You nailed it. LA can build the nicest billion dollar transit, but few people are going to ride it if there are highway-like streets surrounding it. LA needs safe, narrow streets with curb extensions, and protected bike lanes. And your pedestrianization idea around this station is wonderful. Someone send this video to StreetsForAll. They might advocate for this idea.
Indeed, the whole of L.A. Downtown within the 10, 110, and 101 expressways should be excluded to all traffic save transit, emergency, service, and resident's vehicles. This way you can have a walkable downtown and arts district... and room for skid row sidewalk settlements to metastasize into the street.
fair point, they probably have to be careful about spending their political capital.. which is tough since they do seem to be one of the few groups that gets things moving a bit faster in LA@@ehoops31
I was recently was traveling in Tokyo. Many train stations in Tokyo are gigantic 7-8 story tall malls filled with shops grocery stores, desert and snack shops, restaurants. The mall is literally built on top of the train tracks, you get off the train walk up the stairs into the mall. Or you can take another exit up the stairs and get to the street. Train companies in Tokyo are profitable - not from passenger fares. They make their money by charging rent from all the stores in the train station/mall complex.
In fifty years those stations will be ghost towns. Japan, Korea, Italy, Germany, Spain...they are all dying off from staggeringly low birth rates and populations are plummeting. This is happening across the industrialized world and rebuilding families should be the number one priority. Not building monolithic train stations for people who won't exist in the future.
Building the stations before the development seems illogical but if you think about it, the hard part is done. This is the strategy a great deal of cities around the world take. It's an investment for the future, and one that doesn't necessarily have to pay off immediately. As long as LA City is willing to work with developers in the future to help transform the area, I can't see how this was a bad investment. It's certainly piqued interest for future development and can incentivize DTLA to change in the future. Also keep in mind, the problem with DTLA for the longest time was that it was a commuter focused area with no real residents at all and only businesses. People commuted far and wide to get to the area. At least some of those people now have alternatives that we had hoped for decades ago. Build and they will come.
I agree and think the station is a good investment overall - we can add even more room for density and development by removing the giant thru-way along the station to help make this place residential.
The biggest investment the city of LA ever did for DTLA was building Staples Center, if you track development from there it’s been a horrendously slow process to transform Downtown to where it is now, and it still needs so much more. I just see this as another step in that snails-pace process haha. Eventually it could be great though, as an LA native it feels like we are always waiting for the city to be better than what it currently is
Well, they had the Red Lines before WW2 but they stripped it all to build roads, and LA was born. So none of this will matter for the future, you'd be surprised how the tracks and train station get OLD and tattered real quick, and they will continuously be need to be replaced and maintained, and if you look at the rest of the city - none of what you say will happen and will fall into disrepair.
As someone who commutes through Wilshire/Vermont, the reason for its popularity is not the urban design around it. It's currently the best place along with Wilshire/western to transfer to other metro busses going along Wilshire Boulevard through Beverly Hills, and to Westwood and Santa Monica, and all the neighborhoods west of these Wilshire/Western. If the D-Line extension is ever finished, the "popularity" of these two stations would decrease a lot
He also doesn't really understand bunker hill his basically dead at night because the proximity of things are office buildings. Vermont/Wilshire has entire neighborhoods surrounding it
@@bserpasThere are many things the author of the video doesn't understand. Why would a CROWDED city be considered as PROPER (he kinda means this towards the end). I have been living in LA for 5 years now after living my entire life (I'm 44) in BIG (CROWDED) cities like NYC and Istanbul. The life style in LA is so relaxing compared to other big cities. That's why many people from those big cities desire to move to LA like I did. Driving or even walking on those large but kinda empty-ish roads/streets is a joy. I would never want to go back to those mass transport centric and CROWDED cities ever again for living. Pushing those crowded-city/poorish-people problems and possible solutions onto the people who likes LA style of living is nonsense. LA doesn't need more mass transit lines which almost nobody would ever use.
@XtroTheArctic I've been to NYC and Chicago and get the whole car culture growing up here See, the metro rails are beneficial here in LA in a way though. You're right that we don't use it that much. Preferentially, here in LA I would rather take the metro any given day over driving if the connections make logical sense. I work from home now but prior to this I would take the metro since the expo line from where I live was a 10 minute walk to the station from home and a 5 minute walk to the office. 40 minutes where I could relax, nap, get things done. Versus driving that I just idle in my car for the same time or even longer depending on the traffic. I also can't wait for LAX to finish the connection directly to the airport. I would rather take the expo to Crenshaw/lax lines instead of driving or paying for parking near the airport. So in some situations the rail system is amazing. Other times like getting to Knotts or Magic Mountain yeah definitely I'll prefer driving any day since it's convenient.
Agree the bus lines add a lot to the immediate area’s popularity, as does the urban design. But don’t see why the D-line extension happening would harm the overall popularity a ton though...within a month of opening the extended D-line will be popular considering it runs along Wilshire’s density. (as long as we add more security tho, since some take buses for that reason over the D line)
@@XtroTheArctic The real solution isn't to force public transit on everyone, it's to give people the option to choose something other than a car. If you want to travel in a car that's amazing; but, why do I have to pay $400 a month on a car payment + $200 a month on insurance +$160 a month on gas + about $2,000 a year on maintenance (about $11,000 a year total) just to be able to get to work so I can earn money to pay for my car. The way things are in most american cities, it is literally impossible to live life without a car. To reiterate, if you want a car great. But it shouldn't be the only option.
I'm hoping we can harness the dark power of real estate developers to our advantage. I have a feeling that once they realize how much more profit they can generate by removing parking and building near transit, they'll be all over themselves lobbying against parking minimums and measures to better transit. Of course, there is the whole issue of affordability, but at least with walkability and transit, people will be better off financially and have more energy to organize.
Developers have been desperately trying to build dense mixed use construction for years now, everyone knows it’s profitable. It’s just a losing battle with city councils and planning boards.
I would totally use the metro in LA if the station's surrounding areas were actually walkable. Why can't every station above ground look like the wilshire/vermont one???
1000%. I made a point to check out the station after getting lunch with a friend last week. (My most direct route would’ve been to walk back to 7th/Metro). The obscenely wide roads that are part of the standard planning process for LA Metro/LA City need to be thrown out, trashed, eradicated. Granted, this was planned, designed, and funded at a time when mitigating for increased VMT wasn’t yet the statewide standard. But it’s still a travesty that it was (is) EVER normal to design something like this and sell it as a transit improvement.
What is station traffic like at commute times? You mentioned you visited after lunch, and the video inside the station was shot before 1 pm. These are not peak times. I’m not saying you or LEJ are wrong, I’m just saying that your evidence isn’t rigorous.
That is a fair question. I take the E Line around once a week at rush hour, usually on a Wednesday or Thursday. It is as empty then as it is during the midday. Eastbound, the trains are fullest between Culver City and USC, and they start to empty out at Pico and LATTC. Most of the remaining riders get off at 7th/Metro.
"he obscenely wide roads that are part of the standard planning process for LA Metro/LA City" Obscenely wide? Two lanes? Sir, you do realize that roads in London and Rome are narrow because they were originally built for people traveling on horseback, yes? You make it sound like they sat down in Ancient Rome in 800 BC and said "ok, boys. We can make the roads wide enough for cars, or the width that horses need." lmao. And not all of them are that narrow, and when a new one is built, it is built to accommodate cars?
Some of the problems are the transit lines themselves. They dont go where people want to go. They go where the planners said where we wanted to go. Also, its not safe. In San Jose (where I worked for over a decade) they expanded the light rail system for its East / West axis in the late 1990's. This is the Silicon Valley! All of us who used the light rail pleaded "make it right down San Carlos Street from the east end of San Jose (Alum Rock) to the main train station (Diridon) in downtown. Direct. No, the planners had a better idea. Everyone will take the north / south line way up past downtown, change at Baypoint and THEN swing back into east San Jose. It added another 45 minutes to the trip. Planners then shamed residents for not using their "great idea" when no one used it. Then transit planners are upset that "no one is using the light rail". If the USA (outside NYC / Boston / San Francisco / Chicago) want people to use public transport like this they have to really spend the time, the money and really study to see how and where and why people move in a city. Its mostly "see, we built it, Americans dont like it, we're backwards and love cars" insted of asking the right questions. I liked your video and I think you have some great ideas.
When a country and culture forgoes exceptionalism and embraces mediocrity you get mediocre results, mediocre doctors, engineers, architects etc. When people are encouraged to be average you have average results.
In the 90s, the voters would never have approved removing two car lanes along popular east-west streets and using them for light rail. Even now, plans for bus lanes along El Camino failed because car drivers objected to removing parking lanes. In any case, it doesn’t really matter because downtown San Jose is not a particularly important destination in Santa Clara county. In fact, light rail and BART are not really suitable for San Jose at all given how little transit ridership there is in the city.
In the 1990''s the voters DID approve an east west axis to the VTA Light Rail. And of course, the palnning comission made it so that it could NEVER compete save time and get people around San Jose quickly. They had Meetings on where to build this east / west axis. The sad thing was, they already knew where it was going to be built. They meets were held as to saw "we took reisnt and actual user input". @@my2iu
Excellent video, as always. As nice as large sweeping reforms would be, LA can improve substantially with just modest changes like getting rid of redundant roads and filling them in with apartments and/or green space, just as you described.
Hopefully an org like StreetsforAll can push for this plan! They recently got the city to (sort of) commit to looking into a freeway removal, which is great, and Bunker Hill seems like a cheaper road removal which could happen more quickly.
California ridiculous gas taxes, should be such a 'deterrences' and also a PR for local gov and developers to 'approaching' a Mid-dense Urban planning like those in Europe cities, instead of Auto-centric suburbs which is waste of lot of lands. Benefits of having mid-dense residentials build is also impact on Transportation effectiveness, social impacts of it's people (more ‘socialized’), ease policing methods (less space acres to search) and maybe suppress stupid prices of apts there. LA has a great climate for outdoor activity, too bad pollutions is even worser than NYC there. Don't let the Automobiles overtakes and pollute even more, investing on that solution it's preferable option.
When I first arrived in the US in 1999, it was in LA. Then over the years, I've moved everywhere including NY. But LA gave me the feeling of what my grandaunts told me when I was so young to remember anything. They said LA is America. They told me that they would walk everywhere and was surprised to find out that their shoes were still clean at the end of the day. I've lived in NY for decades but I still think LA is the America I know but when I come to visit -- I'm only disappointed by its missed opportunities to become a walkable city with that gorgeous weather.
Yeah, letting criminals back out on the streets without so much as bail is doing its part to keep public transport in LA populated with muggers and rapists … GOOD JOB, LA !!
They need to clean up the public transit too. People don’t take transit in LA because it’s also super sketchy where you will often see many people urinating and shooting drugs into their veins while on the train or platform
Thanks for making a video on this! I actually recently took the A Line from Long Beach to watch a play in the Bunker Hill area - I also ate at a cafe nearby and then went to one of the museums. It was honestly a fantastic experience. Plenty of Metro ambassadors at the Bunker Hill station, and the places I needed to go was within 1-2 blocks of walking... but you're right that the streets could definitely be more pedestrian-friendly. tbh, an immediate issue I face is LBT buses not being frequent enough. The train can be great, but it's not so great when you don't live close to a station and "the last mile problem" is in fact "the last 5+ miles problem." So I have to do bus>train or train>bus when LB buses are either every 30 minutes or every hour. LB buses generally don't have late night service either, so that also shuts down a lot of bus/train combination trips for me. I'm envious of LA Metro and LA DOT that has slightly better frequencies and run later bus service than LBT. 😕
And this is why LA should have focussed on making great transit for the dense core instead of trying to cater to every suburb. Instead, they built transit that requires multiple transfers, is not all that efficient anywhere you go and you end up with long light rail lines that don't really get you to your destination. I'd rather there be pockets with fantastic urbanism and transit rather than bleh all the way around.
Consider biking to the station! It's pretty easy to bring your bike onto a metro train and take it with you. Plus there's the added bonus of easily being able to bike around DTLA, which has some nice new protected bike infrastructure.
