I'm confused. Pacific Highway and Kettner run parallel to each other. Which Pac/Kettner building are you refering to?

my bad. correction: broadway/pachighway. This is the tower designed by KPF.

We need this...

http://earthtechling.com/2012/11/a-v...iego/#comments

http://c276521.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/w...t-sandiego.png

^^ I would die of joy.

This is huge! Why was it not in the UT (do I need to ask)? ...or did I just miss it?

http://la.streetsblog.org/2012/12/04...ouse-gas-laws/

This anti-car mentality is pointless. Socal and public transit are incompatible - the population density doesn't support it, and in 10-20 years pollution from cars will be a non-issue anyways. Opponents want to have rail expansion instead of widening I5. Who would ever take that? Once you get to OC/LA, you're going to be stuck without a car.

Trying to make socal mass transit based is as stupid as making New York or London car based.

With all due respect, you have no idea what you're talking about. First, the Los Angeles area is the densest metropolitan area in the United States: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct...oe-bruegmann23 . Amtrak's Surfliner, connecting LA and San Diego is the second highest ridership route in the US.

Second, you can't have population density without decent transit because the amount of parking required to accommodate automobiles will prevent this. Similarly, without transit, the political opposition to auto congestion will prohobit any significant density.

Finally, the notion that once you get to LA, you'll be stuck without a car is completely absurd. Other than Pasadena, USC, Long Beach, Anaheim Stadium and Disneyland, LAX, Hollywood, Irvine, Century City, the Whilsire corridor, and Burbank, nope, you can't get around at all by rail in California. LA is investing billions in its subway and light rail network and has something like four subway and light rail projects under construction currently (http://www.metro.net/projects/measurer/).

Yes, some of San Diego County is undoubtly too low-density for rail transit (although the Sprinter and Coaster commuter rail has seemed to work pretty well so far) but bus rapid transit could work in these areas, as it has in city after city around the world.

i agree with you that he doesn't know what he's talking about, but the article you attached is an op-ed piece. to say that LA is the densest metro is ludicrous. LA is the epitome of sprawl. while i agree it has improved, and expanding rail has a lot to do with it, LA has a long way to go to be considered amongst the densest metro areas. SD is no different; it's sprawling as well, and has a long way to go.

Actually, Los Angeles is second only to New York in terms of population density by metro.

I know its Wikipedia, but its based on official census data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...lation_density

So you're wrong.

I think you're confusing density with tall buildings. LA might have only a fraction of New York's high-rises, but there are plenty of high-density areas in LA that make it the second most crowded metro in the U.S.

While LA is a sprawling monster, its a dense sprawling monster, which is why they have been investing in mass transit so much. LA knows it can't keep building freeways, its impractical.

As for San Diego, we should be doing the same as LA. Freeway expansion will only lead to more problems. People need to get out of their cars on onto mass transit.

Sure, you can pick an arbitrary patch of land extending well outside NYC's core such that it's less dense than LA, but everyone with any common sense knows that, realistically, the bounds of what define both LA and NYC as cities give NYC a MUCH larger population density. That is exactly why NYC is well suited to mass transit and LA simply isn't.

The fact is LA epitomizes sprawl and the city occupies such a large area that delivering the kind of point to point service you can get in Stockholm or New York or Madrid requires a level of transit density that simply couldn't be supported. The metro in Madrid is extremely convenient and highly used because stations are seldem further than 500m from where you are. Cities like this have millions of people in areas only 10 or 15km across, so its quite easy to cover large populations with relatively small transit systems. While there are PARTS of LA that have high density, any real transit system needs stations not just close to this area, but close to everywhere people might go. Covering LA with the transit density that would actually attract real ridership would be impossible, and doing anything other than that is spending exorbitant amounts of money serving a small subset of the population.

As far as the surfliner, you just highlight my point. Amtrak claim 7,000 rider per day for the entire segment spanning San Diego to San Luis Obispo. So SD to LA is certainly less than 7,000, while I5 covering the same route carries over 700,000 vehicles a day. It may be the "busiest line in the country," as you would like to spin it, but the reality is that it's market share is just under 1%.

