Talk:Transportation of Los Angeles

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Contents 1 Pollution and Car Chases 2 Whole article is biased 3 Bike example 4 Whether we need to revert an entire section... 5 Move? 6 Category:Streets in Los Angeles, California 7 Disputing deletion of assertion by Loodog 8 Still not sources 9 Victory Boulevard 10 rush hour

[edit] Pollution and Car Chases

Are these section necessary? (Phattonez 02:24, 11 January 2007 (UTC))

--I am removing these sections as I feel that they are not relevant to this article. (Phattonez 13:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC))

Phattonez, I reverted your removal. Reasoning: both sections serve to tell something about the magnitude of automotive infrastructure in the city and serve to distinguish its transporation from other cities.--Loodog 17:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur. I drafted the section on car chases. Few other cities in the world have as many car chases or such wild car chases. --Coolcaesar 17:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe pollution makes sense, but not car chases. That should be in an article entitled crime in Los Angeles, not transportation. (Phattonez 15:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Whole article is biased

Can we please do something about this? For example: True to Los Angeles reputation, there is not high ridership on mass transit; worst traffic in the nation; road rage; running red lights; chronic police understaffing; etc. These are just assertions, there is no fact. Los Angeles does not have the worst traffic in the nation, and the source is old anyway. Los Angeles has very high ridership for such a new system. Road rage and everything I mentioned after are just assertions and are not backed up with facts. Can we please do something to fix this? This requires a very big revision. (Phattonez 02:24, 11 January 2007 (UTC))

Unbiased facts are there on the page. The only way to unbias it any more is the remove the phrase "true to reputation", which I thought added something to the article since many Californians I know both don't even know LA has a subway and repute low public transit ridership; thus, the statement "true to reputation" allows the reader to connect the article with something he has probably heard and wondered about the veracity.--Loodog 05:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

→However, Los Angeles' mass transit is very new compared to the rest of the nation. It is not fair to compare it to systems which have been around for many more years. There are many more problems besides the ones on mass transit. I marked those areas by saying that citation is needed. Obviously this article needs a total revision. (Phattonez 05:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC))

Through whatever circumstances have made it so, LA's mass transit system does not have high ridership. The ridership numbers comparing the T to the L to the NYC subway to the DC Metrorail system make no note of explanations for the differences in the numbers. These are all vastly different systems with any number of contextual factors about them being different. Age, size, population density, grade separation, political trends, demographics and poverty rates, ease of owning an automobile, etc... these things are all different for every system compared. It's just as "fair" to compare them to each other as to LA's system, which (with the exception of the Gold Line) was finished before DC's metrorail system anyway.--Loodog 05:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

→Are you kidding? The DC Subway has already celebrated it's 25th anniversary. LA's first line, the Blue Line, was finished in 1993, only 14 years ago. Other cities have had a head start. How can you compare a system that is already complete to a system that is still in its early stages of construction? (Phattonez 23:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC))

DC system was declared finished in 2001. Either way the point is moot as per my comments above. Through whatever circumstances have made it so, LA's system averages 276,900 trips a day, DC's subway has 699,599 trips, the T has 664,700 trips, the L has's 644,200, and the NYC subway has 6 million. Explanations for these facts could fill essays, which would be OR anyway.--Loodog 01:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

And Los Angeles' system is nowhere near done. Besides, if we compare these systems, then the buses need to be taken into account also, since it is a very important part of the mass transit system. (Phattonez 01:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC))

Numbers compare rail trips only. In the part of the section talking about rail transport. The sentence makes no assertions otherwise: "True to reputation, Los Angeles' rail system...". Feel free to add compare bus ridership and total mass transit usage additionally, if you deem it important.--Loodog 02:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I have to concur that L.A. has a reputation as a city making relatively minimal use of public transportation, and that reputation is well-deserved. The fact that L.A. is playing transit catch-up is great, but belongs to its future, meanwhile Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Just today L.A. news stations have announced that Congressman Henry Waxman's recent promise to lift the decades-old ban on the extension of L.A.'s Red Line subway is beginning to make headway -- but the city's ban on subway funding, effected by Zev Yaroslavsky, and the feds won't underwrite subway consrtuction without local matching funds. While it's true that some people in L.A. have always relied on public transit and it is getting better, most locals still consider L.A. an "auto" town: for instance, few middle-class L.A. residents would let a relative or friend take public transit or a taxi (if you could find one!) to or from LAX -- "it's just not done". Lethiere 00:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Dude, what reality do you live in? I take the bus to work every day, and it's always full during rush hours. Los Angeles has a very high transit usage, in fact, lookin at total system usage, it's one of the highest in the nation. And for the love of God, plenty of people take taxis to and from the airport. Donald Hosek 21:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Since this is a city where 10.5% of commuters (see page 12) take public transit to work and 65.2% drive alone, Los Angeles is in the company of other auto-heavy cities such as Housto, San Diego, Dallas, and Phoenix. Obviously, this is a different dynamic than New York (53%), Chicago(30%), Boston(31%), Philadelphia(29%), or San Francisco (33%). Maybe you know a good number of people who take public transit, but in LA, they are in the minority by a ratio of 10 to 1.--Loodog 02:14, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Loodog on this point and disagree with Donald Hosek. --Coolcaesar 06:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bike example