@@AdamFaruqiI have a bike that I often combine with my commute on the train (and sometimes bring on the bus). Multimodal commuting is an amazing time-saver, but it's not always perfect. (1) if I'm going somewhere that's not my workplace, I don't know if they'll have adequate bike parking, and (2) frankly, the infrastructure to/from the Long Beach train station closest to where I live is pretty terrifying. Ideally I try to reduce time spent on the road there, because I think I'll die on those streets one day. It just isn't the safest (stroads, door zones, one center-running bike lane, a street where you're biking in the gutter while cars often go 50 mph, etc.). But I definitely don't count out bikes as an option; I went from Long Beach to Santa Monica a while back taking my bike on the A & E trains and it's so great to bike around Santa Monica.
Downtown LA is trying to improve the transit oriented development around Bunker Hill. Previously only 33% of DTLA was residential. But I think they're trying to up zone it now to be more like 80%. Hopefully in another 10 years we will see a huge transformation.
I got the impression that it was to get people closer to the museums nearby so you don't have to walk from Civic Center Station. From my experience, it's just not well known. I asked the staff at The Broad about the station that's literally behind them and they didn't know what I was talking about.
Civic Center Station is the Red Line (I guess it's called B line now). This station is A and E lines. So the trains that stop at Civic Center wouldn't even go here.
The should market for thrill seekers. The reason I say this is that metro is completely unsafe and you could have bad things happen to you !! Like being murdered, robbery, mug, aggravated assault and raped. The wonderful Los Angeles city council will not ride the metro unless accompanied by a security detail.
Coming from NYC, I was curious about the LA subway. It may have location problems, it is not the main reason why people are not using it. When I came down a downtown station, I surprised how nice it is. Then I saw homeless people with obvious mental issues were ready to jump on other people. One homeless guy actually did it. Please get your record straight. People don’t use it because it is NOT safe.
too many times we see mentally dangerous people riding the subway with others in the NYC. We moved to TX were happy that we dont need to take public transportation anymore, lol.
@@eggheadegghead you and city government could have taken responsibility for providing people with mental health issues the healthcare they need but I guess we don't do that in America because . You could have stayed where you were at if we shed all the toxic bullshit we have around homeless people (including mentally ill ones) being homeless because they all somehow deserved it. Like did the court of prosperity hear every case and was like "you're too weird, homelessness for you. Indefinitely because the US has no support system to speak of."
@@mooviemusicfan I’m on the J Silver Line (bus) line this very second. The stench, insanity and Mental issues are insane. The subway is no different than bus. I’d never ever ever ride public transport if I were a woman.
Get rid of the homeless. It's so scary to ride the train these days. I rode the Expo line from USC to La Cienega station. Two episodes of a man screaming at everyone on the train and Metro workers not doing anything about it. It's so terrible. I'm sticking with Uber and using my car. Please have security ride the trains and kick people off that are drinking, screaming, and being a nuisance.
You’re right!! METRO OR NOT, IT ABOUT SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY!! No one will use metro on US & Western country even it new build if it’s unsafe. THIS IS BIGGEST DIFFERENT IN CHINA, EAST ASIA, SOME SOUTHEAST ASIA COUNTRY VS US & WESTERN MINDSET & LAWSUITS!! Ppl scare shit out of their head use metro in US because they might get a homeless assault & spit on their face for no reason or just because they’re fk hate you, hate your looks, hate your race!! You might get racist hate crimes attackers you because of your race!! Ppl cant fk walking in street, parks & metro safety enjoying their moments with their friends, their kids because they might facing druggies homeless & druggies thugs, criminals BEATING SHIT OUT OF THEM TO ROBBED OR KNIFE STABBING TO GET ROBBERY RIGHT IN DOWNTOWN IN BOARD DAYLIGHT!! The ridiculous stupid is, DRUGGIES HOMELESS IS NOT CONSIDERED AS DRUGGIES ADDICT BUT IN US/WESTERN THEY CONSIDER IT MENTAL ILLNESS PROBLEMS!! And thugs, criminals did robbery facing the SOFTEST PUNISHMENT LIKE A JOKE!! Law system protect & support druggies homeless/druggies zombies, thugs, robbery & criminals more than laws abiding ordinary people!! Druggies zombies/druggies homeless, robbery, thugs & criminals HAVE MORE FREEDOM, MORE HUMANITY RIGHT, MORE PROTECT BY LEGAL LAWS & JUSTICE LAWS SYSTEMS!! US & Western use to be developed & well education country with lawsuits system!! But now US & ALOTS WESTERN IS LAWLESS, LAWLESS & BACKWARDS!! They’re create UNBELIEVABLE RIDICULOUS STUPID LAWS SYSTEMS TO PROTECT & SUPPORT THESE DRUGGIES, THUGS & CRIMINALS IN THE HEARTBEAT!! This is why US, Western nowadays is fails & falling so fast so bad downhill because they’re blind & brainwashed for too long!! Anyone committed crimes but if they’re homeless, druggies then it switched to MENTAL ILLNESS PROBLEM - so no punishment, no jails. WALK AWAY FREELY, NO CAUGHT, NO JAILS!! Us & Western get brainwashed for too long too deep that’s why they’re lost basic common sense & basic logic already!!
I've been reporting them using their Transit Watch app every time it; we shouldn't have to tolerate this behavior . Besides, they're always encouraging us "If you see something, say something". There were two Metro workers that helped when I pointed out a man screaming at himself. It's changed in the past few months.
If nobody uses it.. it will always be unsafe 😢.. however it's interesting to see that the system is growing and I'm sure at some point things will change.. please don't let it get as disgusting as NYC's.. 🤮
Great video! LA has some plans to improve the area with widened sidewalks on Flower, bike lanes, and even closing upper Grand to cars between 1st and 2nd (see the LADOT Downtown LA Mobility Investment Plan), but you are definitely right that the area simply needs more housing. Metro was able to work with a developer to reinforce Historic Broadway station so a 60 story tower could be built directly on top of that station (hopefully that will break ground soon). It’s a shame they didn’t do that here. I’m hoping eventually there can be something like the car-free district you proposed. It just makes so much sense. Sadly, downtown has no representation on city council since KDL has been so terrible, but hopefully that can change soon. Downtown is going to add so many new residents with how much housing the new zoning plan allows, so they need to figure it out how to make the most of the transit that’s already there.
Thanks! Would be great if the city council actually orders LADOT to expedite the originally promised bike lanes and improvements. I saw on StreetsBlogLA that they silently dropped adding them at some point despite saying it would be done, but i’m not shocked that happened haha. But damn a car free district in DTLA would be nice.
I recently got a master plan of all the current and proposed residential and commercial developments for DTLA from a realtor. I’ll have to take a look at it to see what’s happening with this area.
Awful video Dude doesnt live in LA and doesnt follow Street people of los angeles Or dtla crazies on IG bunch of shit everywhere Looters People getting robbed Its not clean Its not safe LA metro isnt safe at all anymore People doing heroin in the train stations Dude prob has never taken the blue line or purple line at all I grew up on catalina and 6th st Took metro everyday Shits ass Its full of ass Smells like it Looks like it Also that coffee bean is gone sadly Same with the dennys and gas station that was across the street People dont come there because of jobs lmao
I do not know LA but living in a city with mass transit, New York City, there are reasons for stations that do not seem to fit what a lot of transit channels say, we have some of them. While transit channels want to do something benevolent with their views, there are things they need to learn.
When there is mixed transportation use, many people prefer to use cars. Years ago on the weekend I took the LA metro from Hollywood to see the Disney Concert Hall. The subway was not crowded because many people in the area got around in other ways. Also, traffic lights for pedestrians are not a bad thing. It protects people when they cross the street. True a person may have to wait for a minute but that kind of behavior is possible. After all taking trains of any kind often involves waiting.
I’m kinda hoping that the area will get more transit oriented over time, it often makes sense to build the station first then let the transit get developed around it, but this is Los Angeles, so that might be rather difficult.
I think the roads have been seen as a hurdle by being there to potential developers, but with the station's low usage (and not very much new surrounding development), there's a legitimate and compelling argument to make for their removal.
@@mrxman581 Thank you for assuming I didn't know what I was talking about. Now I'll try again to explain in more detail what I meant in my "assessment". There is a whole city block west of the station that's on an incline, half comprised of wider roads than normal for Downtown that's clearly from several decades ago, and the rest is grass. Meaning, no people and no buildings. Personally, I think something could be added there and the roads could be modified, as part of developing the surrounding area. Which would mean converting newly renovated roads from the city over to privately held land. I'm indifferent about preparing developed areas beforehand, I think it could happen either way, Honolulu's Skyline is a blatant example with it's westernmost stations placed in the middle of fields because of future projects going to be taking place in those places.
LA will NEVER become transit friendly until the City of LA smartens up and hires Transit Cops. That's right - cops who police the trains! It's NOT SAFE to take mass transit in LA!
This video seems a bit disingenuous. If you exit out the other exit from the Bunker Hill station you go right to a walkable plaza with green space by a restaurant and the Broad museum. Next to that is the Disney Concert Hall. Across the street are apartments. And all around are skyscrapers with businesses. You are just looking out the back of the station at the road. You’re trying to make it look worse than it is. Also, not every stop can be an idyllic paragon of walkable perfect blends of residential and shopping. Have you been to other countries with great train lines? Most stops are just nice utilitarian stops. Functional. Not every stop is amazing. That’s how cities are. The next stop over from Bunker Hill is the Little Tokyo stop with a plaza and shopping and tons of people. It’s great.
The problem is that there still isn't a lot of foot traffic in the area and it isn't pedestrian friendly. It would have been a great idea to just get rid of that hope st. corridor altogether and extend the plaza across the road into the station and even create an underground walkway from the station that exits onto grand ave.
I live near the Vermont station and one of the major reasons I chose to live there was that I'm walking distance from a station that has good access to downtown and lots of groceries and good food. I mostly use the train to go to Hollywood and Downtown because I don't like parking there but I'm definitely in that group that had no idea Bunker Hill had been redone - it was always just a stop on the way to Little Tokyo. I love that you don't just point out the shortcomings of what happened but also suggest positive changes to make the best of what we got. Let's hope they can start turning the roads back toward walkability soon! Subscribed!
TFL in London has got through tough times by selling off land it owns to developers or building its own commercial properties. The city of LA should be capitalising on little used stretches of road like this to boost transit oriented development and make some money back. I remember visiting LA years ago (before Google Maps), arriving at the Greyhound station with no way to get out other than a shuttle bus to a hostel which when I got to it felt like it was surrounded by pedestrian hostile roads so felt I trapped and unable to explore without jumping on the shuttle to the beach provided by the hostel. It was only when I revisiting later and could afford to rent a car that I drove past the same hostel and realised how close it was to the airport and beaches. Having the transit options then would have totally transformed my experience of the city.
Dude they put the greyhound station right in skid row as a middle finger to anyone who dares to not drive in by car. It was deliberate, nobody can change my mind.
Рік тому+2
Selling the land off is probably a mistake, if we compare what East Asian transport companies are doing. Basically, they should lease the land or build on it and lease the property space. If the city won’t have a vision, then maybe the transit company should be building what will bring people to them?
@ Yes. I think, a high-density mixed use building with both commercial and living space would be ideal. High traffic businesses on the bottom, like cafes and fast food restaurants, then on the top would be apartments. The city could either build it up themselves to lease, or just use a zoning law/city ordinance to mandate that the property developer build it to include those specifications. A very simple idea, that would take advantage of the tax revenue generated from the small businesses and residential property, thereby cutting the long-term costs.
I visited LA in August and was really surprised at how the Expo Line trains emptied out at Metro Center station before continuing through downtown. I would have expected the new tunnel to have retained a lot more riders continuing out to the other side of the city. But I also noticed that a lot of system maps in the stations and on trains were outdated and showing the old routes, and the lines traced on Google Maps' Transit layer hadn't been updated either (I could get schedules, but nothing reassuring me by looking at the map layer that showed the train line actually existed -- fortunately that seems fixed now). Hopefully it's just that people have old travel patterns stuck in their heads that will change over time. The observations about station TOD are well-taken, but it feels like that's only part of what's going on.
7th st is pretty much the core of downtown in terms of shops and restaurants, and 7th/metro center is the biggest transfer point on the system. I think it makes sense that it sees far more traffic than other downtown stations
Good point, tbh I haven’t noticed that the E line has less passengers after departing 7th Street/Metro Center to East LA. The A line still retains a lot of passengers.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that hates those beg buttons! Cities may think they are a good thing, but it's inherently car-centric design when the pedestrian should have the right of way instead of forcing them to press a button. I mean, do drivers have to pull up to an intersection, and lean out of their window to push a button in order to get a green light in their favor? No, they just wait and the light appears! They simply exist so that car traffic signals can minimize the car travel “delays” associated with people who need to cross a street on foot. They effectively penalize you for not having a car! And absolutely having transit-oriented development is important! Transit is for, well, PEOPLE! And transit stations aren't gonna get a lot of usage if there's not much surrounding it. I mean when stations in Brooklyn and Queens like those in Bay Ridge or Junction Boulevard first opened, there was NOTHING surrounding them! It was only when people started building development around said stations that people started to move in. Same case with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail! So much development like around Essex Street has popped up in Downtown Jersey City because of that light-rail! If you build it...THEY WILL COME!
