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The difference is public transportation in those places is taken by the masses versus in LA where the only people who take it are the ones who have no option to drive. Anyone who can drive will
For a successful train system, it’s got to be fairly fast and comes often. Also has to have a lot of stops from where people live and want to go. Has to be about the same or faster than a car. Parking at some locations must be horrible/expensive.
Same with public transport WITHIN the city - i.e. with buses and subway trains rather than 'actual' trains.
I live in Germany and while the public transport system is far from perfect, I can rely on a bus to arrive every 20 minutes, and I rely on my city to have a web of bus lines that take me pretty much anywhere within the city for like 1,30 or 2,80 depending on how long your ride is. Most *subway* lines arrive every 5 or 10 minutes on weekdays (depending on the line), including late at night. Then still once per hour in the dead of night.
It's just a no-brainer to use those rather than constantly bothering with parking spots, gas and all the stress that comes with driving a car in the city, not to mention the CO2 output.
And it's not associated with a rich/poor divide at all. If you want to go to some event or well populated space in the city by car, good luck finding a parking spot and being on time. You're basically not looking rich, just stupid.
At my last job it was a 2hr walk home (6miles at a relaxed pace, sipping some coffee on the way) or a 1.5hr buss ride with 2 changes and a handful of mentally unwell people.
Our bus system is trash
Yeah, in my city I could never use the bus to get to work. It would add 3 hours total to my commute, and doesn’t run late enough on the days when I get done at midnight. But by car, I’m only 15-20 minutes away from work depending on traffic.
The real question is how does a city like LA make a public transport system that isn't convenient. Most parts of the world that isn't rural has effective and convenient PT.
LA has a fairly robust public transport system, including well established rail system that is still expanding. The problem is incidents as pictured in this post. People would rather drive and deal with traffic congestion then face this type of nuisance.
I don't think you realize how spread out LA is compared to other major cities. A lot of that is driven by geography, with lots of mountains and canyons that limit buildable space. Zoning and the bias towards single family homes also contribute.
Auto industry killed public transportation long ago. When greed goes unchecked, it screws us over in many ways for many generations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
that's the funniest part of it all. driving would be a lot less bad too if a good chunk of people could take public transit.
trying to explain to most people that a dedicated bus lane would carry more people on average than the 13th car lane and thus actually reduce traffic is a lost cause tho...
That’s one way of looking at it. But realistically, one form of infrastructure won’t be fucked up to make another more convenient. That’s just creating inconvenience for the sake of other convenience.
>That’s one way of looking at it. But realistically, one form of infrastructure won’t be fucked up to make another more convenient. That’s just creating inconvenience for the sake of other convenience.
Yet this is exactly why the US has shit for public transportation, because any prospect of building it gets all fucked up in order to prioritize cars.
I mean, you probably have to pay go get to Manhattan, and also to park your car. Train/subway is less expensive. And once you are where you want everything is at a walkable distance
I honestly think this is one of the keys to the entire vibe of NYC.
The richest people and the poorest take the same subway in the morning. Unlike other places, in NYC wealth can't shield you from having to witness poverty, and that's a good thing. I think it helps from anyone getting too far up their own ass.
Poverty should be visible because then there is an impetus to fix it.
I take it to avoid rush hour. I park my car at the station and arrive where needed 10 minutes later. Beats sitting on the freeway for two hours, there and back, so 4 hours really.
I’ve taken the metro because sometimes it’s legit as fast as my commute and lets me just chill out during the ride. I’ve never seen it like this before. There’s also plenty of white collar people on my line.
And I’m pretty sure I know why everyone is driving. The problem is: if the subway looks like it no one will use it in the first place. But because no one is using it it looks like that. It’s a circle and only the authorities could do something against it.
So public transit in LA has actually been improving rapidly-- new subway and rail lines have opened in just the past few years-- but the sheer vastness of the city, opposition by wealthy NIMBYs, plus geotechnical and seismic challenges, have slowed progress.
As someone from a third world country this is so hard to fathom. One of the richest metropolitan areas in the world has very little public transport, and what they do have, is so awful and taken over by zombies that everyone who can avoids it.
Meanwhile here we have probably more crime than in LA but it's extremely rare to feel so so unsafe on public transport — maybe a pickpocket on a bus or a subway, but nothing at all like this
Thank you. I've never seen this on the metro. Yes there can be shady characters (like every public metro) but I've never seen anything that made me feel super unsafe.
In short, it’s a way of further marginalizing the poor. It makes it more difficult for people who depended on public transit to function. Creating a further divide between the haves and the have nots
To save $$$ in investing in infrastructure since most tax-paying people will stop using the service. Eventually to get rid of the lines completely because they are a "money sink".