Exactly, and guess what? That parking and low density setup has already been built in LA. It's called LA. To make LA become transit ready you would have to rebuild the city. The city has been build and expanded dependent on private cars since the beginning. Trying to turn it into a mass transit example is as inefficient as trying to make NYC a car city.

Seriously, the REALISTIC option to curb pollution in socal is to push for cleaner cars, not push transit that no one will use.

Last year I flew to LA and was carless. Do you know what a nightmare that is? The entire city was developed around personal transport. It was over 2 hours to go point to point from Culver City to Long Beach. Its awful. Sure, I took the Expo line to the Staples center, but it took me 20 minutes to get to the Culver City station. If I pick two points in the region at random (not two transit stations but two actual destinations) the likely hood of walking + transit getting me to them in any kind of sensible time period is 1 in a hundred or less. It sucks, because I WAY prefer, walkable, transit oriented cities (I live in Europe), but I realize how ridiculous it would be to try and force LA into that mold.

Look at this route, lets say a friend visiting another friend. 2 hrs by beloved transit,. Or a 15 minute drive. Guess which one average people are going to choose https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=C...m&z=12&start=0

Yes, you can probably give me a few pre-selected routes on which I could travel efficiently using only transit. But even with the 4 new projects completed, getting me from a home in ______ to a point of interest in _________ (not a major tourist attraction, or a metro station, but somewhere normal residents go often) will still take hours. The way forward for the environment is to switch to cars running on anything but fossil fuels (TLSA anyone?), and the way forward for congestion is to get creative, but to recognize that the car is going to be the major component. Some cities in Europe have "off days" where cars with registration beginning with certain numbers/letters don't drive on certain days, typically 1 or two weekdays.

Yes, <1% market share is really something to brag about. Clearly, we are ready to just shut down the freeway and save the planet with rail that nobody rides. In fact, we can leave I5 as it is. And the 300,000+ new travelers expected by 2030? We can just shove them all onto the new rail line (even though the existing one carries only 7,000) and then they can navigate LA's fragmented rail and bus systems all day.

You really are trying to tell me that you believe NYC is more dense than LA? You would be the first person I've ever heard that from. I am talking "real world" density, not the density of an arbitrarily drawn boundary that includes wooded areas well outside what normal people would call the city.

Sure, so every 10 mile car ride can turn into a 1.5 hr transit excursion. And why do people NEED to get out of their cars? We are much closer to cars that don't pollute than we are to mass transit that can really replace cars. In the end, SANDAG is spending residents' money, and that money needs to go into whatever provides the greatest benefit to people living there. Expanding I5, which is how 98% of people make the trip, makes a hell of a lot more sense than adding additional train services considering the current trains are not even full and only serve 1% of the LA to SD market.

aerogt3:
Sure, Manhattan is denser than downtown LA, but as a region, metro-LA is denser than the New York or Washington metropolitan regions. I live in Washington, and while our downtown is the second or third densest downtown in the United States, just two or three miles from downtown, there are plenty of large single-family homes on half-acre lots. The same suburban development pattern can be found in much of the New York region. The LA metro region, on the other hand, has mile after mile of very high-density suburbs-- the densest suburbs in the nation.

Out West, a Paradox: Densely Packed Sprawl
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...081002110.html

What Density Doesn't Tell Us About Sprawl
http://www.uctc.net/access/37/access37_sprawl.shtml

This doesn't mean that high-frequency subways should cover every last inch of LA County (or San Diego). There are some areas in the center cities and the densest corridors where heavy rail might make sense but you match your transportation investments with the built environment and geography. Elsewhere, bus rapid transit, light rail and commuter rail have proven very successful. There are at least 1.2 million daily bus boardings in LA County and over 360,000 daily rail passengers (light rail and subways). In response to your question, 'who would ever take' transit, it looks like plenty of people do.