Gotta love the confidence to assert there's nothing around the station while showing multiple overhead clips including the Broad, one of the 100 most visited art museums in the world, immediately adjacent to the station and connected via pedestrian-only bridge. I can agree it'd be great to strip out that section of road. I wish they tore out a lot of downtown's streets in general. One of my "favorite" downtown pedestrian moments is 2nd between Hill and Olive, where the tunnel ends. Since the street is one way and there's been fencing on the other side, people will just walk down the side of the road.
I travel to Bangkok and Tokyo regularly. Both share characteristics that I think a lot of American stations do not have most the time. They are all located with their entrances and exits near major destinations and offices. In Bangkok one MRT Line is built to have a stop inside a mall. You get off and walk down a beautiful tunnel take an escalator and you’re in the mall which itself is inside a skyscraper with offices above.
Also: it takes time for behavioral patterns to change. People aren’t taking the train to or from here because, if they had to go to or from here in the past, they had to do it some other way-or not do it at all. Those habits usually don’t change overnight.
@@peterwelby 100% I'm laughing at the comments on this post how they're claiming it's EVERYTHING except the real reasons why people are no longer using the MTA 🤣
@@thedrunkweddingphotographerthis is America. There's gonna be violence all the time, everywhere. It's an evil country. Meanwhile I moved to Russia, and no joke, have peaceful train rides, bus rides, ect I'm convinced my homeland just can't do anything right. They'll always blame anything but the problem.
Did you check this stations density during the start and end of the public high school day at the nearby Ramon C Cortines High School of Visual and Performing Arts? aka Grand Arts H.S.?
I’ve ridden the train in countless other cities and used it to commute in Toronto. The biggest issue with LA Metro is safety. In the last 3 years there have been killings, gang violence, and 20+ deaths by overdose. This is all documented by the LASD. Not to mention that the homeless population uses the system as place to sleep. There is no controlled access to most of the stations and the payment “honor” system doesn’t work. It’s disgusting and unsafe to ride the system during commuter hours; never mind after hours. I stopped riding metro because I felt unsafe. Until we can figure out how to make the system safe for everyone, it’s going to be a continue to be a failure for the city.
Bingo. The chief of the MTA said housing the homeless was the number one priority of the MTA. Huh? Come again? Yep that’s the main focus. The system is now designed to be homeless housing
Great Video as Always! I visited bunker hill sta during the opening and it was quite busy, and i went there again ~2 weeks ago on a weekend and there was a decent amount of people, ao it seems like the museums drive alot of the traffic to the station
Thanks! Yeah I totally get that weekends here attract some more people - and if more gets built all around it, it can live up to it's true potential and become an all hours station I hope!
Homelessness and menatal health is a HUGE issue. On top of that, everyone just wants to get to A and B then C to D so fast. Years ago, it was convenient to ride the fwy, now a days, with all the traffic in the city, the train cuts through traffic like butter. I mean dont get me wrong at certain times being in a car is essential, but almost most of the time its not worth it. At least now a days... just my opinion though
Can you sometimes post updates on some videos you posted? For example if there was any kind of development, that goes in the fight direct Because for me, it would be very interesting to see, if the places learn over time and we can see progress that could or shouldve happend in the first place
During Rush Hour, there are long delays or it gets really packed. I stopped taking the subway due to its inconsistency, and decided on the buses instead. Depending on the but route, they can be very frequent and, in my experience, on time the majority of the time I'm riding.
Mmk The USSR densified and planned things out, like you guys talk, in a couple years. The richest country in the world is struggling to build a simple metro that people can use ahahahaha
basically LA needs transit oriented development + pedestrianized superblocks around stations + grade separation of the metro for speed to compete with driving for increased ridership
Office space in downtowns across the US are emptying out due to remote online work capabilities. Even the office buildings will eventually be converted to residential. I am in St. Louis, where the huge AT&T building was sold for only 50 million dollars and is scheduled for condo conversion. Whether or not that will actually happen is not clear. The problem is that people in general don't want to live in cramped urban apartments if they not in close proximity to the workplace.
Toronto is using TOD planning for the new Ontario subway line. They’re basically planning massive skyscrapers over the stations such as Corktown, King-Bathurst, Exhibition Place and Pape-Danforth. And the plans have been placed on the Metrolinx website for public review. Toronto is already dense and is approaching the density of New York - especially downtown/central area. The problem facing Toronto is overcrowding of Line 1 along Yonge Street, which happens to be the busiest single service in North America.
Toronto as a city is no where near the population density of NYC ( all 5 boroughs combined has a population density of about 30,000 people per Square kilometer. Its even higher during the daytime. I was shocked to city as large of Toronto with only 3 train lines with 70 stations.
Nice video. I live near San Jose, and like to take the metro rail system to our international air port. Wouldn’t you know it, the rail system doesn’t have a stop at the airport. To get to the airport the traveler has to take a shuttle bus that runs every half hour half a mile from to the airport. To be considered for a position on the planning boards of California it seems a person has to prove they’re stupid.
The retail at and near Wilshire Vermont is nothing anyone would go out-of-their-way for. I doubt the Coffee Bean even has a restroom. Wilshire Western could be a better example, given the Wiltern and Koreatown. But this stop is used a lot less than Vermont.
In places like Korea and Japan, the sidewalks are safe to walk, with fences, and trees, sometimes multiple fences and tree lines, to make the people comfortable to walk. They have sun shields at intersections to shield you from the sun. And there's always multiple dinning areas in the station and around the station. The town or neighborhoods best foods are available in the station. The US government just isn't capable of building things that serve the community. The US is all about division and grievances.
I agree. It's the same in Russia! Places have a sense of feeling/belonging, and you as a human, have lots of choice. America doesn't want choice. Buy your car and house, preferably on a loan, and BE HAPPY! ITS DA DREEEM, FREE DUMB, RIGHT?
@bldontmatter5319 Of course we have "choices." We CHOOSE to live in suburbs, own a REAL house, and drive a nice car. If we did not want that stuff, we would not buy it. Inside our own house and in our own neighborhood, we "feel like we belong."
I feel like the transit needs to reach the south bay. There’s not enough transit there and like only a few lines towards long beach. And given people commute from outside dtla into it, we need stations where people usually commute FROM and TO. Thoughts from my fellow LA natives?
There’s kind of a lot wrong here. The lines basically needed to go through there in order to complete the whole blue & gold line project. Since the trains have to be there regardless, best to build a station there (see e.g. West Oakland BART - if the trains gotta be there regardless, try to make some lemonade - a strange & unique urban park-and-ride, in West Oakland’s case - out of the lemons left behind by urban planners who left the mortal plane before most of us were born!) Furthermore, many of the surrounding apartments are senior & disability housing, not commuters. Over time the area will redevelop, but because of the nature of what’s there now, it’ll take 10-20 years. Come 2040 we’ll all be talking about how Metro was so insightful to build this infrastructure in preparation for the changes that will inevitably come to Bunker Hill.
Great video, and that street should 100% converted into pedestrian. We can just use Times Square as proof. One thing I'd suggest though, is that the name "Performing Arts Center" gives us a clear idea on what kind of civic activity this area should be designated for. Plus with major attractions close to it, like Disney Hall, I'd want this area to be perfect for people to wayfind and safely walk to what's already existing around it. If the demand calls for apartments, then sure build them. However way you just "spark" a large area for buskers and artists, this is the number one place it should be, as a pedestrian only road. You've got a sub
Many cities went pedestrian-mall crazy back in the 70’s and 80’s … And 89% of them failed. Most ended up being populated by pigeons, and drunks. Hell, build some low-cost housing nearby, and you have yourself another ghetto …
I think you got your cart before the horse here. Transit first development after. Are you simply advocating for what should be the next steps? Also you made some selective choice of shooting locations and viewpoints. The station is connected to a nice plaza by The Broad with food trucks parked on Grand, at least on weekends. Yes the area west of Hope street you highlight needs some help deprioritizing cars but the connectivity to the museums, and theatres on Grand mean the station does have some serious trip generation potential, though not in the middle of the day on a tuesday. So does the Bunker Hill station merit more TOD north and west of it, definitely. That said you gloss over the fact that there is a pedestrian plaza and a bridge to connect to the upper part of Grand Ave. You probably could have made some more nuanced points about car oriented planning talking about what is east of the station (for example the viaduct that is the upper and lower parts of Grand Ave, yuck!).
Totally agree that transit normally comes before the TOD, but since there only two properties ever planned for development here (at least that I was able to research) I wanted to point out how removing the roads here could work as a plan to create more density. I think the bridge they built was good too, but doesn’t make up for the overall car centric-ness around the station.
@@lej_explainsI read an article about how Los Angeles spent millions on the parking garage for the Disney Concert Hall & it’s been way under parked it’s entire existence, requiring general funds to subsidize the bond payments. Using parking in that structure to compensate for only service vehicle access to the new buildings could be a big win
500 ft? Nah. Better say, 500 m - this is 5-7 minute walk and is no big deal. But: on the way home one would expect to buy groceries, have a haircut, repair a phone. On a way from home one would expect to have a sandwich and a cup of coffee. This station environment does not seem to offer any of that. As you said, it is very uninviting.
Looks like LA has STARTED the process of transit development, but it has a LONG way to go. PLEASE be sure that you VOTE accordingly, and maybe work with other groups/individuals to make these transit stations more about Humans rather than cars. Once again, i will say that You Must Pressure your Local Politicians to Fix This. This requires Years of Work. And spread the word! You are on the right track in bringing this to everyone's attention.
Would extra entrances with an underground walkway under the roads help as well? I mean, while I would love it to see roads ripped out and beg buttons removed, I'm not sure LA is already in that state of mind for that to happen, a subway might help to make it at least more accessible. There's enough staff hanging around for this subway not to become a big hazard, IMO.
I wouldn't set foot into any public transportation due to the possibility of being robbed or attacked by the homeless and thugs that patrol those areas.
Y’all seem to forget the main issue with public transportation in LA, it’s not safe nor is it clean. True we have a car culture but it continues this way bc I’d rather have a car and be in my own space than to sit on piss or have a random transient want to fight me. Those are examples of actual occurrences 😒
This station doesn’t have a lot going on. You’re shooting at off peak times when it’s dead. It gets busy during peak a bit. The next station down opens to little Tokyo and that’s busy.
Why didn't you show all the traffic at the Wilshire/Vermont station, if it's so great? People like the idea of transit, but reality says different. The fact is, when given a choice, most people would rather have the freedom of a car, then deal with the limitations and constraints of mass transit. Also, if the only way to get people to use transit would be to have interesting stuff within 500 feet of the station, how in the world is that going to help anything but a small fraction of the population? The city literally has millions of people who need to get all over the place. They aren't just there to lounge, most anyway.
Let’s not forget that a lot of is empty because The office workers in that bunker hill are still working from home, and if they are required to come in do you think those salaried people would actually want to take the dangerous and unsafe LA Metro? Why would they even bother?
No one is going to take public transit in a city / county that has no bail and immediately releases criminals back on the street. Why would I want to be in an unsafe place like public transit when I can take my own vehicle? It’s that simple.
I disagree. It’s not because of that. It’s because Vermont/Wilshire are both high transit populated routes. Plenty of buses run both streets both ways. So it’s a good connector to the subway system. Bunker hill is in downtown, but the area Itself is not heavily vehicle populated as the blvds Wilshire & Vermont
I had a wander around downtown LA on a midweek afternoon last February, Union Station-Chinatown-City Hall area. I have seldom seen such a deserted inner city, apart maybe from Birkenhead on Merseyside in the UK, which seems to be devoid of humans all the time. I guess it's all down to the car minded post war town planners and politicians. I found it all a bit depressing and a touch dystopian, only the sunshine made it bearable. Couldn't even find a decent bar open for a drink! More dwellings and fewer offices might do the trick I guess.