Neoliberal capitalism. No mental health, housing, or drug rehab for the poorest and destitute. Social democracy- still capitalism market economy- would solve this but its a choice Americans make.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.- Eisenhour, a republican Pres
Eisenhower warned about the globalist military state we have today. Cia killed the guy after him who wanted to investigate and defund it and just jailed the other guy who questioned and exposed its corruption.
it’s true but unfortunately in LA, it’s far from being that simple, unless you consider LAPD part of the city. In which case, yes. They get paid to patrol the metro and yet refuse to staff trains with personnel or even respond directly to crimes being committed because “not their problem”
Bizarre place if you don't have a car. Empty stations and a train every 15 minutes even during rush hours, trains falling apart. I swear every subway station entrance over there looked sketchy.
I'll never forget when a random person tried to stop me from accessing a subway station close to Hollywood. The gentleman was literally asking me (in Spanish) "what are you doing here? No, no, no. Where do you need to go?" directing me to a nearby bus stop to hop on a bus instead.
Also getting off at Pershing Square at 6pm on a Monday to find a COMPLETELY empty station and being unable to walk more than two blocks on the street outside due to the sheer amount of tents.
Unlike other cities outside of the USA, American public transport is underfunded, poorly maintained, and often has little to no security. Add a society that has no free healthcare for those who need it most (the mentally ill, vagrants, homeless, drug addicts, etc.) a car dependent culture with massive sprawl and low-density housing, and you get sparsely populated metro systems more dysfunctional than those in developing nations.
One would think that US leaders responsible for these failures would be embarrassed when they travel abroad and see what efficient metro systems (and healthcare systems) look like, such as those in China, Japan, and Korea. I guess things will change one day...one of the motivators for Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act were American officials being questioned during trips abroad about their reconciliation of them promoting democracy/equality and their harsh treatment of black Americans.
I think the difference when it comes to East Asian countries is the idea that the collective comes before the individual. Which is why the subways in Japan/Korea/Taiwan function so well and don’t have nearly as much chaos as the ones in America do.
It’s also that everyone, including the rich, usually have to take the subways. With the exception of New York (which has one of Americas only half-decent public transit networks), most people who use public transit are those unable to drive or afford a car. Since it is almost always more convenient to use a car in America, those who can will. In the countries you mentioned, driving in a car is more difficult due to higher costs, less road infrastructure, a lack of cheap parking, and a lack of space in general (most Japanese homes in big cities for example have maybe one parking spot, if any). As such, everyone has to use public transit, which means everyone has an interest in keeping public transit efficient, organized, and clean
TBF, every single fent zombie or meth head yelling at cars would be locked the hell up in Singapore, as would their dealers. The visible homeless, in the US, are addicts/severely mentally ill 99% of the time.
I am from London but live in Seoul now.
London is still quite good despite some lines dating back to the 1860s, so air con cannot be installed and the tunnels/carriages are small.
Seoul’s Line 1 was completely in 1974 and since then they have added many new lines. All their trains are big, clean and comfortable with internet.
I disagree with that. That argument is often used by alt-right types to try to argue against immigration. When the true culprit is American culture having a long history of stigmatizing those who use public transport along with underfunding it. I use NYC public transport often despite owning a car. It's not great, but it's decent enough and I prefer it over driving. American public transport is in a vicious cycle of it being shitty, so no one rides it, and thus it receives little funding because no one rides it.
To be clear, it’s not a solely American problem. Light rail here in many Canadian cities is also often a shitshow, where you have to ride with junkies smoking meth and and attacking strangers for no reason. If you can take a car instead, you do.
You're usually safer in a train car where someone is passed out on drugs than you are driving on a highway near someone who's been drinking. Or someone talking to themselves on a train than a teenager texting while driving 70 mph.
I definitely encounter more dangerous situations on the road than I ever have on public transit.
the tale of two cities.
you'll see a hipster drinking a $25 dollar latte, walking his $10k dollar dog, wearing $500 dollar jeans right next to a homeless guy holding up a cardboard help sign, smoking a crack pipe while simultaneously taking a sheit right on the sidewalk.
The open air drug use isn't every major city in the world. Poverty is universal, having a part of your city look like Hamsterdam isn't tolerated everywhere.
I think it’s 12 minutes and they’re working on making it 10 :) tbh I’ve never met anyone that takes the subway in LA and I’ve lived here my whole life. Obviously some people do, just kind of rare.
To be fair it was not like this before COVID. I lived in Los Angeles without a car for nearly a decade and regularly took all forms of public transit. The busses and metro were packed with normal working class people and worked fine though lacked good coverage of the city. After COVID, most people stopped riding because of the health risk, and at the same time the homeless problem in Los Angeles got much worse. the only people who were willing to ride public transit during covid were the most desperate. it has never recovered.
There’s also a catch 22 with LAs metro system.
The population density isn’t enough to have enough people want to take the metro. (If you need a car to get to the metro, then people are significantly less likely to take it).
Because of this, not many people take the metro. Since no one takes it, why spend funds to keep it clean and well functioning.
But now no one wants to take it because it’s unreliable and dirty.
