Public transportation in California... (Los Angeles, Santa Monica: live, buses, safety)

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Thekdog

Outside of koreatown it doesn't really seem that dense to me. Not compared to European and Asian cities.

Those cities, the ones with rail transit, can vary a lot to much, much denser to LA to somewhat less dense in regards to the stretch of more densely populated part of LA that I mentioned. I think one thing to note is that city boundaries aren't a great way to look at it as they aren't very comparable from one place to the other as boundaries can have been set fairly arbitrarily and vary a lot. Hong Kong's certainly a lot denser in practice as are numerous other cities, but a lot of Central and Northern European cities have densities along the lines of a vast swath of Central LA, Westside, South Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles. Like, Koreatown is denser than the most densely populated wards of Nagoya and Palms is about as dense as the densest parts of Nagoya.

[Thekdog]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Those cities, the ones with rail transit, can vary a lot to much, much denser to LA to somewhat less dense in regards to the stretch of more densely populated part of LA that I mentioned. I think one thing to note is that city boundaries aren't a great way to look at it as they aren't very comparable from one place to the other as boundaries can have been set fairly arbitrarily and vary a lot. Hong Kong's certainly a lot denser in practice as are numerous other cities, but a lot of Central and Northern European cities have densities along the lines of a vast swath of Central LA, Westside, South Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles. Like, Koreatown is denser than the most densely populated wards of Nagoya and Palms is about as dense as the densest parts of Nagoya.

There are definitely several dense areas, but even compared to NYC, most of it isn't dense. More than half of the
land area of New York City exhibits a population
density greater than 15,000. In the City of Los
Angeles, only about 15 percent of the area
meets this density level.

And without more housing being built, I don't see more areas developing density

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Thekdog

There are definitely several dense areas, but even compared to NYC, most of it isn't dense. More than half of the
land area of New York City exhibits a population
density greater than 15,000. In the City of Los
Angeles, only about 15 percent of the area
meets this density level.

And without more housing being built, I don't see more areas developing density

I'm not comparing it to New York City, and New York City is also underserved by transit. If we're talking about major cities in industrialized or developed countries, New York City for its urban area size has overall mediocre transit.

Also, again, city boundaries are pretty arbitrary. New York City has a land area of about 300 square miles (50% of it would 150). Los Angeles has about 470 square miles (15% of this would be 70.5). Regardless, that's not necessarily the threshold for urban rail since as I mentioned before, there are quite a few countries in industrialized or developed countries that have comparatively extensive rail networks for comparatively dense stretches as LA's dense, contiguous areas are. LA's density and where it's place can certainly support more grade-separated rapid transit. The density itself is not the issue as plenty of other places at near or lesser densities over even smaller areas have been able to support more and better rail.

I think the other thing to realize is that LA is surprisingly dense for various reasons, but it's in some weird clumps at times and the contiguous dense tracts do not follow the contours of Los Angeles city municipal limits. Well-known parts of that would be downtown and midtown Santa Monica contiguous with the dense Venice Beach of LA, or West Hollywood and the flats and commercial part of Beverly Hills that are contiguous with LA neighborhoods. These are dense parts that are not technically part of LA but meld into LA neighborhoods. Those along with maybe the downtown part of Culver City or East Los Angeles are the better known ones, but you also have expanses of small, dense municipalities one after another such as the Gateway Cities.

[Thekdog]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

I'm not comparing it to New York City, and New York City is also underserved by transit. If we're talking about major cities in industrialized or developed countries, New York City for its urban area size has overall mediocre transit.

Also, again, city boundaries are pretty arbitrary. New York City has a land area of about 300 square miles (50% of it would 150). Los Angeles has about 470 square miles (15% of this would be 70.5). Regardless, that's not necessarily the threshold for urban rail since as I mentioned before, there are quite a few countries in industrialized or developed countries that have comparatively extensive rail networks for comparatively dense stretches as LA's dense, contiguous areas are. LA's density and where it's place can certainly support more grade-separated rapid transit. The density itself is not the issue as plenty of other places at near or lesser densities over even smaller areas have been able to support more and better rail.

I think the other thing to realize is that LA is surprisingly dense for various reasons, but it's in some weird clumps at times and the contiguous dense tracts do not follow the contours of Los Angeles city municipal limits. Well-known parts of that would be downtown and midtown Santa Monica contiguous with the dense Venice Beach of LA, or West Hollywood and the flats and commercial part of Beverly Hills that are contiguous with LA neighborhoods. These are dense parts that are not technically part of LA but meld into LA neighborhoods. Those along with maybe the downtown part of Culver City or East Los Angeles are the better known ones, but you also have expanses of small, dense municipalities one after another such as the Gateway Cities.

