicion this was the case as a rider, but had no idea it was that bad 😬.
Metro has an entire department focused on equity.
https://equity-lametro.hub.arcgis.com/
You’ll see they have maps for “equity focused communities” overlayed with the Metro train system and the new D-Line stations are not in these areas.
Also, Metro issues an equity-type report multiple times a year to report on how they are doing in this regard. I’m sorry I don’t have the link or the specific name off hand. We discuss it on this sub often because it actually gives updates on all projects under construction and can be a good resource for information when Metro is being stingy with particulars. The reports specifically note that the D-Line extensions are not in equity-focused communities or some similar term of art.
Thank you, & no worries it's great to read either way!
Van Nuys and Panorama City are not white and affluent.
Everything south of the ESFV terminus at the G Line is white and affluent. I realize Metro included Panorama City and parts of Van Nuys in their study for the current corridor for some reason (honestly, probably to get an equity hook) but those areas have nothing to do with the route alternatives under consideration.
The Sepulveda Transit Corridor line terminates at the Van Nuys Metrolink station, not the Van Nuys G line station. The STC will very likely have stations at the Metrolink station, Sherman Way, and the G line. All three of those stations (especially the first two) will generally serve less-wealthy and more nonwhite areas; Van Nuys primarily, but Panorama City is not far from the Metrolink station, and will have a good connection thanks to the upcoming ESFV line.
And I presume that northernmost segment was included for three major reasons: the Metrolink connection, to avoid overwhelming the G and ESFV lines, and access to a large industrial site for a railyard. I would think that other considerations - like "equity hooks" - were secondary to those two critical reasons.
They really should’ve done D line first then K line but I’m biased being on the westside
They should prioritize high ridership projects over low ridership projects but they have to have political support from all parts of the county to pass the tax increases that fund these projects.
Bingo. If we only built projects in the core city, the outer cities who still have to pay the sales tax, but won’t benefit from any new projects will simply vote it down.
They can get busses tho
u/lepriccon22 To answer your question as an advocate who worked hard to pass one of the principle funding sources approved by the voters Measures R & M. Most of these issues are related with cashflow to build projects with the sales tax dollars that we have coming in.
Before Measure M passed in 2016 the principle projects focused on completing the K Line (then Crenshaw/LAX Corridor), Airport Metro Center, Regional Connector, Expo Line to Santa Monica and the Wilshire Subway west towards Westwood in three phases about a decade apart (with Westwood completed in 2035-36 along with those "incremental" projects (South Bay, Foothill Extension, Eastside Phase 2, Southeast Gateway). With the board needing to pass another sales tax to accelerate the subway along with building other 'incremental' lines that was the agreed upon order that was passed under the LA County Measure M sales tax. The Measure M ordinance establishes some order and hierarchy to ensure that every subregion will receive some projects completed in the appropriate cashflow timeline in order to combat the times in the 1990s when it was all in on the subway and there where physical and financial sinkholes to where voters in 1998 banned the use of the current Prop A and C sales tax dollars to go to subway construction and projects.
After Measure M passed this order continued with the Wilshire Subway's original three phases got combined into successive phases. However that stretched sales tax cashflow to do the other larger projects such as K Line North and Sepulveda Pass must wait until much later because that will require a lot of local seed money to get going and started.
The process and timelines can be frustrating and long but that is to ensure that all the subregions represented on the Metro Board receives their signature project, gets completed and eliminate the mistakes of the 1990s.
I totally agree. I’ve often wondered why they prioritize all these A line extensions into the suburbs over projects like the D or K line extensions that would serve areas that actually WANT transit. Not to mention ridership.
Because even those areas have NIMBYs and tons of bureaucracy to go through. Look at the gondola project, it's something many people want to ease the traffic at Dodger Stadium and it's being built with private funds but even then it faces opposition. If you get that for something built privately imagine what the headaches are for public projects.
Dealing with NIMBYs and all the bureaucratic reviews are costly so they go for the ones that seems easier to do.
Metro exists to spread tax money around the county first, and to operate functional transit network second.
The Board's decisions make much more sense when viewed through this lens.
https://boardagendas.metro.net/board-members/
The issue with this sentiment is that it is contraproductive on the long term, as projects that would serve poor communities well are not built in time, while high priority projects need to be postponed.
Money
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