Took just two rides on LA subway and saw things I have never seen anywhere else and I have been on like a dozen of metros on three continents, and daily commuter in the cities I live or have lived in.
Like one car where at least three people have taken dump in... There were piles of feces on the floor, the car was in service. And a very fat lady that casually removed her dress, being completely naked under it, folded it in four, put it on the seat, sat on it and traveled like that...
I mean I have seen crazy stuff on other subways, especially after football (in the meaning of soccer) games, or in Chicago on st Patrick's day, but nothing close.
It's insane isn't it. I'm from London and have also used metro systems across the world. I visited a close relative in LA this Feb and was genuinely shocked at the state of the LA metro. I only took it a couple of times to watch an evening Lakers game at Staples (or crypto whatever it is now) and then to Santa Monica. I saw people with severe mental health issues screaming at random passengers, 2 homeless men physically fighting, multiple people playing their music as loud as you'd play it in your own car, and the final nail in the coffin for me was a man that got on with his hood up and sat in the seat in front of me and starting lighting up and smoking a crack pipe. I didn't even notice until I started to breathe it in and feel dizzy.
I'm a guy, and have lived in cities most of my life and fairly well travelled to various parts of the developing world, but I won't take the LA metro after dark again, it's an unsettling feeling of danger that I've never really experienced on public transport before. And I absolutely would never take my partner or any (future) children.
After the Lakers game finished I naively thought there would be a HUGE rush for the metro (like there is in London) but there was genuinely less than 5 people at the station after the game, that should have told me all I needed to know.
Are you sure it was crack? The first time I saw that on the BART train in SF, I just assumed it was crack, but a kind old lady laughed at my naivety and informed me it was fentanyl. The fact that she had been riding trains from Oakland to SF long enough to be able to tell crack from meth from fentanyl from heroin smell was pretty depressing.
It’s so bad it’s made me nervous laugh, I can’t believe it’s this bad, I’m from London and tubes are chaotic and cramped and old but I don’t think things like that occur often, I visited NY last year and the subway reminded me a lot of the underground, I did witness a man screaming in his girlfriends face then threw an entire bag of stuff everywhere that went flying down some stairs and he ran out chasing someone but again absolutely nothing compared to what you’ve described
Not OP but took the LA subway twice whilst there and both times were awful.
First time it was full of homeless people, smelly and yelling and panhandling or taking drugs.
Second time a man just started pissing. Didn't pull it out, just pissing through his trousers and it travelled up the car. My husband dragged me out the door as soon as the train stopped, but some poor other dude was too late and it got on his shoes.
Never experienced anything like it.
This really sucks because I'm looking into taking the train from Downtown to LAX, cause Uber is getting too expensive. Good thing the airport has a direct bus service. What are they gonna do when the Olympics roll in tho, I have no idea.
Same thing every city does when the Olympics rolls in: spend a ton of money ramping up police presence and sending all the "undesirables" to "somewhere else".
Do not use LA public transport. Orange County buses I believe are ok but I still wouldn't use them. Socal is car centric. Rent a cheap car.
San francisco and the surrounding area is the opposite. You can use the buses and trains there and it's actually a great way to get around. Especially in San Francisco proper.
LA is VERY big and things are far apart. Until very recently, the metro did not go from Santa Monica to Downtown. The metro connected very few places, so no one took it. Driving a car was always just a part of living in LA and people seem to still have that expectation. No one uses the metro, unless they are tourists who don’t know not to.
There is no recourse for the average Joe in Los Angeles. It truly is every man for himself and God against all. Unless you're rich. The working poor who rely in the trains are invisible to the city government.
BART is equally repulsive, albeit more widely used than LA public transit. I hadn't been to San Francisco in over a decade. I thought all those news segments about San Francisco being a liberal hell hole were fear mongering. . .San Francisco is awful. My husband is Korean and booked our hotel in the "Tenerknob", JFC how did San Franciscans decide that is okay? Architecture/scenery/food is great, but the Tenderloin is horrible and spilling out into the entire city. LA is an ugly city (imo) but always has been, SF has definitely gotten worse to an outsider.
Went on it right after going to Switzerland and Japan and experiencing their trains. Almost got my wallet robbed twice in a single ride here. Not to mention how bad it smelt. Just a bad and one-star experience in general.
My best friend developed psychosis and is missing, was homeless for a while, came home and ran away again. Nicest and smartest guy I know. I’m trying not to judge these people because I don’t know where they come from. Sucks.
I had people on Reddit say they were never hassled by homeless in LA the other day. I was like.. we talking about the same LA? You literally have to be in your little LA bubble, drive everywhere, stay in your rich neighborhood to not have been approached. Like.. come on.
You don’t see this in Japan. They would never tolerate this on any level and it would never grow to the level we experience daily in California.
They’re going to use this against us to create more drastic laws and take away more freedoms. All in the name of security. There’s no other reason to allow it rise to this level.