LA was built with suburbia in mind. 20 years ago the place was a ghost town after 6. Nobody actually lived there. There has been recent developments and people actually live there now so it's starting to be a city with stuff to actually do.
Spot on. Although when the Wilshire/Vermont station first opened it was super quiet in the '90s. The development came AFTER. Other examples of this are Hollywood/Highland, Hollywood/Vine, and Pershing Square. The state has high density zoning for station areas so they are growth magnets. The bunker hill station doesn't have a lot of businesses close by, though. Its all musuems, performing arts and hotels.... not very high density stuff.
As someone living in Thailand. This is easily fixable. Just connects the surrounding buildings with an underground walkways. We did something similar to this in Bangkok. Many highrises near a BTS station even foot the bills themselves, just to construct a skywalk to connects the station to their buildings directly and as time pass many buildings did the same and now they're several kilometers long in many area all around Bangkok. Same goes to the MRT. Although, not many private companies are willing to connects with the MRT, as building an underground walkway is far more costly than building a skywalk, but it's still achievable. In some areas of Bangkok, you never have to touch the footpath, you walk out of a metro station, goes to your destination, without having to walk on the ground.
@@myoldvhstapes ah............ yes. I completely forgot about the current abhorrent state of things in Liberal cities across America. Welp. Nothing can be done here then. Good luck!
LA is still partially stuck in a car culture and slowly transferring to Metro commute mentality. Hopefully the rise in Gas prices will enforce it more. The purpose is easy traffic congestion.
But what makes you think that people want to live right there??? That’s the same logic of using office space as apartments 🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️💁🏽♀️💁🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🚩🚩!!!! Stop trying to put people right on top of each other just to make “ affordable housing “ which doesn’t work because then you have rework other things like plumbing, utilities, and the whole sewerage system in that area ect!!!! And taking the ramp out will cause puddles and drainage issues on that flat surface 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️!!!!
I checked out this station to see The Broad and MOCA and it was too tucked away and hidden. It really doesn’t need the exit to the street, it should only have the exit that leads you to the little plaza next to The Broad leading you to Grand. It’s busier up there than that terrible street with nothing on it.
About a month ago, a homeless man stabbed someone to death on the metro. Security is good at the stations, but the trains are a different story. There are some pretty crazy people who practically live on the train. Even though I live next to a metro station, I just dont take it a lot because of safety considerations.
That’s the main problem right there. Last time I rode the gold line there were about 5 homeless in each and every car? They smelled hideous. They had all their carts and possessions and blankets over their heads, sleeping. This is their home and we are invading it.
I agree with your main argument that there are amble opportunities for transit-oriented development here and the road layout is stupid and annoying, but I think the main reason why you don't see a lot of crowds at this station is because the uses around it (which are mostly museums and cultural institutions) don't generate round-the-clock traffic. Most of the stuff on Grand only sees lots of traffic on the weekends (I used to work at the Broad, so this is something I'm intimately familiar with), which is why the station would be totally dead at rush hour. By contrast, the Little Tokyo station is also surrounded by streets, and also lacks transit-oriented development (there's literally a *parking garage* across the street from the station), but is really busy because Little Tokyo is a place that people want to go to throughout the day. I think there was also just more community buy-in from Little Tokyo, which is one of those intangibles that's more subjective and harder to measure, but I definitely got the impression that the community was really excited about the new station, especially since they've had to wait since the old one closed. Whereas Bunker Hill is dominated by these institutions, which creates something of a remove from people who would actually use the Metro, if that makes sense.
I don't think the lack of TOD at Bunker HIll is the problem - it's that the lines that connect to the Bunker Hill destinations aren't competitive. The Blue Line runs as a tram at street level along Washington street, the Expo line really needs to run on a viaduct East of Culver City, and the East LA line is a tram instead of the heavy rail subway that was promised in 1980. This makes trips from, say, Long Beach to attend the LA Symphony, uncompetitive. It's a trade off between driving and paying to park or attending a concert where the train won't get you and your kids home until after midnight. The 120-minute-long Santa Monica to DTLA Expo service is also not competitive with the 10, and commuters aren't going to switch. Rapid transit has to be rapid.
You know what I think will happen eventually? They'll keep the road... and put a 5-8 floor building over it. Which is OKAY at that point as long as it doing so doesn't compromise the structural integrity of the building being built. Besides, I think some people may actually find it cool to visit shops over a road or live over one.
Wow this is the kind pf quality content we need on youtube. Straight to point no need to try to make the video 10 minutes, not constantly repeating the same idea 10 times. Subbed
Or, just let more and more people work from home, and we won't need to waste money building train stations into downtown centers that no one really wants to go to. Also, Los Angeles has a huge homeless problem, and people don't feel safe using public transit. I live and work in DTLA, commute in three times a week, and work from home the other two. I gave up on public transit many years ago because I got tired of dealing with feeling unsafe all the time. It's too stressful.
As someone that's been using the Red line since it opened back in 1993 I have to point out 2:16 is simply not true. The Wilshire/Vermont station has been popular ever since it was opened, back when there was nothing built on the street level. The density of Koreatown, plus the fact that both the Vermont bus and Wilshire buses are the busiest in the system explain why the station is always busy.
They should build elevated rails above all freeways or alongside them to make mass transit safer and faster. If they want people back in offices, mass transit has to be faster and safer than using a car. If it takes 45 minutes to 1 hour for me to get to work in my car, mass transit should only take 20-30 minutes for me to use it. Additionally, they could consider implementing a system like at airports, where only people with purchased tickets are allowed onto train property, verified by a facial scan.
To determine the best routes for building train lines in Los Angeles, consider the following factors: 1. High-Demand Corridors: • Downtown LA to Santa Monica: This is a heavily trafficked corridor, with major employment centers and attractions. Existing Expo Line helps, but more capacity or faster service might be needed. • Downtown LA to San Fernando Valley: Heavy traffic along the 101 and 405 freeways suggests the need for improved public transit options, such as an extension of the existing lines or new routes. 2. Airport Connectivity: • LAX to Downtown LA: Improving connectivity to the airport can reduce car traffic. This can be achieved by extending existing lines or creating express services. • LAX to major hubs like Hollywood, Long Beach, and Pasadena. 3. Residential to Commercial Hubs: • San Fernando Valley to Westside: Commuters traveling from residential areas in the Valley to the Westside could benefit from a direct rail connection, potentially reducing reliance on the congested 405 freeway. • South LA to major employment centers: Ensuring connections from residential areas to key job centers in Downtown, Century City, and Burbank. 4. East-West and North-South Connectivity: • East LA to Westside: Improved transit options to reduce travel times across the city, potentially extending the Gold Line or creating new lines. • South Bay to Downtown LA: Enhancing connections from areas like Torrance and Redondo Beach to downtown, possibly through extensions of existing lines or new routes. 5. Emerging and Expanding Areas: • Hollywood to Downtown LA: Increasing capacity and speed of the Red Line to accommodate growth. • Culver City to key destinations: As a growing tech hub, better connections from Culver City to other major employment and residential areas. 6. Integration with Other Transit Modes: • Ensuring seamless integration with bus lines, bike-sharing programs, and other forms of public transit to enhance the overall efficiency and convenience of the network. 7. Equity and Accessibility: • Focus on underserved areas to improve access to public transit, reduce reliance on cars, and provide economic opportunities through better connectivity. These routes should be studied for feasibility, demand, environmental impact, and cost to prioritize projects that will most effectively reduce traffic congestion and improve public transit efficiency in Los Angeles.
"car centric"? have train n... people have consider that the same way they prefer trains is the same way others (most people) prefer cars. because the way you guys talk sometimes is not unlike religious fanatics, where they are always right and everyone else is wrong.
North America is car centric. There are cities where you need a car just to get across the "street." Cities have been bulldozed to make way for large parking lots. Americans nowadays see no problem with that until they look at the how this country used to look like before it was bulldozed for cars. Trains never did that :^)
It's ridiculous to compare development around Wilshire/Vermont with Bunker Hill station. Wilshire/Vermont opened back in 1993, so a fair comparison would be to compare foot traffic in Wilshire/Vermont from back from 1994. Maybe if you wait 30 years, the development around Bunker Hill will be similar, or much greater, than Wilshir/Vermont is today.
I went out of my way to visit this station when going to the MOCA and my experience was very similar to yours. Beautiful station but there were literally more of those people in the green shirts (ambassadors?) than people using the trains. More recently I wanted to go to the broad, but had some other errands to run after. Because those errands required a car I made the whole trip by car. That is a big failure of land use!
It's a magnificent station. I started using it to get to work a week after it opened, and I remember how amazed I was upon seeing it for the first time. It is typically a ghost town, and you're absolutely right about needing far more transit-oriented development (but I'm not very optimistic). It would be great to remove the roads right next to the station, as Hope, Fig, and Grand are all so close and can continue to carry vehicle traffic through the area. Could still use Hope to access the parking for the WD Concert Hall as you pointed out, and Flower can end at 3rd instead of sort of carrying on to 1st. I don't have high hopes for this, but it would be amazing and go a long way to creating more traffic in the station.
Your solution to fixing the bunker hill station by removing that one road is actually really smart. Can you send this video to the city and have them do that please 😂 Seems like such a simple yet effective idea!
You nailed it. LA can build the nicest billion dollar transit, but few people are going to ride it if there are highway-like streets surrounding it. LA needs safe, narrow streets with curb extensions, and protected bike lanes. And your pedestrianization idea around this station is wonderful. Someone send this video to StreetsForAll. They might advocate for this idea.
😂one controversial lane re-imagining at a time for SFA. I agree though, SFA seems like one of the few advocacy groups that can make real change.
Indeed, the whole of L.A. Downtown within the 10, 110, and 101 expressways should be excluded to all traffic save transit, emergency, service, and resident's vehicles. This way you can have a walkable downtown and arts district... and room for skid row sidewalk settlements to metastasize into the street.
fair point, they probably have to be careful about spending their political capital.. which is tough since they do seem to be one of the few groups that gets things moving a bit faster in LA@@ehoops31
You forgot that the lines that serve it are plagued by street running!!!!! Remove the street running segments
@@edwardmiessner6502capture some of the viaducts and reroute the A and E lines onto them off the streets.
I was recently was traveling in Tokyo. Many train stations in Tokyo are gigantic 7-8 story tall malls filled with shops grocery stores, desert and snack shops, restaurants. The mall is literally built on top of the train tracks, you get off the train walk up the stairs into the mall. Or you can take another exit up the stairs and get to the street.
Train companies in Tokyo are profitable - not from passenger fares. They make their money by charging rent from all the stores in the train station/mall complex.
In fifty years those stations will be ghost towns. Japan, Korea, Italy, Germany, Spain...they are all dying off from staggeringly low birth rates and populations are plummeting. This is happening across the industrialized world and rebuilding families should be the number one priority. Not building monolithic train stations for people who won't exist in the future.
It's the same in Toronto!
LA is still very far away from having the traffic sufficient enough for a shop at a transit station to do business.
🤯 So we gotta build malls!
@@franko8572 No?!? You gotta build the stations where "lives" take place!
Downtown LA feels like a fake city inside a real city. It's so barren and weird.
Building the stations before the development seems illogical but if you think about it, the hard part is done. This is the strategy a great deal of cities around the world take. It's an investment for the future, and one that doesn't necessarily have to pay off immediately. As long as LA City is willing to work with developers in the future to help transform the area, I can't see how this was a bad investment. It's certainly piqued interest for future development and can incentivize DTLA to change in the future. Also keep in mind, the problem with DTLA for the longest time was that it was a commuter focused area with no real residents at all and only businesses. People commuted far and wide to get to the area. At least some of those people now have alternatives that we had hoped for decades ago. Build and they will come.
I agree and think the station is a good investment overall - we can add even more room for density and development by removing the giant thru-way along the station to help make this place residential.
The biggest investment the city of LA ever did for DTLA was building Staples Center, if you track development from there it’s been a horrendously slow process to transform Downtown to where it is now, and it still needs so much more. I just see this as another step in that snails-pace process haha. Eventually it could be great though, as an LA native it feels like we are always waiting for the city to be better than what it currently is
Well, they had the Red Lines before WW2 but they stripped it all to build roads, and LA was born. So none of this will matter for the future, you'd be surprised how the tracks and train station get OLD and tattered real quick, and they will continuously be need to be replaced and maintained, and if you look at the rest of the city - none of what you say will happen and will fall into disrepair.
I agree. China has done this with their high speed stations and it worked out really well
Same, the roads are wide already, hard to make the roads wider when it's surrounded by apartments already.
