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there's isn't really heavy rail. mostly light rail
Los Angeles' system is mostly LRT but the Red Line and Purple Line are two major components of the system, and have been built in the last few decades (making them newer than most of DC's system).
The Purple Line is being extended along Wilshire Blvd to Westwood, that alone a good 9 miles of subway being constructed in the United States.
Additionally, in Downtown LA the Regional Connector is under construction - though while it is a "subway" only LRT trains will run through the tunnels.
There is a good chance that the eventual transit link through the Sepulveda Pass (between San Fernando Valley and Westside) will be heavy rail as well. That would make four separate subway projects (Red to North Hollywood, Purple to Ktown, Purple to Westside, Sepulveda Pass) in the last 4-5 decades.
NYC also has a heavy rail subway under construction.
Where is is needed and where the density warrants it, subways do get built. However there really aren't that many places in the United States that are dense enough to justify new subway construction.
Infrastructure spending can be done with the stroke of the keyboard (i.e. a jobs-bill from Congress). It was blocked.
Most growth in developoing markets is all infrastructure. It is the easiest economic boom in the playbook.
Knock a bunch of things down, build a subway, put people to work, and watch the magic.
I would agree, but infrastructure spending is been at almost zero (in comparison) for decades. We don't fix our bridges, tunnels, roads, over passes, tressles etc etc etc until its way beyond repair.
Then roll the dice every day to see what might happen. Even our electrical grid is suspect.
I don't think you should talk about what you don't know. I live in the District and almost everyone here under the age of 40 uses metro as their primary source of travel. The neighborhoods in DC that don't have metro stations are begging metro to come to them because it is such a boon to the area. Also, comparing Oslo to LA which barely even has a subway system is completely unfair. DC has the second highest subway ridership in the US with about 700,000 trips a day, with an expected 1 million trips a day in the next 15 years. Oslo has a subway ridership of 200,000 a day. Both have similar populations within the city. So obviously you are anti public transit, but don't spurt out weak facts
Um, first thing, your "facts" are all wrong.
The DC area has 6 million people, and the Oslo metro has not even 1 million people, yet the Oslo metro has half the daily ridership of the DC metro.
And Oslo has 8 commuter rail lines supplementing the metro, as well as tons of streetcar lines. DC has a tiny commuter rail system.
Basically DC's metro is a hybrid commuter rail-subway system serving an area of 6-7 million people, and even with all its advantages, it has lower per capita ridership than almost any European city. And the DC Metro is considered a smashing success in the U.S. context!
NYC is the only U.S. city with really a strong need for heavy rail capacity. If anything, there are too many U.S. cities with heavy rail, not too few. Small cities abroad like Oslo have higher heavy rail ridership than our second largest city. That tells you all you need to know.
Even the older, urban-type cities of Philly, Boston, DC, Chicago, and SF do not have very strong heavy rail ridership compared to cities outside the U.S.
Just look at KidPhilly's map and tell me that a city like Philadelphia wouldn't benefit from having more heavy rail expansion. It's not just NYC that has a strong need for heavy rail transit.
I don't think you should talk about what you don't know. I live in the District and almost everyone here under the age of 40 uses metro as their primary source of travel. The neighborhoods in DC that don't have metro stations are begging metro to come to them because it is such a boon to the area. Also, comparing Oslo to LA which barely even has a subway system is completely unfair. DC has the second highest subway ridership in the US with about 700,000 trips a day, with an expected 1 million trips a day in the next 15 years. Oslo has a subway ridership of 200,000 a day. Both have similar populations within the city. So obviously you are anti public transit, but don't spurt out weak facts
If you look at boardings by state and consider the hybrid form the Metro while good is not running away with anything and vastly more similar to overall rail usage of places like Chicago, Philly and Boston, even SF to an extent
for example Chicago has more ridership within the city than does DC
Philly actually has nearly the ridership of WMATA for heavy rail within the city and 1/4th (believe but may be wrong on the track mileage) the rail miles. (Actually far higher riders per mile when compared to DC)
Also many cities have Regional rail that more act like the outer portions of the WMATA. I really think the Metro is great to be honest and wish many aspects of Metro were here but I think some of the numbers dont always have the appropriate perspective
this is an older report with boardings by state and station
That information about Tucson (where I live) is somewhat of an exaggeration. Mainly because this "modern streetcar" didn't even start to carry passengers until two weeks ago, so how can it have caused "aggressive redevelopment"? As for the "vibrant entertainment district," Tucson has a few more bars and restaurants than it had when I moved here nine years ago, but I doubt if it's even as many that closed during the recession. I used to write engineering proposals so I look at figures like those provided by the Dept. of Transportation with a jaundiced eye. The Mercado District, for example, would have been developed had there been no streetcar.
The streetcar, furthermore, has yet to prove its functionality. A wrongly parked car can bring it to a dead halt and it is a danger in several ways to bicycle riders, a transportation method Tucson has spent millions of dollars for years trying to promote. It remains to be seen if many people beyond those studying or employed at the U of A will actually use it. Because it just goes around downtown on a loop, it's useless for commuters.
The article says it was the announcement of the project itself in 2006 that attracted commercial development along the approved streetcar route. A transit project doesn't just start running the minute it is announced. It has to be built first and that takes time. And that's the biggest problem. Rail projects in the US today take forever to build. It takes Tucson 8 years just to build 4 miles of light rail. Which is half a mile per year. And four miles doesn't seem to be a very useful amount. I could maybe understand taking that long to build a heavy rail underground subway line but this is only surface light rail.
So I wonder how long it will take California to build their approved 400 miles of high speed heavy rail from LA to SF? A hundred years? It's painfully slow. At half a mile per year it would take them 800 years to complete the construction lol.
Last edited by cisco kid; 08-11-2014 at 06:08 PM..
Plenty of cities would benefit from having a rapid transit subway system like Portland, St. Louis, Buffalo, Denver, and Pittsburgh. I could name a lot more.
Instead of building more roads and highways, this country should put a stronger emphasis on seriously improving mass transit. Countries in Asia and Europe have no problem investing in mass transit for the long term. America on the other hand would rather wait until there is a huge problem and then try to fix it with a less efficient option in which they will run into the same problem 10-20 year later. It's a shame that this country used to be a world leader in the late 19th and early 20th century when it come to mass transit. Boy "how the mighty have fallen" as this country is arguably the worst 1st world nation when it comes to mass transit. Countries like Brazil and Argentina have already surpassed us when it comes to mass transit efficiency.
It's because the Reaganites succeeded in changing the discussion of public works projects from one of "investments" to "costs" and "spending". As a result, Americans now generally believe that when you build a public project, the money is burned and taken out of the economy. Because in their own microeconomic experience, spending means simply losing money. They don't understand that it's simply moving money and investing it in something that will have returns for the economy and quality of life.
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