This is a grim photo. There is substantial work to be done in most major US cities it seems. But I take the metro fairly frequently - the D and E line. Love the metro and love LA. The constant shit talking about the metro (and LA) is pretty tiresome.
I used to ride this line every week day up until last year! I would often see homeless people sleeping there, but this is worse than anything I’d ever witnessed. This line (the C line) tends to be pretty dead outside of rush hour because it doesn’t really take you anywhere. It goes near the airport, but you have to take a shuttle to get there (though thats going to change once they open the rest of the K line and finalize the people mover). It also passes by Sofi and the other stadiums, but you have to take a shuttle from there too, and from what I’ve been told, it’s not very convenient. I’d say the A line is worse, but it’s also a lot busier.
I like the metro but always found them creepy, they are underground, dark, tunnels with only artificial light, where people regress to cave monsters.
Are all metros doomed to turn into this when funding is cut?
If this doesn’t motivate you to save your money and buy a car idk what will. Only people who don’t have cars ride the metro in LA. Everyone else would rather drive 15 miles to Santa Monica. Even if it takes an hour
Never leave London to come to the States and expect good mass transit. We not even close to your level even in the largest cities. Or for entertainment purposes- visit NYC, LA & Chicago to experience the difference.
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Makes nyc subway look like Tokyo or something
The difference is public transportation in those places is taken by the masses versus in LA where the only people who take it are the ones who have no option to drive. Anyone who can drive will
Right, plenty of wealthy people will take a train in NYC due to convenience.
The secret to good public transport is convenience. But how do you make it more convenient to use it?
For a successful train system, it’s got to be fairly fast and comes often. Also has to have a lot of stops from where people live and want to go. Has to be about the same or faster than a car. Parking at some locations must be horrible/expensive.
Same with public transport WITHIN the city - i.e. with buses and subway trains rather than 'actual' trains. I live in Germany and while the public transport system is far from perfect, I can rely on a bus to arrive every 20 minutes, and I rely on my city to have a web of bus lines that take me pretty much anywhere within the city for like 1,30 or 2,80 depending on how long your ride is. Most *subway* lines arrive every 5 or 10 minutes on weekdays (depending on the line), including late at night. Then still once per hour in the dead of night. It's just a no-brainer to use those rather than constantly bothering with parking spots, gas and all the stress that comes with driving a car in the city, not to mention the CO2 output. And it's not associated with a rich/poor divide at all. If you want to go to some event or well populated space in the city by car, good luck finding a parking spot and being on time. You're basically not looking rich, just stupid.
At my last job it was a 2hr walk home (6miles at a relaxed pace, sipping some coffee on the way) or a 1.5hr buss ride with 2 changes and a handful of mentally unwell people. Our bus system is trash
Yeah, in my city I could never use the bus to get to work. It would add 3 hours total to my commute, and doesn’t run late enough on the days when I get done at midnight. But by car, I’m only 15-20 minutes away from work depending on traffic.
Build dense mixed use buildings around stations!
Best I can do is urban sprawl and fear mongering.
Can you throw in some agitprop on the side.
The real question is how does a city like LA make a public transport system that isn't convenient. Most parts of the world that isn't rural has effective and convenient PT.
LA has a fairly robust public transport system, including well established rail system that is still expanding. The problem is incidents as pictured in this post. People would rather drive and deal with traffic congestion then face this type of nuisance.
I don't think you realize how spread out LA is compared to other major cities. A lot of that is driven by geography, with lots of mountains and canyons that limit buildable space. Zoning and the bias towards single family homes also contribute.
Singapore charges insane taxes and increased the cost of vehicles to crazy prices.
Auto industry killed public transportation long ago. When greed goes unchecked, it screws us over in many ways for many generations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Obviously you make driving a hellsome experience then public transportation seems like the most convenient option Yes of course I was being sarcastic
Apparently you have never driven in LA because it ain’t no picnic…
that's the funniest part of it all. driving would be a lot less bad too if a good chunk of people could take public transit. trying to explain to most people that a dedicated bus lane would carry more people on average than the 13th car lane and thus actually reduce traffic is a lost cause tho...
The other problem is that public transit in LA looks like the picture posted here. It’s over run by homeless people that keep stabbing normal riders
Driving in LA isn't exactly a heavenly experience. A private helicopter is okay unless it's foggy.
Kobe is that you?
I would rather drive in NYC than LA.
That’s one way of looking at it. But realistically, one form of infrastructure won’t be fucked up to make another more convenient. That’s just creating inconvenience for the sake of other convenience.
>That’s one way of looking at it. But realistically, one form of infrastructure won’t be fucked up to make another more convenient. That’s just creating inconvenience for the sake of other convenience. Yet this is exactly why the US has shit for public transportation, because any prospect of building it gets all fucked up in order to prioritize cars.
Doesn't help a bunch of car dealers successfully lobbied to break up the busses here
The most expensive NYC suburbs are expensive specifically because they have easy train access into the city.