As someone who commutes through Wilshire/Vermont, the reason for its popularity is not the urban design around it. It's currently the best place along with Wilshire/western to transfer to other metro busses going along Wilshire Boulevard through Beverly Hills, and to Westwood and Santa Monica, and all the neighborhoods west of these Wilshire/Western. If the D-Line extension is ever finished, the "popularity" of these two stations would decrease a lot
He also doesn't really understand bunker hill his basically dead at night because the proximity of things are office buildings. Vermont/Wilshire has entire neighborhoods surrounding it
@@bserpasThere are many things the author of the video doesn't understand. Why would a CROWDED city be considered as PROPER (he kinda means this towards the end). I have been living in LA for 5 years now after living my entire life (I'm 44) in BIG (CROWDED) cities like NYC and Istanbul. The life style in LA is so relaxing compared to other big cities. That's why many people from those big cities desire to move to LA like I did. Driving or even walking on those large but kinda empty-ish roads/streets is a joy. I would never want to go back to those mass transport centric and CROWDED cities ever again for living. Pushing those crowded-city/poorish-people problems and possible solutions onto the people who likes LA style of living is nonsense. LA doesn't need more mass transit lines which almost nobody would ever use.
@XtroTheArctic I've been to NYC and Chicago and get the whole car culture growing up here See, the metro rails are beneficial here in LA in a way though. You're right that we don't use it that much. Preferentially, here in LA I would rather take the metro any given day over driving if the connections make logical sense. I work from home now but prior to this I would take the metro since the expo line from where I live was a 10 minute walk to the station from home and a 5 minute walk to the office. 40 minutes where I could relax, nap, get things done. Versus driving that I just idle in my car for the same time or even longer depending on the traffic.
I also can't wait for LAX to finish the connection directly to the airport. I would rather take the expo to Crenshaw/lax lines instead of driving or paying for parking near the airport.
So in some situations the rail system is amazing. Other times like getting to Knotts or Magic Mountain yeah definitely I'll prefer driving any day since it's convenient.
Agree the bus lines add a lot to the immediate area’s popularity, as does the urban design. But don’t see why the D-line extension happening would harm the overall popularity a ton though...within a month of opening the extended D-line will be popular considering it runs along Wilshire’s density. (as long as we add more security tho, since some take buses for that reason over the D line)
@@XtroTheArctic The real solution isn't to force public transit on everyone, it's to give people the option to choose something other than a car. If you want to travel in a car that's amazing; but, why do I have to pay $400 a month on a car payment + $200 a month on insurance +$160 a month on gas + about $2,000 a year on maintenance (about $11,000 a year total) just to be able to get to work so I can earn money to pay for my car. The way things are in most american cities, it is literally impossible to live life without a car. To reiterate, if you want a car great. But it shouldn't be the only option.
I'm hoping we can harness the dark power of real estate developers to our advantage. I have a feeling that once they realize how much more profit they can generate by removing parking and building near transit, they'll be all over themselves lobbying against parking minimums and measures to better transit. Of course, there is the whole issue of affordability, but at least with walkability and transit, people will be better off financially and have more energy to organize.
Developers have been desperately trying to build dense mixed use construction for years now, everyone knows it’s profitable. It’s just a losing battle with city councils and planning boards.
High density housing offers profit margins off the roof, compared to a single family household with lots of wasted land. @@electricpaper269
I would totally use the metro in LA if the station's surrounding areas were actually walkable. Why can't every station above ground look like the wilshire/vermont one???
Majority of the redline is walkable, the rest of the it isn’t walkable cause LA is just one big suburb.
1000%. I made a point to check out the station after getting lunch with a friend last week. (My most direct route would’ve been to walk back to 7th/Metro). The obscenely wide roads that are part of the standard planning process for LA Metro/LA City need to be thrown out, trashed, eradicated. Granted, this was planned, designed, and funded at a time when mitigating for increased VMT wasn’t yet the statewide standard. But it’s still a travesty that it was (is) EVER normal to design something like this and sell it as a transit improvement.
🚄🚅🚈🚝 I love trains ❤
I have a folder about ''transportation''
thank you chou chou chouuuu : )
What is station traffic like at commute times? You mentioned you visited after lunch, and the video inside the station was shot before 1 pm. These are not peak times.
I’m not saying you or LEJ are wrong, I’m just saying that your evidence isn’t rigorous.
That is a fair question. I take the E Line around once a week at rush hour, usually on a Wednesday or Thursday. It is as empty then as it is during the midday. Eastbound, the trains are fullest between Culver City and USC, and they start to empty out at Pico and LATTC. Most of the remaining riders get off at 7th/Metro.
"he obscenely wide roads that are part of the standard planning process for LA Metro/LA City"
Obscenely wide? Two lanes?
Sir, you do realize that roads in London and Rome are narrow because they were originally built for people traveling on horseback, yes?
You make it sound like they sat down in Ancient Rome in 800 BC and said "ok, boys. We can make the roads wide enough for cars, or the width that horses need." lmao.
And not all of them are that narrow, and when a new one is built, it is built to accommodate cars?
Some of the problems are the transit lines themselves. They dont go where people want to go. They go where the planners said where we wanted to go. Also, its not safe. In San Jose (where I worked for over a decade) they expanded the light rail system for its East / West axis in the late 1990's. This is the Silicon Valley! All of us who used the light rail pleaded "make it right down San Carlos Street from the east end of San Jose (Alum Rock) to the main train station (Diridon) in downtown. Direct. No, the planners had a better idea. Everyone will take the north / south line way up past downtown, change at Baypoint and THEN swing back into east San Jose. It added another 45 minutes to the trip. Planners then shamed residents for not using their "great idea" when no one used it. Then transit planners are upset that "no one is using the light rail". If the USA (outside NYC / Boston / San Francisco / Chicago) want people to use public transport like this they have to really spend the time, the money and really study to see how and where and why people move in a city. Its mostly "see, we built it, Americans dont like it, we're backwards and love cars" insted of asking the right questions. I liked your video and I think you have some great ideas.
When a country and culture forgoes exceptionalism and embraces mediocrity you get mediocre results, mediocre doctors, engineers, architects etc. When people are encouraged to be average you have average results.
Sounds like Communist China bully planning. Audit needed as big projects always have big money and scams.
In the 90s, the voters would never have approved removing two car lanes along popular east-west streets and using them for light rail. Even now, plans for bus lanes along El Camino failed because car drivers objected to removing parking lanes. In any case, it doesn’t really matter because downtown San Jose is not a particularly important destination in Santa Clara county. In fact, light rail and BART are not really suitable for San Jose at all given how little transit ridership there is in the city.
In the 1990''s the voters DID approve an east west axis to the VTA Light Rail. And of course, the palnning comission made it so that it could NEVER compete save time and get people around San Jose quickly. They had Meetings on where to build this east / west axis. The sad thing was, they already knew where it was going to be built. They meets were held as to saw "we took reisnt and actual user input". @@my2iu
Excellent video, as always. As nice as large sweeping reforms would be, LA can improve substantially with just modest changes like getting rid of redundant roads and filling them in with apartments and/or green space, just as you described.
Hopefully an org like StreetsforAll can push for this plan! They recently got the city to (sort of) commit to looking into a freeway removal, which is great, and Bunker Hill seems like a cheaper road removal which could happen more quickly.
Love your video... stay safe biking around...
California ridiculous gas taxes, should be such a 'deterrences' and also a PR for local gov and developers to 'approaching' a Mid-dense Urban planning like those in Europe cities, instead of Auto-centric suburbs which is waste of lot of lands. Benefits of having mid-dense residentials build is also impact on Transportation effectiveness, social impacts of it's people (more ‘socialized’), ease policing methods (less space acres to search) and maybe suppress stupid prices of apts there. LA has a great climate for outdoor activity, too bad pollutions is even worser than NYC there. Don't let the Automobiles overtakes and pollute even more, investing on that solution it's preferable option.
When I first arrived in the US in 1999, it was in LA. Then over the years, I've moved everywhere including NY. But LA gave me the feeling of what my grandaunts told me when I was so young to remember anything. They said LA is America. They told me that they would walk everywhere and was surprised to find out that their shoes were still clean at the end of the day. I've lived in NY for decades but I still think LA is the America I know but when I come to visit -- I'm only disappointed by its missed opportunities to become a walkable city with that gorgeous weather.
It’s just the homeless population and the muggers that are the problem….
great ideas. Hopefully we're inching closer towards more reliable public transportation in LA
Yeah, letting criminals back out on the streets without so much as bail is doing its part to keep public transport in LA populated with muggers and rapists … GOOD JOB, LA !!
They need to clean up the public transit too. People don’t take transit in LA because it’s also super sketchy where you will often see many people urinating and shooting drugs into their veins while on the train or platform
You mean miles away?
I dunno. I go down there a lot and I can get around just fine without a car. I don't even know how to drive. What's supposedly unreliable about it?
@@neutrino78xvisit other countries and see actually good public transport. Try Germany, Russia, or Sweden. Great examples.
Thanks for making a video on this! I actually recently took the A Line from Long Beach to watch a play in the Bunker Hill area - I also ate at a cafe nearby and then went to one of the museums. It was honestly a fantastic experience. Plenty of Metro ambassadors at the Bunker Hill station, and the places I needed to go was within 1-2 blocks of walking... but you're right that the streets could definitely be more pedestrian-friendly.
tbh, an immediate issue I face is LBT buses not being frequent enough. The train can be great, but it's not so great when you don't live close to a station and "the last mile problem" is in fact "the last 5+ miles problem." So I have to do bus>train or train>bus when LB buses are either every 30 minutes or every hour. LB buses generally don't have late night service either, so that also shuts down a lot of bus/train combination trips for me. I'm envious of LA Metro and LA DOT that has slightly better frequencies and run later bus service than LBT. 😕
And this is why LA should have focussed on making great transit for the dense core instead of trying to cater to every suburb. Instead, they built transit that requires multiple transfers, is not all that efficient anywhere you go and you end up with long light rail lines that don't really get you to your destination. I'd rather there be pockets with fantastic urbanism and transit rather than bleh all the way around.
Consider biking to the station! It's pretty easy to bring your bike onto a metro train and take it with you. Plus there's the added bonus of easily being able to bike around DTLA, which has some nice new protected bike infrastructure.
@@AdamFaruqiI have a bike that I often combine with my commute on the train (and sometimes bring on the bus). Multimodal commuting is an amazing time-saver, but it's not always perfect. (1) if I'm going somewhere that's not my workplace, I don't know if they'll have adequate bike parking, and (2) frankly, the infrastructure to/from the Long Beach train station closest to where I live is pretty terrifying. Ideally I try to reduce time spent on the road there, because I think I'll die on those streets one day. It just isn't the safest (stroads, door zones, one center-running bike lane, a street where you're biking in the gutter while cars often go 50 mph, etc.).
But I definitely don't count out bikes as an option; I went from Long Beach to Santa Monica a while back taking my bike on the A & E trains and it's so great to bike around Santa Monica.
you did not get mugged eh
Downtown LA is trying to improve the transit oriented development around Bunker Hill. Previously only 33% of DTLA was residential. But I think they're trying to up zone it now to be more like 80%. Hopefully in another 10 years we will see a huge transformation.
I got the impression that it was to get people closer to the museums nearby so you don't have to walk from Civic Center Station. From my experience, it's just not well known. I asked the staff at The Broad about the station that's literally behind them and they didn't know what I was talking about.
Civic Center Station is the Red Line (I guess it's called B line now). This station is A and E lines. So the trains that stop at Civic Center wouldn't even go here.
The should market for thrill seekers. The reason I say this is that metro is completely unsafe and you could have bad things happen to you !! Like being murdered, robbery, mug, aggravated assault and raped. The wonderful Los Angeles city council will not ride the metro unless accompanied by a security detail.
Coming from NYC, I was curious about the LA subway. It may have location problems, it is not the main reason why people are not using it. When I came down a downtown station, I surprised how nice it is. Then I saw homeless people with obvious mental issues were ready to jump on other people. One homeless guy actually did it. Please get your record straight. People don’t use it because it is NOT safe.
Bingo
too many times we see mentally dangerous people riding the subway with others in the NYC. We moved to TX were happy that we dont need to take public transportation anymore, lol.
@@eggheadegghead you and city government could have taken responsibility for providing people with mental health issues the healthcare they need but I guess we don't do that in America because .
