Los Angeles Metro recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the opening of its Expo light-rail line. Construction on the line began in 2006, a year in which LA Metro buses carried 409 million trips, and the line opened in April, 2012.
The LA Expo line shortly after it opened. Photo by Gary Leonard for Los Angeles Metro.
To help pay for the Expo and other new light-rail lines, LA Metro cut bus service by nearly a quarter between 2006 and 2019. This contributed to the loss of a third of its bus riders, or nearly 138 million trips per year. The Expo line, meanwhile, boosted light-rail ridership by about 2 million annual trips, enough to make up 1.5 percent of the loss in bus ridership.
LA Metro learned a valuable lesson from this experience: it pays to get federal dollars to build light rail. Congress has made it clear that it doesn’t car about ridership; it gladly hands out billions of dollars to agencies such as LA Metro for new construction projects regardless of the benefits of those projects.
As a result, LA Metro currently has several more light-rail plans in the works, most of which are projected to cost more than $300 million a mile, and is eager to get more federal funds for those projects. Meanwhile, light-rail ridership declined even more than bus ridership during the pandemic, and neither show much sign of recovery.
One Commenter said it. Called it “Other peoples Money”
I call it ‘Valley Girl Mentality”
You live on daddy’s Credit card, you don’t care what it costs ,or how useful it is or if you’ll even keep it in the long run.
LA has lost 138,000,000 bus rides and gained 2,000,000 light rail rides? Those numbers seem suspect to me since I’ve been repeatedly assured that “we must build rail because people won’t ride buses”. ; )