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Originally Posted by LA21st
But what was the bus ridership to service those 11 million? I bet it was close to a million, even back then.
And you still don't get LA wasn't a NIMBY city until the mid 1980s, with a population far larger than current Dallas and Houston.
It's foolish to think those cities won't starting have backlash as traffic increases like it did for LA.
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Yes, I remember the NIMBY period of LA in the 1980s. There were a number of "slow-growth" groups, and even Westwood (my assumption is they were reacting to the high-rises that started popping up on Wilshire) had a group called NYNY, which stood for "Not Yet New York." Their argument was that high-rises would just contribute to more traffic. I see that point, but it's a short-sighted one; it's as if they never thought of rail transit along Wilshire.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Belt
That's not what I meant.
1990 LA MSA was about 11 million, and didn't have one single rail line to service that population.
Dallas, a much smaller city [current pop 6.4 million], has a much more expansive rail system already in place than a much larger Los Angeles did as recently as 1990.
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Ah OK.
But to add, going along the lines that LA21st is saying, LA voters finally approved a sales tax increase to fund rapid transit in 1980, after traffic started becoming more and more heavy, and I'm sure the gas crisis of 1979 also contributed to that (remember the odd/even gas days? haha!). LA voters turned down sales taxes to fund rapid transit in 1968 and 1974 (that was the era when BART was created up in the Bay Area), but by 1980, LA took a turn. The 80s was when HRT subway construction was started, and like I mentioned previously, the Blue Line light rail opened between downtown LA and downtown Long Beach in 1990.