You could have stayed where you were at if we shed all the toxic bullshit we have around homeless people (including mentally ill ones) being homeless because they all somehow deserved it. Like did the court of prosperity hear every case and was like "you're too weird, homelessness for you. Indefinitely because the US has no support system to speak of."
It is very safe, actually.
@@mooviemusicfan I’m on the J Silver Line (bus) line this very second. The stench, insanity and Mental issues are insane. The subway is no different than bus. I’d never ever ever ride public transport if I were a woman.
Get rid of the homeless. It's so scary to ride the train these days. I rode the Expo line from USC to La Cienega station. Two episodes of a man screaming at everyone on the train and Metro workers not doing anything about it. It's so terrible. I'm sticking with Uber and using my car. Please have security ride the trains and kick people off that are drinking, screaming, and being a nuisance.
CityNerd will call you a racist for that.
Aren't you exageratting? 😅
You’re right!!
METRO OR NOT, IT ABOUT SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY!!
No one will use metro on US & Western country even it new build if it’s unsafe.
THIS IS BIGGEST DIFFERENT IN CHINA, EAST ASIA, SOME SOUTHEAST ASIA COUNTRY VS US & WESTERN MINDSET & LAWSUITS!!
Ppl scare shit out of their head use metro in US because they might get a homeless assault & spit on their face for no reason or just because they’re fk hate you, hate your looks, hate your race!!
You might get racist hate crimes attackers you because of your race!!
Ppl cant fk walking in street, parks & metro safety enjoying their moments with their friends, their kids because they might facing druggies homeless & druggies thugs, criminals BEATING SHIT OUT OF THEM TO ROBBED OR KNIFE STABBING TO GET ROBBERY RIGHT IN DOWNTOWN IN BOARD DAYLIGHT!!
The ridiculous stupid is, DRUGGIES HOMELESS IS NOT CONSIDERED AS DRUGGIES ADDICT BUT IN US/WESTERN THEY CONSIDER IT MENTAL ILLNESS PROBLEMS!!
And thugs, criminals did robbery facing the SOFTEST PUNISHMENT LIKE A JOKE!!
Law system protect & support druggies homeless/druggies zombies, thugs, robbery & criminals more than laws abiding ordinary people!!
Druggies zombies/druggies homeless, robbery, thugs & criminals HAVE MORE FREEDOM, MORE HUMANITY RIGHT, MORE PROTECT BY LEGAL LAWS & JUSTICE LAWS SYSTEMS!!
US & Western use to be developed & well education country with lawsuits system!!
But now US & ALOTS WESTERN IS LAWLESS, LAWLESS & BACKWARDS!!
They’re create UNBELIEVABLE RIDICULOUS STUPID LAWS SYSTEMS TO PROTECT & SUPPORT THESE DRUGGIES, THUGS & CRIMINALS IN THE HEARTBEAT!!
This is why US, Western nowadays is fails & falling so fast so bad downhill because they’re blind & brainwashed for too long!!
Anyone committed crimes but if they’re homeless, druggies then it switched to MENTAL ILLNESS PROBLEM - so no punishment, no jails. WALK AWAY FREELY, NO CAUGHT, NO JAILS!!
Us & Western get brainwashed for too long too deep that’s why they’re lost basic common sense & basic logic already!!
I've been reporting them using their Transit Watch app every time it; we shouldn't have to tolerate this behavior . Besides, they're always encouraging us "If you see something, say something".
There were two Metro workers that helped when I pointed out a man screaming at himself. It's changed in the past few months.
This aged well@@joaov.m.oliveira9903
The other problem is the lines are gross and dangerous! Never felt safe on the trains… security is almost non-existent!
The lines are hardly usable
If nobody uses it.. it will always be unsafe 😢.. however it's interesting to see that the system is growing and I'm sure at some point things will change.. please don't let it get as disgusting as NYC's.. 🤮
@@marcelochavez1467it will. It's America. Everything falls apart here from neglect
Great video! LA has some plans to improve the area with widened sidewalks on Flower, bike lanes, and even closing upper Grand to cars between 1st and 2nd (see the LADOT Downtown LA Mobility Investment Plan), but you are definitely right that the area simply needs more housing. Metro was able to work with a developer to reinforce Historic Broadway station so a 60 story tower could be built directly on top of that station (hopefully that will break ground soon). It’s a shame they didn’t do that here.
I’m hoping eventually there can be something like the car-free district you proposed. It just makes so much sense. Sadly, downtown has no representation on city council since KDL has been so terrible, but hopefully that can change soon. Downtown is going to add so many new residents with how much housing the new zoning plan allows, so they need to figure it out how to make the most of the transit that’s already there.
Thanks! Would be great if the city council actually orders LADOT to expedite the originally promised bike lanes and improvements. I saw on StreetsBlogLA that they silently dropped adding them at some point despite saying it would be done, but i’m not shocked that happened haha. But damn a car free district in DTLA would be nice.
I recently got a master plan of all the current and proposed residential and commercial developments for DTLA from a realtor. I’ll have to take a look at it to see what’s happening with this area.
Awful video
Dude doesnt live in LA and doesnt follow
Street people of los angeles
Or dtla crazies on IG
bunch of shit everywhere
Looters
People getting robbed
Its not clean
Its not safe
LA metro isnt safe at all anymore
People doing heroin in the train stations
Dude prob has never taken the blue line or purple line at all
I grew up on catalina and 6th st
Took metro everyday
Shits ass
Its full of ass
Smells like it
Looks like it
Also that coffee bean is gone sadly
Same with the dennys and gas station that was across the street
People dont come there because of jobs lmao
I do not know LA but living in a city with mass transit, New York City, there are reasons for stations that do not seem to fit what a lot of transit channels say, we have some of them. While transit channels want to do something benevolent with their views, there are things they need to learn.
When there is mixed transportation use, many people prefer to use cars. Years ago on the weekend I took the LA metro from Hollywood to see the Disney Concert Hall. The subway was not crowded because many people in the area got around in other ways.
Also, traffic lights for pedestrians are not a bad thing. It protects people when they cross the street. True a person may have to wait for a minute but that kind of behavior is possible. After all taking trains of any kind often involves waiting.
I’m kinda hoping that the area will get more transit oriented over time, it often makes sense to build the station first then let the transit get developed around it, but this is Los Angeles, so that might be rather difficult.
I think the roads have been seen as a hurdle by being there to potential developers, but with the station's low usage (and not very much new surrounding development), there's a legitimate and compelling argument to make for their removal.
@@mrxman581 Thank you for assuming I didn't know what I was talking about. Now I'll try again to explain in more detail what I meant in my "assessment". There is a whole city block west of the station that's on an incline, half comprised of wider roads than normal for Downtown that's clearly from several decades ago, and the rest is grass. Meaning, no people and no buildings. Personally, I think something could be added there and the roads could be modified, as part of developing the surrounding area. Which would mean converting newly renovated roads from the city over to privately held land. I'm indifferent about preparing developed areas beforehand, I think it could happen either way, Honolulu's Skyline is a blatant example with it's westernmost stations placed in the middle of fields because of future projects going to be taking place in those places.
LA will NEVER become transit friendly until the City of LA smartens up and hires Transit Cops. That's right - cops who police the trains! It's NOT SAFE to take mass transit in LA!
This video seems a bit disingenuous. If you exit out the other exit from the Bunker Hill station you go right to a walkable plaza with green space by a restaurant and the Broad museum. Next to that is the Disney Concert Hall. Across the street are apartments. And all around are skyscrapers with businesses. You are just looking out the back of the station at the road. You’re trying to make it look worse than it is. Also, not every stop can be an idyllic paragon of walkable perfect blends of residential and shopping. Have you been to other countries with great train lines? Most stops are just nice utilitarian stops. Functional. Not every stop is amazing. That’s how cities are. The next stop over from Bunker Hill is the Little Tokyo stop with a plaza and shopping and tons of people. It’s great.
The problem is that there still isn't a lot of foot traffic in the area and it isn't pedestrian friendly. It would have been a great idea to just get rid of that hope st. corridor altogether and extend the plaza across the road into the station and even create an underground walkway from the station that exits onto grand ave.
Typical American, trying to act like american trash is safe and clean lol
I live near the Vermont station and one of the major reasons I chose to live there was that I'm walking distance from a station that has good access to downtown and lots of groceries and good food. I mostly use the train to go to Hollywood and Downtown because I don't like parking there but I'm definitely in that group that had no idea Bunker Hill had been redone - it was always just a stop on the way to Little Tokyo. I love that you don't just point out the shortcomings of what happened but also suggest positive changes to make the best of what we got. Let's hope they can start turning the roads back toward walkability soon!
Subscribed!
TFL in London has got through tough times by selling off land it owns to developers or building its own commercial properties. The city of LA should be capitalising on little used stretches of road like this to boost transit oriented development and make some money back. I remember visiting LA years ago (before Google Maps), arriving at the Greyhound station with no way to get out other than a shuttle bus to a hostel which when I got to it felt like it was surrounded by pedestrian hostile roads so felt I trapped and unable to explore without jumping on the shuttle to the beach provided by the hostel.
It was only when I revisiting later and could afford to rent a car that I drove past the same hostel and realised how close it was to the airport and beaches. Having the transit options then would have totally transformed my experience of the city.
Dude they put the greyhound station right in skid row as a middle finger to anyone who dares to not drive in by car. It was deliberate, nobody can change my mind.
Selling the land off is probably a mistake, if we compare what East Asian transport companies are doing. Basically, they should lease the land or build on it and lease the property space. If the city won’t have a vision, then maybe the transit company should be building what will bring people to them?
@ Yes. I think, a high-density mixed use building with both commercial and living space would be ideal. High traffic businesses on the bottom, like cafes and fast food restaurants, then on the top would be apartments. The city could either build it up themselves to lease, or just use a zoning law/city ordinance to mandate that the property developer build it to include those specifications. A very simple idea, that would take advantage of the tax revenue generated from the small businesses and residential property, thereby cutting the long-term costs.
I visited LA in August and was really surprised at how the Expo Line trains emptied out at Metro Center station before continuing through downtown. I would have expected the new tunnel to have retained a lot more riders continuing out to the other side of the city. But I also noticed that a lot of system maps in the stations and on trains were outdated and showing the old routes, and the lines traced on Google Maps' Transit layer hadn't been updated either (I could get schedules, but nothing reassuring me by looking at the map layer that showed the train line actually existed -- fortunately that seems fixed now). Hopefully it's just that people have old travel patterns stuck in their heads that will change over time.
The observations about station TOD are well-taken, but it feels like that's only part of what's going on.
7th st is pretty much the core of downtown in terms of shops and restaurants, and 7th/metro center is the biggest transfer point on the system. I think it makes sense that it sees far more traffic than other downtown stations
It's the transfer station to the subway.
Good point, tbh I haven’t noticed that the E line has less passengers after departing 7th Street/Metro Center to East LA. The A line still retains a lot of passengers.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that hates those beg buttons! Cities may think they are a good thing, but it's inherently car-centric design when the pedestrian should have the right of way instead of forcing them to press a button. I mean, do drivers have to pull up to an intersection, and lean out of their window to push a button in order to get a green light in their favor? No, they just wait and the light appears! They simply exist so that car traffic signals can minimize the car travel “delays” associated with people who need to cross a street on foot. They effectively penalize you for not having a car!
And absolutely having transit-oriented development is important! Transit is for, well, PEOPLE! And transit stations aren't gonna get a lot of usage if there's not much surrounding it. I mean when stations in Brooklyn and Queens like those in Bay Ridge or Junction Boulevard first opened, there was NOTHING surrounding them! It was only when people started building development around said stations that people started to move in. Same case with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail! So much development like around Essex Street has popped up in Downtown Jersey City because of that light-rail! If you build it...THEY WILL COME!
NYC has very few beg buttons.
@@duckmercy11NYC used to have none! Remember your history!
Gotta love the confidence to assert there's nothing around the station while showing multiple overhead clips including the Broad, one of the 100 most visited art museums in the world, immediately adjacent to the station and connected via pedestrian-only bridge. I can agree it'd be great to strip out that section of road. I wish they tore out a lot of downtown's streets in general. One of my "favorite" downtown pedestrian moments is 2nd between Hill and Olive, where the tunnel ends. Since the street is one way and there's been fencing on the other side, people will just walk down the side of the road.
Roads are sacred DON'T EVEN THINK about removing them or slowing a single driver down.