Could it be that the "Example" - Transportation_of_Los_Angeles#Example of using bikes on the Metrolink is a bit long and a case of personal research? It seems like most of what is information in it is also contained in the preceding section. The article is so long already and getting longer that detailed examples of commuter hassles should probably be summarized, if not moved to another article - "Biking in LA" or something like that. Anyway, my two centavos worth.... (great article, all in all.) Willmcw 10:19, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The example is also factually incorrect. It's been ccorrected. 3 Dec 2004

[edit] Whether we need to revert an entire section...

Hello everyone:

I haven't looked at this article for a while. Now I come back from a trip to Europe and the section on the L.A. street grid (which I originally started) is a total mess.

The point of that section was not to mention every single arterial road in the City of Los Angeles, but rather to mention some of the more notable ones (and we all know that to keep WP to a manageable size, WP content is restricted under the systemwide notability policy).

Furthermore, the section as originally written listed first the boulevards and then the non-boulevards, but as rewritten, it is now an incoherent jumble listing many non-notable arterials like 3rd Street. Yes, 3rd Street is an important bypass for people in the Mid-Wilshire area, but no one who lives outside of L.A. knows or cares about it. In contrast, Santa Monica Boulevard has been celebrated in several movies and songs.

If no one objects in the next couple of weeks, I am going to move back just that section to the last good version (by copying and pasting from the old version in the article history). --Coolcaesar 21:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• Could you provide a dif so we might know the version you will be reverting to? BlankVerse ∅ 23:58, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course. Take a look at the section as it existed in this version: [1]

Okay, it's been a week and no one has come forth with a good reason why the current version of that section should stay. I'm copying over the old version right now. --Coolcaesar 13:52, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move?

Wouldn't Transportation in Los Angeles be more appropriate than Tranportation of Los Angeles? Pacific Coast Highway ^{(blah • not even doom music)} 21:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

sure lensovet 23:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. On the one hand, transportation "in" is probably more grammatically correct, but transportation "of" is more consistent with the other L.A.-related articles. Anyone else have an opinion? --Coolcaesar 03:11, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Well if it was something like Transportation systems of LA than it would be cool, but now that PCH points it out, it def sounds weird the way it is now. What other articles have this naming structure? Perhaps it's time to move them as well. lensovet 05:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Streets in Los Angeles, California

I have proposed renaming Category:Streets in Los Angeles, California to Category:Streets in Los Angeles County, California at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 3#Category:Streets in Los Angeles, California. If you have any opinions on this renaming, please contribute to the discussion. ^BlankVerse 01:54, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• NO it should stay as is--Redspork02 22:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

As you can see by the redlinks, the change was approved a couple of months ago. All the votes at Categories for discussion were for the rename. ^BlankVerse 15:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disputing deletion of assertion by Loodog

User:Loodog just deleted an assertion that I originally drafted, regarding how the system is gridlocked because less than a third of the originally planned freeway system was finished. If I recall correctly, the source for that assertion would be the L.A. Freeway book by David Brodsly, ISBN 0520040686. It's widely available throughout the United States (just look it up on WorldCat at worldcat.org). Anyway, the next time I go to San Jose Public Library (probably within the next three weeks) I will take a look at Brodsly's book and get the exact page cite. --Coolcaesar 10:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

My fault, there was no obvious source so I assumed it to be some user's guess, though I'd still like to back that statement off to "David Brodsly blames the fact that LA's freeway system was never finished..." because, IMO, there is no scientific way to know something like this. Many freeway systems did get finished and jam anyway.--Loodog 17:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

We should try to see if we can find some planning maps for the original plans. My personal opinion is that there is no way we could have afforded to build all of the freeways that were planned, and if they were built, that LA would be a balkanized disaster of little enclaves separated by freeways. BlankVerse 10:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Some of them were impossible, but some of them really should have been built like the Beverly Hills Freeway and the 710 to the 210. (Phattonez 14:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Still not sources

I marked many places where citation is needed. If nothing is put there, I will delete it tomorrow. You have had enough time. Statements without sources do not belong here. (Phattonez 05:18, 27 July 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Victory Boulevard

The Victory Boulevard link points to a Vicotry Boulevard in New York state. Should the link be removed, or a Disambiguation Page added for Victory Boulevard. I don't think, however, that there is any page for the Victory Boulevard in Los Angeles. Lasdlt (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I just made an article called "Victory Boulevard (Los Angeles)". It is a stub, but it should be sufficient. - Phattonez (talk) 02:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] rush hour

Has anything been done by the city authorites to counteract the city's rush hours? why are they so bad in this city compared to others, considering its extensive transport network? What could be done. After reading the article and hoping to find out this info I dont think these have been answered. --Chickenfeed9 (talk) 12:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)