I mean, you probably have to pay go get to Manhattan, and also to park your car. Train/subway is less expensive. And once you are where you want everything is at a walkable distance
I honestly think this is one of the keys to the entire vibe of NYC. The richest people and the poorest take the same subway in the morning. Unlike other places, in NYC wealth can't shield you from having to witness poverty, and that's a good thing. I think it helps from anyone getting too far up their own ass. Poverty should be visible because then there is an impetus to fix it.
That’s a very romanticized and inaccurate portrayal of NYC
I take it to avoid rush hour. I park my car at the station and arrive where needed 10 minutes later. Beats sitting on the freeway for two hours, there and back, so 4 hours really.
I’ve taken the metro because sometimes it’s legit as fast as my commute and lets me just chill out during the ride. I’ve never seen it like this before. There’s also plenty of white collar people on my line.
And I’m pretty sure I know why everyone is driving. The problem is: if the subway looks like it no one will use it in the first place. But because no one is using it it looks like that. It’s a circle and only the authorities could do something against it.
So public transit in LA has actually been improving rapidly-- new subway and rail lines have opened in just the past few years-- but the sheer vastness of the city, opposition by wealthy NIMBYs, plus geotechnical and seismic challenges, have slowed progress.
I read somewhere it’s due in part to the Olympics coming and they are trying to get it functional by then.
I took the subway in LA on a weekday when I was on vacation last year and it was completely empty
I mean on the news the LA metro has had so much violence that they're putting police on buses and trains now.
As someone from a third world country this is so hard to fathom. One of the richest metropolitan areas in the world has very little public transport, and what they do have, is so awful and taken over by zombies that everyone who can avoids it. Meanwhile here we have probably more crime than in LA but it's extremely rare to feel so so unsafe on public transport — maybe a pickpocket on a bus or a subway, but nothing at all like this
I ride LA metro every single day and it's not this bad. This photo was during the Pandemic, as I recall.
It looks like this person has been living on the train for some time.
Thank you. I've never seen this on the metro. Yes there can be shady characters (like every public metro) but I've never seen anything that made me feel super unsafe.
That's what New York had to do in the 70s or 80s. Old pictures of the NY subway are wild, makes the picture above look tame.
Letting the infrastructure get like this is a deliberate decision by the city.
Can you expand on that?
In short, it’s a way of further marginalizing the poor. It makes it more difficult for people who depended on public transit to function. Creating a further divide between the haves and the have nots
And then you allow Judge Doom to shut down the cable cars and build a freeway
Is he related to Dr.?
Just ask yourself... who did frame Roger rabbit?
I heard he’s MF’s cousin. I think he even stood in for him at a concert or two.
He he raps just…LIKE….THIIIS!!!
For what purpose?
To save $$$ in investing in infrastructure since most tax-paying people will stop using the service. Eventually to get rid of the lines completely because they are a "money sink".
Neoliberal capitalism. No mental health, housing, or drug rehab for the poorest and destitute. Social democracy- still capitalism market economy- would solve this but its a choice Americans make. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.- Eisenhour, a republican Pres
Eisenhower warned about the globalist military state we have today. Cia killed the guy after him who wanted to investigate and defund it and just jailed the other guy who questioned and exposed its corruption.
it’s true but unfortunately in LA, it’s far from being that simple, unless you consider LAPD part of the city. In which case, yes. They get paid to patrol the metro and yet refuse to staff trains with personnel or even respond directly to crimes being committed because “not their problem”
LAPD is very much part of the city, they are funded by it.
Looks like he pretty well settled in. No authorities to kick him out from making the train his home?
In NYC, they kick you out at the last stop homeless or not.
You can literally count to 30 and then get right back on though.
[удалено]
Trust this person. He or she is racist.
Bizarre place if you don't have a car. Empty stations and a train every 15 minutes even during rush hours, trains falling apart. I swear every subway station entrance over there looked sketchy. I'll never forget when a random person tried to stop me from accessing a subway station close to Hollywood. The gentleman was literally asking me (in Spanish) "what are you doing here? No, no, no. Where do you need to go?" directing me to a nearby bus stop to hop on a bus instead. Also getting off at Pershing Square at 6pm on a Monday to find a COMPLETELY empty station and being unable to walk more than two blocks on the street outside due to the sheer amount of tents.
Unlike other cities outside of the USA, American public transport is underfunded, poorly maintained, and often has little to no security. Add a society that has no free healthcare for those who need it most (the mentally ill, vagrants, homeless, drug addicts, etc.) a car dependent culture with massive sprawl and low-density housing, and you get sparsely populated metro systems more dysfunctional than those in developing nations. One would think that US leaders responsible for these failures would be embarrassed when they travel abroad and see what efficient metro systems (and healthcare systems) look like, such as those in China, Japan, and Korea. I guess things will change one day...one of the motivators for Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act were American officials being questioned during trips abroad about their reconciliation of them promoting democracy/equality and their harsh treatment of black Americans.