It definitely has weird clumps of non density in the middle. And then Panorama City way up there is somewhat dense.

When I travel to Europe. I don't see quite so many single family homes far from transit (not that there's anything wrong with the).

When I look at the numbers, only a few hundred thousand Angelenos actually live in high dense areas.

Yes there are small parts of every city that have high density. But
Culver City, Santa Monica and Venice are not dense overall.

They should do an extensive subway around Westlake, koreatown, Hollywood and downtown. The rest at this point is better served by buses and high occupancy lane imo until density increases (Santa Monica and Culver City are famously NIMBY though)

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Thekdog

It definitely has weird clumps of non density in the middle. And then Panorama City way up there is somewhat dense.

When I travel to Europe. I don't see quite so many single family homes far from transit (not that there's anything wrong with the).

When I look at the numbers, only a few hundred thousand Angelenos actually live in high dense areas.

Yes there are small parts of every city that have high density. But
Culver City, Santa Monica and Venice are not dense overall.

They should do an extensive subway around Westlake, koreatown, Hollywood and downtown. The rest at this point is better served by buses and high occupancy lane imo until density increases (Santa Monica and Culver City are famously NIMBY though)

Yea, they should definitely work on the major corridors, but there are multiple major corridors. Santa Monica and Culver City themselves are only somewhat dense overall, but they have parts adjacent to other municipalities that are quite dense and contiguous with high density.


On the city vs city forum, there's a user Nei who mapped smaller units, census tracts, and tabulated the various large metropolitan areas by proportion and number of people living in high density tracts and aside from the very top peaks where only a few tracts per urban area outside of NYC are hitting. I couldn't find the exact post with those, but here's this one for the LA urban area that has about 30% by 2010 census numbers of LA's urban area living at above 15,000 people per square mile which would equate to a few million rather than a few hundred thousand. This wouldn't be strictly Angelenos in terms of living within the city boundaries of the city of Los Angeles.

[Thekdog]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Yea, they should definitely work on the major corridors, but there are multiple major corridors. Santa Monica and Culver City themselves are only somewhat dense overall, but they have parts adjacent to other municipalities that are quite dense and contiguous with high density.


On the city vs city forum, there's a user Nei who mapped smaller units, census tracts, and tabulated the various large metropolitan areas by proportion and number of people living in high density tracts and aside from the very top peaks where only a few tracts per urban area outside of NYC are hitting. I couldn't find the exact post with those, but here's this one for the LA urban area that has about 30% by 2010 census numbers of LA's urban area living at above 15,000 people per square mile which would equate to a few million rather than a few hundred thousand. This wouldn't be strictly Angelenos in terms of living within the city boundaries of the city of Los Angeles.

I assume that's city not county, so that would be about a million, though it probably needs to be above 20,000

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Thekdog

I assume that's city not county, so that would be about a million, though it probably needs to be above 20,000

It's the urban area so includes all of the city plus a massive chunk of the county and Orange County save for far disconnected parts since Los Angeles County is geographically massive. Nei used the 2010 census. The 2020 census has the LA urban area at 12 million. At the 20K ppsqm cut-off, it's about 15% which would still cover about 1.8 million people by 2020 census numbers.

It also doesn't necessarily require 20,000 ppsqm to have grade separated rapid transit. The entire city of Nagoya comes in at 18,494 ppsqm with 2.3 million people and is by far the densest part of Aichi prefecture and that has a relatively massive mass transit network even more so than just its subway network but also commuter rail lines that interline and act as rapid transit throughout dense parts of the city.

The LA metropolitan area does have a lot of sprawl albeit often in somewhat dense forms of sprawl (though still sprawl), and so that's a lot of people's experience, but in terms of the absolute size and population count of its dense areas, it's also quite large by those counts as well.

[Hochita]

Speaking only as a tourist...

We've done trips to LA where we relied on the buses and Metro to get everywhere (except the beaches) and it was fine. Dare I say the buses are even comparable to the CTA.

[Señor Ríos]

When I was a little boy, me and my grandmother took the bus all the time in LA. As a teenager I used the bus system in Downey, CA and thought that was pretty good. As an adult I rode the train a lot & also went all over LA County on a bicycle.

I would say the public transportation in LA is pretty good. I do not have any recent experience, but I know there are new train routes since I last rode. You can get around LA County with no car.

[Thekdog]

The bus system is not bad. Though it will be better for tourists staying in certain areas. For example getting to Santa Monica from the east side right now is 30 minutes by car and almost 2 hours by bus