In my last post, I complained that the subway was not convenient enough as a sole means of transportation. However, my analysis was woefully incomplete, because I didn't mention anything about how many people actually ride this thing on a daily basis.

In fact, there's been serious uptick in ridership on the Red Line compared to even a month ago. In the mornings, for example, there are no empty seats by the time the subway gets to the Hollywood-Western station, four stops from the northern terminus of the line in North Hollywood. (Most of them appear to be coming from there, and two-thirds of them get off at the 7th and Metro station in the middle of downtown, which is a connector to the Blue Line to Long Beach.) Apparently, higher gas prices are finally changing people's behavior.


Even with this in mind, the 4:40 pm Red Line service to Hollywood blew my socks off. Only one stop from Union Station, the southern terminus of the line, the subway was already crowded; when you add in the impossible crush of new passengers boarding at the 7th and Metro junction, the result is akin to packing sardines into a tin can. (See photo above.) Every time I moved a body part, I would bump someone. What's going on here?

The saddest part is that the increased ridership on public transit has not been accompanied, as far as I can tell, by lighter traffic on the freeways. It sure doesn't feel that way. At 6:30 pm this evening, the Harbor and the Santa Monica freeways were moving somewhere between 5 and 15 miles per hour. One can only hope that this is not the future of transportation in LA.

(If you're wondering why I took the subway and drove a car on the same evening, it's because I went to Hollywood after work to visit the optometrist and go to the gym. I have to drive to work, but I figure I can still take public transportation for other things. Sadly, I got to the optometrist too late and they had already closed. This was in part because boardings on a packed subway take three times as long.)