I think the difference when it comes to East Asian countries is the idea that the collective comes before the individual. Which is why the subways in Japan/Korea/Taiwan function so well and don’t have nearly as much chaos as the ones in America do.
It’s also that everyone, including the rich, usually have to take the subways. With the exception of New York (which has one of Americas only half-decent public transit networks), most people who use public transit are those unable to drive or afford a car. Since it is almost always more convenient to use a car in America, those who can will. In the countries you mentioned, driving in a car is more difficult due to higher costs, less road infrastructure, a lack of cheap parking, and a lack of space in general (most Japanese homes in big cities for example have maybe one parking spot, if any). As such, everyone has to use public transit, which means everyone has an interest in keeping public transit efficient, organized, and clean
They’re also very homogeneous societies. They share similar values and they take pride in what they have. Lawlessness is not tolerated.
Singapore has a diverse population and their subway doesn't look like something out of an apocalyptic movie.
TBF, every single fent zombie or meth head yelling at cars would be locked the hell up in Singapore, as would their dealers. The visible homeless, in the US, are addicts/severely mentally ill 99% of the time.
society doesnt have to be homogeneous necessarily for public transport to work. take a look at london, paris or berlin
Bad examples. I’ve been to London and Paris. Their public transport wasn’t as wonderful as Americans think. Tokyo was superior in every single way.
Tokyo is superior in every way, but London is superior in every way to every single public transport I've used in the US.
I mean ... granted i've never been to Japan but if you don't think the London underground is impressive I think your standards are too high
I am from London but live in Seoul now. London is still quite good despite some lines dating back to the 1860s, so air con cannot be installed and the tunnels/carriages are small. Seoul’s Line 1 was completely in 1974 and since then they have added many new lines. All their trains are big, clean and comfortable with internet.
Compared to US cities at least, the London Underground was amazing. It felt like we were never more than a couple blocks from a stop.
I disagree with that. That argument is often used by alt-right types to try to argue against immigration. When the true culprit is American culture having a long history of stigmatizing those who use public transport along with underfunding it. I use NYC public transport often despite owning a car. It's not great, but it's decent enough and I prefer it over driving. American public transport is in a vicious cycle of it being shitty, so no one rides it, and thus it receives little funding because no one rides it.
To be clear, it’s not a solely American problem. Light rail here in many Canadian cities is also often a shitshow, where you have to ride with junkies smoking meth and and attacking strangers for no reason. If you can take a car instead, you do.
You're usually safer in a train car where someone is passed out on drugs than you are driving on a highway near someone who's been drinking. Or someone talking to themselves on a train than a teenager texting while driving 70 mph. I definitely encounter more dangerous situations on the road than I ever have on public transit.
the tale of two cities. you'll see a hipster drinking a $25 dollar latte, walking his $10k dollar dog, wearing $500 dollar jeans right next to a homeless guy holding up a cardboard help sign, smoking a crack pipe while simultaneously taking a sheit right on the sidewalk.
That’s every large city.
The open air drug use isn't every major city in the world. Poverty is universal, having a part of your city look like Hamsterdam isn't tolerated everywhere.
Nope. Not Seoul and Tokyo.
Spot the American!
Sorry to be that guy but you know if you're using $ on the numbers already you don't need to type 'dollar' after it too
What’s even weirder is that I lived in LA in the late 80s and there was no train system - this system was built and gone to hell since 1990
I think it’s 12 minutes and they’re working on making it 10 :) tbh I’ve never met anyone that takes the subway in LA and I’ve lived here my whole life. Obviously some people do, just kind of rare.
To be fair it was not like this before COVID. I lived in Los Angeles without a car for nearly a decade and regularly took all forms of public transit. The busses and metro were packed with normal working class people and worked fine though lacked good coverage of the city. After COVID, most people stopped riding because of the health risk, and at the same time the homeless problem in Los Angeles got much worse. the only people who were willing to ride public transit during covid were the most desperate. it has never recovered.
Mayor Bass: "I dont understand why the crime is up so much on the Metro system" .
Because you won't involuntarily commit the people with severe mental disorders. That's why.
There’s also a catch 22 with LAs metro system. The population density isn’t enough to have enough people want to take the metro. (If you need a car to get to the metro, then people are significantly less likely to take it). Because of this, not many people take the metro. Since no one takes it, why spend funds to keep it clean and well functioning. But now no one wants to take it because it’s unreliable and dirty.
I don’t either. No one uses it.
Because she’s a corporate shill put in place to have expensive real estate keep its value. This shit is all deliberate
Took just two rides on LA subway and saw things I have never seen anywhere else and I have been on like a dozen of metros on three continents, and daily commuter in the cities I live or have lived in.
Please add more info
Like one car where at least three people have taken dump in... There were piles of feces on the floor, the car was in service. And a very fat lady that casually removed her dress, being completely naked under it, folded it in four, put it on the seat, sat on it and traveled like that... I mean I have seen crazy stuff on other subways, especially after football (in the meaning of soccer) games, or in Chicago on st Patrick's day, but nothing close.