I travel to Bangkok and Tokyo regularly. Both share characteristics that I think a lot of American stations do not have most the time. They are all located with their entrances and exits near major destinations and offices. In Bangkok one MRT Line is built to have a stop inside a mall. You get off and walk down a beautiful tunnel take an escalator and you’re in the mall which itself is inside a skyscraper with offices above.
Thailand and Japan have a sense of place for everything. Asians are very meticulous in their planning.
Also: it takes time for behavioral patterns to change. People aren’t taking the train to or from here because, if they had to go to or from here in the past, they had to do it some other way-or not do it at all. Those habits usually don’t change overnight.
Overall the metro is dirty and dangerous. That's why people don't use it.
@@peterwelby It's still pretty dirty. I'll give you that. But have you ridden recently? They've stepped up their security.
@@peterwelby 100% I'm laughing at the comments on this post how they're claiming it's EVERYTHING except the real reasons why people are no longer using the MTA 🤣
@@AdamFaruqi there was a stabbing just the other day at the Little Tokyo station with the new so called 'beefed up security.'
@@thedrunkweddingphotographerthis is America. There's gonna be violence all the time, everywhere. It's an evil country. Meanwhile I moved to Russia, and no joke, have peaceful train rides, bus rides, ect
I'm convinced my homeland just can't do anything right. They'll always blame anything but the problem.
Did you check this stations density during the start and end of the public high school day at the nearby Ramon C Cortines High School of Visual and Performing Arts? aka Grand Arts H.S.?
I’ve ridden the train in countless other cities and used it to commute in Toronto. The biggest issue with LA Metro is safety. In the last 3 years there have been killings, gang violence, and 20+ deaths by overdose. This is all documented by the LASD. Not to mention that the homeless population uses the system as place to sleep. There is no controlled access to most of the stations and the payment “honor” system doesn’t work. It’s disgusting and unsafe to ride the system during commuter hours; never mind after hours. I stopped riding metro because I felt unsafe. Until we can figure out how to make the system safe for everyone, it’s going to be a continue to be a failure for the city.
Bingo. The chief of the MTA said housing the homeless was the number one priority of the MTA. Huh? Come again? Yep that’s the main focus. The system is now designed to be homeless housing
@@bigbaddms I’d be extremely surprised if he actually said that. Nevertheless, the problem is rampant and much worse than other cities I’ve visited.
@@revmatchtvthe problem is worse than any place in the world. Only America creates cities for only suburban people
Great Video as Always! I visited bunker hill sta during the opening and it was quite busy, and i went there again ~2 weeks ago on a weekend and there was a decent amount of people, ao it seems like the museums drive alot of the traffic to the station
Thanks! Yeah I totally get that weekends here attract some more people - and if more gets built all around it, it can live up to it's true potential and become an all hours station I hope!
Homelessness and menatal health is a HUGE issue.
On top of that, everyone just wants to get to A and B then C to D so fast. Years ago, it was convenient to ride the fwy, now a days, with all the traffic in the city, the train cuts through traffic like butter. I mean dont get me wrong at certain times being in a car is essential, but almost most of the time its not worth it. At least now a days... just my opinion though
Can you sometimes post updates on some videos you posted? For example if there was any kind of development, that goes in the fight direct Because for me, it would be very interesting to see, if the places learn over time and we can see progress that could or shouldve happend in the first place
Call them out, LEJ! Let's pressure LA to improve its transit and streets!
During Rush Hour, there are long delays or it gets really packed. I stopped taking the subway due to its inconsistency, and decided on the buses instead. Depending on the but route, they can be very frequent and, in my experience, on time the majority of the time I'm riding.
It is being built for our children, not for us. Give it another 50 years and it will densify.
Mmk
The USSR densified and planned things out, like you guys talk, in a couple years. The richest country in the world is struggling to build a simple metro that people can use ahahahaha
Wow I never knew the A train ran this far. I can now travel to LA from New York with just $2.90
basically LA needs transit oriented development + pedestrianized superblocks around stations + grade separation of the metro for speed to compete with driving for increased ridership
Having to wait 15 minutes to cross and almost being runover at every street is definitely a barrier to adoption 😂
And prioritization of safety. You can have the best metro in the world. No one will use it if youre surrounded by loony crackheads
@@cyclingtexas1670America problem
Nobody will use these until they clean up the streets. Why risk your life when you can just drive a car?
Office space in downtowns across the US are emptying out due to remote online work capabilities. Even the office buildings will eventually be converted to residential. I am in St. Louis, where the huge AT&T building was sold for only 50 million dollars and is scheduled for condo conversion. Whether or not that will actually happen is not clear. The problem is that people in general don't want to live in cramped urban apartments if they not in close proximity to the workplace.
They’ll be back in the office next year don’t worry
That's because companies are leaving Cali. Has nothing to do with working from home, since that's been mostly reversed
Toronto is using TOD planning for the new Ontario subway line. They’re basically planning massive skyscrapers over the stations such as Corktown, King-Bathurst, Exhibition Place and Pape-Danforth. And the plans have been placed on the Metrolinx website for public review. Toronto is already dense and is approaching the density of New York - especially downtown/central area. The problem facing Toronto is overcrowding of Line 1 along Yonge Street, which happens to be the busiest single service in North America.
Toronto as a city is no where near the population density of NYC ( all 5 boroughs combined has a population density of about 30,000 people per Square kilometer. Its even higher during the daytime.
I was shocked to city as large of Toronto with only 3 train lines with 70 stations.
Nice video. I live near San Jose, and like to take the metro rail system to our international air port. Wouldn’t you know it, the rail system doesn’t have a stop at the airport. To get to the airport the traveler has to take a shuttle bus that runs every half hour half a mile from to the airport. To be considered for a position on the planning boards of California it seems a person has to prove they’re stupid.
From Diridon Station to SJC airport directly is almost impossible.
The retail at and near Wilshire Vermont is nothing anyone would go out-of-their-way for. I doubt the Coffee Bean even has a restroom.
Wilshire Western could be a better example, given the Wiltern and Koreatown. But this stop is used a lot less than Vermont.
In places like Korea and Japan, the sidewalks are safe to walk, with fences, and trees, sometimes multiple fences and tree lines, to make the people comfortable to walk. They have sun shields at intersections to shield you from the sun. And there's always multiple dinning areas in the station and around the station. The town or neighborhoods best foods are available in the station.
The US government just isn't capable of building things that serve the community. The US is all about division and grievances.
Those are state and city responsibilities. Stop blaming the U.S. government for things they are not allowed to be involved in.
@@Matthew_Loutner lol
I agree. It's the same in Russia! Places have a sense of feeling/belonging, and you as a human, have lots of choice. America doesn't want choice. Buy your car and house, preferably on a loan, and BE HAPPY! ITS DA DREEEM, FREE DUMB, RIGHT?
@bldontmatter5319 Of course we have "choices."
We CHOOSE to live in suburbs, own a REAL house, and drive a nice car.
If we did not want that stuff, we would not buy it.
Inside our own house and in our own neighborhood, we "feel like we belong."
I feel like the transit needs to reach the south bay. There’s not enough transit there and like only a few lines towards long beach. And given people commute from outside dtla into it, we need stations where people usually commute FROM and TO. Thoughts from my fellow LA natives?
I would ride the metro more if there were less crazy people in downtown.
There’s kind of a lot wrong here. The lines basically needed to go through there in order to complete the whole blue & gold line project. Since the trains have to be there regardless, best to build a station there (see e.g. West Oakland BART - if the trains gotta be there regardless, try to make some lemonade - a strange & unique urban park-and-ride, in West Oakland’s
case - out of the lemons left behind by urban planners who left the mortal plane before most of us were born!)
Furthermore, many of the surrounding apartments are senior & disability housing, not commuters. Over time the area will redevelop, but because of the nature of what’s there now, it’ll take 10-20 years. Come 2040 we’ll all be talking about how Metro was so insightful to build this infrastructure in preparation for the changes that will inevitably come to Bunker Hill.
Great video, and that street should 100% converted into pedestrian. We can just use Times Square as proof. One thing I'd suggest though, is that the name "Performing Arts Center" gives us a clear idea on what kind of civic activity this area should be designated for. Plus with major attractions close to it, like Disney Hall, I'd want this area to be perfect for people to wayfind and safely walk to what's already existing around it. If the demand calls for apartments, then sure build them. However way you just "spark" a large area for buskers and artists, this is the number one place it should be, as a pedestrian only road. You've got a sub
Would anyone wanna live there though, with a crowd of people around breakdancers at 9pm? LOL
Many cities went pedestrian-mall crazy back in the 70’s and 80’s … And 89% of them failed.
Most ended up being populated by pigeons, and drunks.
Hell, build some low-cost housing nearby, and you have yourself another ghetto …
Agreed. Affordable family housing at Bunker Hill. #1@@Clyde-2055
@@Clyde-2055 Were there any residential buildings near them? If not, that's probably why they didn't work.
Good points and ideas. Yet at least LA is building some mass transit. You should see Atlanta, where its not being built.
I think you got your cart before the horse here. Transit first development after. Are you simply advocating for what should be the next steps? Also you made some selective choice of shooting locations and viewpoints. The station is connected to a nice plaza by The Broad with food trucks parked on Grand, at least on weekends. Yes the area west of Hope street you highlight needs some help deprioritizing cars but the connectivity to the museums, and theatres on Grand mean the station does have some serious trip generation potential, though not in the middle of the day on a tuesday. So does the Bunker Hill station merit more TOD north and west of it, definitely. That said you gloss over the fact that there is a pedestrian plaza and a bridge to connect to the upper part of Grand Ave. You probably could have made some more nuanced points about car oriented planning talking about what is east of the station (for example the viaduct that is the upper and lower parts of Grand Ave, yuck!).
Totally agree that transit normally comes before the TOD, but since there only two properties ever planned for development here (at least that I was able to research) I wanted to point out how removing the roads here could work as a plan to create more density. I think the bridge they built was good too, but doesn’t make up for the overall car centric-ness around the station.
@@lej_explainsI read an article about how Los Angeles spent millions on the parking garage for the Disney Concert Hall & it’s been way under parked it’s entire existence, requiring general funds to subsidize the bond payments. Using parking in that structure to compensate for only service vehicle access to the new buildings could be a big win
500 ft? Nah. Better say, 500 m - this is 5-7 minute walk and is no big deal. But: on the way home one would expect to buy groceries, have a haircut, repair a phone. On a way from home one would expect to have a sandwich and a cup of coffee. This station environment does not seem to offer any of that. As you said, it is very uninviting.
Looks like LA has STARTED the process of transit development, but it has a LONG way to go. PLEASE be sure that you VOTE accordingly, and maybe work with other groups/individuals to make these transit stations more about Humans rather than cars.
Once again, i will say that You Must Pressure your Local Politicians to Fix This. This requires Years of Work. And spread the word! You are on the right track in bringing this to everyone's attention.
don't worry when androids come and replace all our needs depopulation will happen you will not need any train stations.
finally someone realizes they barely started on this lol.
Would extra entrances with an underground walkway under the roads help as well? I mean, while I would love it to see roads ripped out and beg buttons removed, I'm not sure LA is already in that state of mind for that to happen, a subway might help to make it at least more accessible. There's enough staff hanging around for this subway not to become a big hazard, IMO.
Yet the same people in LA that complain about traffic will be the ones to shut down any plans to densify. 😂
John Phillips of 790 KABC is pure evil.
I wouldn't set foot into any public transportation due to the possibility of being robbed or attacked by the homeless and thugs that patrol those areas.
Y’all seem to forget the main issue with public transportation in LA, it’s not safe nor is it clean. True we have a car culture but it continues this way bc I’d rather have a car and be in my own space than to sit on piss or have a random transient want to fight me. Those are examples of actual occurrences 😒
This station doesn’t have a lot going on. You’re shooting at off peak times when it’s dead. It gets busy during peak a bit. The next station down opens to little Tokyo and that’s busy.
Why didn't you show all the traffic at the Wilshire/Vermont station, if it's so great? People like the idea of transit, but reality says different. The fact is, when given a choice, most people would rather have the freedom of a car, then deal with the limitations and constraints of mass transit. Also, if the only way to get people to use transit would be to have interesting stuff within 500 feet of the station, how in the world is that going to help anything but a small fraction of the population? The city literally has millions of people who need to get all over the place. They aren't just there to lounge, most anyway.
Let’s not forget that a lot of is empty because The office workers in that bunker hill are still working from home, and if they are required to come in do you think those salaried people would actually want to take the dangerous and unsafe LA Metro? Why would they even bother?
