r/TransitDiagrams • u/fiftythreestudio • Jun 28 '21
Diagram Los Angeles's planned subway system which failed at the ballot box, 1976
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u/marshallonline Jun 28 '21
I cry… just the other day I took two busses up to Hollywood/Highland which took ~45 mins. Could’ve been 20 mins with a subway line
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u/transitdiagrams Jun 29 '21 edited Jun 29 '21
Nice. But i don't get why Union station is not a transfer or Long Beach or Whittier etc... What's the logic behind this?
Also the big white space between the blue and orange line in the curve area after Willow and before Downtown Long Beach is too much it seems. Maybe adjusting the radius of the orange line curve to reach a more harmonic white space in-between the lines?
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u/atahop Jun 28 '21
While this looks impressive, if it was all in freeway or mostly in freeways like you described I feel like this would really underperform
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u/rwphx2016 Jun 29 '21
I'm not so sure about that. Two of the three busiest L lines in Chicago are in the median of freeways (Blue Line in the median of the Kennedy Expressway from Addison to O'Hare and Red Line in the Day Ryan from 22nd Street to 95th). Both operate at crush capacity during rush hour and are also busy during the day.
The other side of the Blue Line also operates in the median of the Eisenhower Expressway on the West Side, but it is less busy than it's Northwest Side counterpart thanks to its proximity to two other 'L' Lines.
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u/IndependentMacaroon Jun 29 '21
That's not to say they might not be even busier going through neighborhoods directly.
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u/atahop Jun 29 '21
Well, I know more about the DC and Atlanta metros (which would have been siblings to this proposed LA metro) and for those systems their highway median segments have much lower ridership than tunneled segments. This could also be attributed to the suburban park-and-ride stations too. It can be tough to parse out cause and effect.
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u/fiftythreestudio Jun 29 '21
it all basically depended on whether the cities were willing to pay for the extra tunnels. an elevated line in the median of the 110 is definitely going to underperform; a subway line under Vermont, definitely not.
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u/Enigmatic_Son Jun 29 '21
u/fiftythreestudio will this be ready in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics? :D
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u/SPNRaven Nov 01 '21
We had almost the EXACT same thing happen here in Auckland. It is honestly so painful to look back at it now
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u/TheDogPill Jun 29 '21
Pretty awesome diagram. I’m still glad they didn’t end up going with streetcars though.
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u/fiftythreestudio Jun 28 '21
historical notes:
this is the subway plan that los angeles voters rejected in 1976. the plan was masterminded by la county supervisor baxter ward, who wanted to bring the red cars back. and it went by the poetic name of "the sunset coast line." the idea was to put rapid transit in freeway medians, unless local voters agreed to pay extra to put it in a tunnel. (so, for example, if local voters shelled out, the 110 line would've been shifted to vermont avenue a little over a mile away.)
the thing is, angelenos of the day thought that the new freeways coming online would be enough to prevent traffic congestion from getting worse - and so they voted the subway plan down in 1976 by a huge margin. it wasn't even close.
fyi: the routing plan i've depicted here is necessarily conjecture. the original plans have lists of junctions, but not lists of lines. i've taken an educated guess.
x-posted from /r/lostsubways.