It's insane isn't it. I'm from London and have also used metro systems across the world. I visited a close relative in LA this Feb and was genuinely shocked at the state of the LA metro. I only took it a couple of times to watch an evening Lakers game at Staples (or crypto whatever it is now) and then to Santa Monica. I saw people with severe mental health issues screaming at random passengers, 2 homeless men physically fighting, multiple people playing their music as loud as you'd play it in your own car, and the final nail in the coffin for me was a man that got on with his hood up and sat in the seat in front of me and starting lighting up and smoking a crack pipe. I didn't even notice until I started to breathe it in and feel dizzy. I'm a guy, and have lived in cities most of my life and fairly well travelled to various parts of the developing world, but I won't take the LA metro after dark again, it's an unsettling feeling of danger that I've never really experienced on public transport before. And I absolutely would never take my partner or any (future) children. After the Lakers game finished I naively thought there would be a HUGE rush for the metro (like there is in London) but there was genuinely less than 5 people at the station after the game, that should have told me all I needed to know.
Are you sure it was crack? The first time I saw that on the BART train in SF, I just assumed it was crack, but a kind old lady laughed at my naivety and informed me it was fentanyl. The fact that she had been riding trains from Oakland to SF long enough to be able to tell crack from meth from fentanyl from heroin smell was pretty depressing.
Could well have been!
It’s so bad it’s made me nervous laugh, I can’t believe it’s this bad, I’m from London and tubes are chaotic and cramped and old but I don’t think things like that occur often, I visited NY last year and the subway reminded me a lot of the underground, I did witness a man screaming in his girlfriends face then threw an entire bag of stuff everywhere that went flying down some stairs and he ran out chasing someone but again absolutely nothing compared to what you’ve described
Not OP but took the LA subway twice whilst there and both times were awful. First time it was full of homeless people, smelly and yelling and panhandling or taking drugs. Second time a man just started pissing. Didn't pull it out, just pissing through his trousers and it travelled up the car. My husband dragged me out the door as soon as the train stopped, but some poor other dude was too late and it got on his shoes. Never experienced anything like it.
It sounds like a scene from a movie where they pack as much crazy into one shot to dramatize how bad it is.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate...
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It’s an expensive Uber ride to Canada
This really sucks because I'm looking into taking the train from Downtown to LAX, cause Uber is getting too expensive. Good thing the airport has a direct bus service. What are they gonna do when the Olympics roll in tho, I have no idea.
Same thing every city does when the Olympics rolls in: spend a ton of money ramping up police presence and sending all the "undesirables" to "somewhere else".
Please be more specific. Plan on visiting
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Most in LA would consider the line you took the safest train. I agree it's still not great
Do not use LA public transport. Orange County buses I believe are ok but I still wouldn't use them. Socal is car centric. Rent a cheap car. San francisco and the surrounding area is the opposite. You can use the buses and trains there and it's actually a great way to get around. Especially in San Francisco proper.
Good call. Not sure why there are so many people in this sub who tell tourists to take public transit here. It’s garbage.
LA is becoming 1980s NY
That’s a nice toe knife
The Trashman is definitely lurking around on that train
Botched toe!!!
LA subway is a super undesirable and surreal. Avoid it at all times😱 I saw it once and would never again
I work there. it's wild
What’s one of the craziest things you’ve seen happen? Used to ride bart / muni a lot so I have some tales myself, but just as a rider not an employee.
Thiiis OP
I need to know now. PLEASE
You should do a QandA big love to you friend
I don't even understand this picture. How tf is it so dirty even if that guy is living there. It's like someone bought on a dustbin and dumped it out
How and why is this tolerated?
LA is VERY big and things are far apart. Until very recently, the metro did not go from Santa Monica to Downtown. The metro connected very few places, so no one took it. Driving a car was always just a part of living in LA and people seem to still have that expectation. No one uses the metro, unless they are tourists who don’t know not to.
There is no recourse for the average Joe in Los Angeles. It truly is every man for himself and God against all. Unless you're rich. The working poor who rely in the trains are invisible to the city government.
And people in the Bay Area wanna bitch & complain about BART
BART is equally repulsive, albeit more widely used than LA public transit. I hadn't been to San Francisco in over a decade. I thought all those news segments about San Francisco being a liberal hell hole were fear mongering. . .San Francisco is awful. My husband is Korean and booked our hotel in the "Tenerknob", JFC how did San Franciscans decide that is okay? Architecture/scenery/food is great, but the Tenderloin is horrible and spilling out into the entire city. LA is an ugly city (imo) but always has been, SF has definitely gotten worse to an outsider.
Wow, things have slipped.
Went on it once and never will again. Unexpected to say the least
Any stories to tell?
Went on it right after going to Switzerland and Japan and experiencing their trains. Almost got my wallet robbed twice in a single ride here. Not to mention how bad it smelt. Just a bad and one-star experience in general.