No one is going to take public transit in a city / county that has no bail and immediately releases criminals back on the street. Why would I want to be in an unsafe place like public transit when I can take my own vehicle? It’s that simple.
That's just because you're scared of the big world. No reason why the rest of us should shake in our boots.
I disagree. It’s not because of that. It’s because Vermont/Wilshire are both high transit populated routes. Plenty of buses run both streets both ways. So it’s a good connector to the subway system. Bunker hill is in downtown, but the area Itself is not heavily vehicle populated as the blvds Wilshire & Vermont
I had a wander around downtown LA on a midweek afternoon last February, Union Station-Chinatown-City Hall area. I have seldom seen such a deserted inner city, apart maybe from Birkenhead on Merseyside in the UK, which seems to be devoid of humans all the time. I guess it's all down to the car minded post war town planners and politicians. I found it all a bit depressing and a touch dystopian, only the sunshine made it bearable. Couldn't even find a decent bar open for a drink! More dwellings and fewer offices might do the trick I guess.
downtown miami is super creepy. so empty
LA was built with suburbia in mind. 20 years ago the place was a ghost town after 6. Nobody actually lived there. There has been recent developments and people actually live there now so it's starting to be a city with stuff to actually do.
Waste of money. They should have used those funds to cleanup and remodel their existing stations.
Spot on. Although when the Wilshire/Vermont station first opened it was super quiet in the '90s. The development came AFTER. Other examples of this are Hollywood/Highland, Hollywood/Vine, and Pershing Square. The state has high density zoning for station areas so they are growth magnets. The bunker hill station doesn't have a lot of businesses close by, though. Its all musuems, performing arts and hotels.... not very high density stuff.
Get rid of Wiggins and the higher ups that bow to her whims!!
As someone living in Thailand. This is easily fixable. Just connects the surrounding buildings with an underground walkways. We did something similar to this in Bangkok. Many highrises near a BTS station even foot the bills themselves, just to construct a skywalk to connects the station to their buildings directly and as time pass many buildings did the same and now they're several kilometers long in many area all around Bangkok. Same goes to the MRT. Although, not many private companies are willing to connects with the MRT, as building an underground walkway is far more costly than building a skywalk, but it's still achievable.
In some areas of Bangkok, you never have to touch the footpath, you walk out of a metro station, goes to your destination, without having to walk on the ground.
Pedestrian tunnels would become public urinals, places for addicts to use drugs, etc. Law-abiding folks would be too scared to use them.
@@myoldvhstapes ah............ yes. I completely forgot about the current abhorrent state of things in Liberal cities across America. Welp. Nothing can be done here then. Good luck!
@@myoldvhstapes - He’s talking Bangkok. It’s nothing like the cesspool that is the urban US standard.
@@myoldvhstapes got a short on this (applied to la at least)
LA is still partially stuck in a car culture and slowly transferring to Metro commute mentality. Hopefully the rise in Gas prices will enforce it more. The purpose is easy traffic congestion.
But what makes you think that people want to live right there??? That’s the same logic of using office space as apartments 🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️💁🏽♀️💁🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🚩🚩!!!! Stop trying to put people right on top of each other just to make “ affordable housing “ which doesn’t work because then you have rework other things like plumbing, utilities, and the whole sewerage system in that area ect!!!! And taking the ramp out will cause puddles and drainage issues on that flat surface 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️!!!!
I checked out this station to see The Broad and MOCA and it was too tucked away and hidden. It really doesn’t need the exit to the street, it should only have the exit that leads you to the little plaza next to The Broad leading you to Grand. It’s busier up there than that terrible street with nothing on it.
Brilliant video! Brilliant analysis! Watching from the Netherlands, I hope that your excellent ideas for TODs will come to fruition.
Just loving how there are so many transit enthusiast's are making content 🥰!! Keep going bro!!! Oh, and subscribed 😎🤟🏿.
I have no clue how I got here i have never heard of this channel before but hey i liked the video it was great
About a month ago, a homeless man stabbed someone to death on the metro. Security is good at the stations, but the trains are a different story. There are some pretty crazy people who practically live on the train. Even though I live next to a metro station, I just dont take it a lot because of safety considerations.
That’s the main problem right there. Last time I rode the gold line there were about 5 homeless in each and every car? They smelled hideous. They had all their carts and possessions and blankets over their heads, sleeping. This is their home and we are invading it.
Yep, I'm from the UK and couldn't believe how crazy it was every time I rode the Metro
@no_soy_rubio can you tell me if the bus system is much safer?
Exactly! They need to hire Japan Rail to consult.
First fully nude homeless person I ever saw was right outside the station there where you were filming. Good times.
The real problem is sensationalist news media and its fear-mongering about crime.
The wilshire Vermont station is so ghetto and scary though lol. I feel bad for the people who live next to it 😭
Nobody walks in LA.
I agree with your main argument that there are amble opportunities for transit-oriented development here and the road layout is stupid and annoying, but I think the main reason why you don't see a lot of crowds at this station is because the uses around it (which are mostly museums and cultural institutions) don't generate round-the-clock traffic. Most of the stuff on Grand only sees lots of traffic on the weekends (I used to work at the Broad, so this is something I'm intimately familiar with), which is why the station would be totally dead at rush hour.
By contrast, the Little Tokyo station is also surrounded by streets, and also lacks transit-oriented development (there's literally a *parking garage* across the street from the station), but is really busy because Little Tokyo is a place that people want to go to throughout the day. I think there was also just more community buy-in from Little Tokyo, which is one of those intangibles that's more subjective and harder to measure, but I definitely got the impression that the community was really excited about the new station, especially since they've had to wait since the old one closed. Whereas Bunker Hill is dominated by these institutions, which creates something of a remove from people who would actually use the Metro, if that makes sense.
I don't think the lack of TOD at Bunker HIll is the problem - it's that the lines that connect to the Bunker Hill destinations aren't competitive. The Blue Line runs as a tram at street level along Washington street, the Expo line really needs to run on a viaduct East of Culver City, and the East LA line is a tram instead of the heavy rail subway that was promised in 1980. This makes trips from, say, Long Beach to attend the LA Symphony, uncompetitive. It's a trade off between driving and paying to park or attending a concert where the train won't get you and your kids home until after midnight. The 120-minute-long Santa Monica to DTLA Expo service is also not competitive with the 10, and commuters aren't going to switch. Rapid transit has to be rapid.
You know what I think will happen eventually? They'll keep the road... and put a 5-8 floor building over it. Which is OKAY at that point as long as it doing so doesn't compromise the structural integrity of the building being built. Besides, I think some people may actually find it cool to visit shops over a road or live over one.
Wow this is the kind pf quality content we need on youtube. Straight to point no need to try to make the video 10 minutes, not constantly repeating the same idea 10 times. Subbed
Good vid. I liked that cheeky terminator riff at the crossing.
Bro... we live in America. If you don't own a car, you're basically on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean.
For the most part, people with decent jobs will not take public transportation in LA. The majority who do have no choice.
The real problem is sensationalist news media and its fear-mongering about crime.
Or, just let more and more people work from home, and we won't need to waste money building train stations into downtown centers that no one really wants to go to. Also, Los Angeles has a huge homeless problem, and people don't feel safe using public transit. I live and work in DTLA, commute in three times a week, and work from home the other two. I gave up on public transit many years ago because I got tired of dealing with feeling unsafe all the time. It's too stressful.
Why would anyone want to live in a high density apartment building? Maybe the elderly, to have acquaintances to help them when they fall?
As someone that's been using the Red line since it opened back in 1993 I have to point out 2:16 is simply not true. The Wilshire/Vermont station has been popular ever since it was opened, back when there was nothing built on the street level. The density of Koreatown, plus the fact that both the Vermont bus and Wilshire buses are the busiest in the system explain why the station is always busy.
They should build elevated rails above all freeways or alongside them to make mass transit safer and faster. If they want people back in offices, mass transit has to be faster and safer than using a car. If it takes 45 minutes to 1 hour for me to get to work in my car, mass transit should only take 20-30 minutes for me to use it. Additionally, they could consider implementing a system like at airports, where only people with purchased tickets are allowed onto train property, verified by a facial scan.
To determine the best routes for building train lines in Los Angeles, consider the following factors:
1. High-Demand Corridors:
• Downtown LA to Santa Monica: This is a heavily trafficked corridor, with major employment centers and attractions. Existing Expo Line helps, but more capacity or faster service might be needed.
• Downtown LA to San Fernando Valley: Heavy traffic along the 101 and 405 freeways suggests the need for improved public transit options, such as an extension of the existing lines or new routes.
2. Airport Connectivity:
• LAX to Downtown LA: Improving connectivity to the airport can reduce car traffic. This can be achieved by extending existing lines or creating express services.
• LAX to major hubs like Hollywood, Long Beach, and Pasadena.
3. Residential to Commercial Hubs:
• San Fernando Valley to Westside: Commuters traveling from residential areas in the Valley to the Westside could benefit from a direct rail connection, potentially reducing reliance on the congested 405 freeway.
• South LA to major employment centers: Ensuring connections from residential areas to key job centers in Downtown, Century City, and Burbank.
4. East-West and North-South Connectivity:
• East LA to Westside: Improved transit options to reduce travel times across the city, potentially extending the Gold Line or creating new lines.
• South Bay to Downtown LA: Enhancing connections from areas like Torrance and Redondo Beach to downtown, possibly through extensions of existing lines or new routes.
5. Emerging and Expanding Areas:
• Hollywood to Downtown LA: Increasing capacity and speed of the Red Line to accommodate growth.
• Culver City to key destinations: As a growing tech hub, better connections from Culver City to other major employment and residential areas.
6. Integration with Other Transit Modes:
• Ensuring seamless integration with bus lines, bike-sharing programs, and other forms of public transit to enhance the overall efficiency and convenience of the network.
7. Equity and Accessibility:
• Focus on underserved areas to improve access to public transit, reduce reliance on cars, and provide economic opportunities through better connectivity.
These routes should be studied for feasibility, demand, environmental impact, and cost to prioritize projects that will most effectively reduce traffic congestion and improve public transit efficiency in Los Angeles.
"car centric"?
have train n... people have consider that the same way they prefer trains is the same way others (most people) prefer cars.
because the way you guys talk sometimes is not unlike religious fanatics, where they are always right and everyone else is wrong.
North America is car centric. There are cities where you need a car just to get across the "street." Cities have been bulldozed to make way for large parking lots. Americans nowadays see no problem with that until they look at the how this country used to look like before it was bulldozed for cars. Trains never did that :^)
@@mistatrollge3184What is your point in telling all of these lies??
You are the exact religious fanatic he is talking about.
It's ridiculous to compare development around Wilshire/Vermont with Bunker Hill station. Wilshire/Vermont opened back in 1993, so a fair comparison would be to compare foot traffic in Wilshire/Vermont from back from 1994. Maybe if you wait 30 years, the development around Bunker Hill will be similar, or much greater, than Wilshir/Vermont is today.
I went out of my way to visit this station when going to the MOCA and my experience was very similar to yours. Beautiful station but there were literally more of those people in the green shirts (ambassadors?) than people using the trains.
More recently I wanted to go to the broad, but had some other errands to run after. Because those errands required a car I made the whole trip by car. That is a big failure of land use!
It's a magnificent station. I started using it to get to work a week after it opened, and I remember how amazed I was upon seeing it for the first time. It is typically a ghost town, and you're absolutely right about needing far more transit-oriented development (but I'm not very optimistic). It would be great to remove the roads right next to the station, as Hope, Fig, and Grand are all so close and can continue to carry vehicle traffic through the area. Could still use Hope to access the parking for the WD Concert Hall as you pointed out, and Flower can end at 3rd instead of sort of carrying on to 1st. I don't have high hopes for this, but it would be amazing and go a long way to creating more traffic in the station.
THANK YOU FOR POINTING OUT HOW MUCH BEG BUTTONS SUCK!! I also love your car-free street closure plan. BRING BACK BUNKER HILL!!
It's a very nice station
I was here recently that day there were a lot of ppl there idk what happened but it was packed
Apartments parking free... 😂😂😂😂 maybe you should not quit your day job...
Your solution to fixing the bunker hill station by removing that one road is actually really smart. Can you send this video to the city and have them do that please 😂 Seems like such a simple yet effective idea!
They don’t even know how to clean the brand new metal tiles on the entrance. This place will be a sh*t hole next week.