A recent article in the San Jose Mercury-News reports that transit ridership in “car crazy” Los Angeles has exceeded ridership in the “transit mecca” of the San Francisco Bay Area, a “reversal that could remake California’s mass transit landscape.” This would be a lot more interesting if the writer hadn’t done the arithmetic wrong.
Contrary to the implications of the Mercury-News story, Los Angeles has always been one of the biggest transit markets in the country and certainly bigger than that of the Bay Area. Photo by Downtowngal.
The story compares ridership carried by the major agencies in six San Francisco Bay Area counties with ridership carried by the main agencies in Los Angeles county. But Los Angeles County is not all of the Los Angeles urban area any more than San Francisco County is all of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Los Angeles urban area includes all of urban Los Angeles County and all of urban Orange County, while the Greater Los Angeles area also include three more counties. Continue reading