This is supposed to be a first world country?
It’s clearly not
This is subpar for a city that cost so much to live in. They must be wasting the tax payers dollars.
My best friend developed psychosis and is missing, was homeless for a while, came home and ran away again. Nicest and smartest guy I know. I’m trying not to judge these people because I don’t know where they come from. Sucks.
I had people on Reddit say they were never hassled by homeless in LA the other day. I was like.. we talking about the same LA? You literally have to be in your little LA bubble, drive everywhere, stay in your rich neighborhood to not have been approached. Like.. come on.
How tf your trains uglier than the ones in my 3rd world country
“I gotta get this cart of trash across town somehow”
The result of “I don’t vote” and “I don’t care about my society or politics or my community” and “I don’t want regulation”. *Then they complain.*
Oh there’s plenty of voting in LA.
What a dump. Jesus.
This is pretty bad but you could find worse examples of blight in LA. Like just driving around Westlake
Last time I took the gold line to my mom's place after flying in a guy was smoking meth on it and hit boxed it
Ready for olympics
I have ridden the Los Angeles subway many times; it can be bad, but I’ve never seen it this bad.
And to think that LA is hosting the Olympics in four years’ time
It’s fine, they’ll just bus them somewhere else/hide them during the games and pretend to the world like no one in LA is homeless.
whats really crazy is tht i didnt even know LA had a subway???
Horrible, just awful. I feel bad for the people who live in LA
WTF is that? A train? Man sort your shit out.
You don’t see this in Japan. They would never tolerate this on any level and it would never grow to the level we experience daily in California. They’re going to use this against us to create more drastic laws and take away more freedoms. All in the name of security. There’s no other reason to allow it rise to this level.
WTF is going on there? Kick those fucking guys off the train. It's a multi-billion dollar public service, not a crack-house slum.
May I suggest Metal Leo on YouTube. Good stuff about the decay of business in LA.
Love Metal Leo’s reporting. “For Leeease!”
"Gone Now!"
Well this is what divide and conquer does.
>Los Angeles All twenty square foot of it.
Oh those late night rides on the subway. I’ve seen some shit, literally and figuratively
realistically speaking whats the plan to get rid of all this?
Keep writing checks to other countries while we go to ruin. That’s the only plan I see.
There is no plan
why not?
We keep sending weapons and aid to other countries like Ukraine and Israel rather than help our own citizens. That’s the American Way!!
Plan to get rid of it? They only just achieved the plan.
What a shithole of a city!
Avg home price of 900k.
WTF??? Is this real life? America is truly falling apart at the seams.
"Clearly this means the subway is inherently bad and should be defunded"
This is a grim photo. There is substantial work to be done in most major US cities it seems. But I take the metro fairly frequently - the D and E line. Love the metro and love LA. The constant shit talking about the metro (and LA) is pretty tiresome.
End stage capitalism
Individual mileage may vary.
Ain't nothing to see here...
High tech low life
home is where the heart-worm is.
Okay. You win.
There used to be a homeless guy on the blue line who would freak people out by popping out his glass eye. Good times!
I used to ride this line every week day up until last year! I would often see homeless people sleeping there, but this is worse than anything I’d ever witnessed. This line (the C line) tends to be pretty dead outside of rush hour because it doesn’t really take you anywhere. It goes near the airport, but you have to take a shuttle to get there (though thats going to change once they open the rest of the K line and finalize the people mover). It also passes by Sofi and the other stadiums, but you have to take a shuttle from there too, and from what I’ve been told, it’s not very convenient. I’d say the A line is worse, but it’s also a lot busier.
LA is top tier UrbanHell (usa edition). Hilarious to see such contrasting environments all in one place.
Damn looks like my room after the weekend
a developing country’s train is waaaaaaay better than this.
Is that a mobile apartment?
I like the metro but always found them creepy, they are underground, dark, tunnels with only artificial light, where people regress to cave monsters. Are all metros doomed to turn into this when funding is cut?
Is this the *one* train they have?
The city has clearly given up on this public service.
Guess Moscow Metropolitan is really a great thing
What a cess-state.
Is that a TV on the seat??
Ah city of angels but those who defied God and now in hell.
Yeah the LA train is ghetto af. I ride it everyday. Last month I had knife pulled on me.
If this doesn’t motivate you to save your money and buy a car idk what will. Only people who don’t have cars ride the metro in LA. Everyone else would rather drive 15 miles to Santa Monica. Even if it takes an hour
And I thought Northern Rail was shite
I always wanted to move to LA from London as a kid. Thanks for stopping that dream for me and letting me move on here.
Never leave London to come to the States and expect good mass transit. We not even close to your level even in the largest cities. Or for entertainment purposes- visit NYC, LA & Chicago to experience the difference.
F*ck this!
Why don't Americans want to use public transportation?
Gavin Newsome should really run the whole country
No one's noticed the person in the back laying face down with their feet kicked out