Ridership Statistics
http://www.metro.net/news/ridership-statistics/

Up to what boundaries? Transit discussions aren't really centered around covering the "way out there" suburbs, which require the longer distance solutions and offer up the lowest ridership. The "greater metro LA" is irrelevant here. No one is talking about building subway lines to Santa Clarita. Transit is going to apply to the denser core areas, and we all know that. In that regard, central LA cannot compare with central NYC (Manhattan, Brooklyn, etc.)

My major point is that I-5 between LA and SD is never going to be a major transit corridor (which I think is the most contentious point of SANDAG's plan). It is ridiculous to refuse to expand a freeway that sees 700,000 cars a day for a projected increase to 1,000,000, and instead demand that rail be expanded, when rail currently carries less than 7,000. This is a blind ideological push to "kill the car" without any touch of reality, especially considering that cars will be environmentally friendly well before any socal transit system will be able to fight them. I am quite pro-environment, but technology is going to solve the vehicle pollution problem way before transit will.

And I am all for transit when it makes sense. BART in SF, the west end subway in LA, the trolley in SD going to la jolla. Great ideas. But not expanding the 5 between OC and SD is a terrible idea. 1% is just about nobody. Nobody takes the train between those cities. Having done it myself, only to land in downtown LA without a car, I can see why. Seriously, pick two random points in the LA metro area and see how badly you wish you had a car. That is why not expanding the 5 makes no sense.

Cut the boardings in half for round trips, and you're down to 700k. Those numbers double count connections, etc. Unique ridership is probably 300k-ish. A few percent of the regional population.

Of course for MTA I am sure it feels better to count "number of boardings" rather than "number of riders,"or better yet, ridership miles, but it's disingenuous.

What LA needs to do is be strategic about their public transportation. As stated, it makes little sense to try to implement a rail system that reaches everywhere. For one it will not be financially viable, nor will it actually work, the distances are too vast. Walking to ride would still not work everyone, or even most places. The total area of the region is simply too big.

BUT, what they should do is create a very dense network of rail for LA's "Manhattan" that would make it so that if you lived/worked in this area, you could go carless. The area I am assuming everyone is familiar with, Santa Monica to Downtown LA, Hollywood Hills to as South as Culver City. You could fill that area with a very nice and dense transit system that would work extremely well. Every other place could have fingers of service, like the long beach rail connector, connector to LAX, but really, the idea would be to drive to the "island" (the area i mentioned) park and then ride for outsiders. Or if you lived on the
"island" live carless. That would be ideal, and would actually work.

San Diego can do something similar. Decide which areas are strategic for dense living/working. Provide a dense network of transportation, and the rest, provide fingers of service, and park and ride options.

I agree with you in Spades. But, the decision making process does not allow it. Politics. Politics leads to a geographic equitable distribution of benefits or improvements. But, LA certainly has more leverage than the SF Bay Area.

seriously we're debating whether LA is more dense than NY....on an SD city forum. The market can't be THAT bad.

This is ridiculous!!! This particular thread (SAN DIEGO | Boom Rundown, Vol. 2) is for just that, NOT some argument regarding LA/SF/NYC density. Take it to another appropriate part of the forum.

While I sympathize with those of you who are terribly distraught over the lack of SD emphasis (in the last 10 posts of 7,436), if you read the argument at hand you should be able to note that it stems from a discussion over whether SD should further its freeway-first plans, or adopt a more transit-oriented future for transportation development.

Maybe contributing to that discussion instead of lamenting the loss of focus would be more productive?

Here, I'll do it. I believe San Diego should adopt more mass transit in conjunction with urban planning and development rather then build 10 lane freeways.

There.

:rolleyes:

^^ Pretty much.

If there's nothing SD related to talk about then talk about whatever.

News:

Ariva Apartments by Sunroad office tower

https://media.utsandiego.com/img/pho...053cbc530c46a8

And BRT planned for El Cajon Boulevard, probably pre-cursor to a trolley extension.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/...alization-reg/

https://media.utsandiego.com/img/pho...053cbc530c46a8