Passenger Trains > I Rode the Entire (LA) Metro in One Day. This Is What I Learned.

http://www.lamag.com/longform/ii-rode-the-entire-metro-in-one-day-this-is-what-i-learned/

“We’re not building for today,” Metro chair Philip A. Washington told the Los Angeles Times in 2016. “We’re building for 100 years down the road.”

"People who work for Metro call the Blue Line “the mother of all lines.” That’s because it is the oldest in the system. It opened in 1990, and the trains show their wear. In addition, the Blue Line’s safety record is among the worst of any light-rail line in the United States, with more than 1,000 train collisions and 120 crash-related deaths over the past 27 years."

"The Gold Line is a hybrid, a city streetcar on its eastern leg, from Union Station to East Los Angeles, and more of a commuter line after it turns north, from Chinatown through Pasadena and Sierra Madre, to its terminus at Azusa Pacific University/Citrus College." "As such, it may be like the old Red and Yellow car systems, which at their peak ran more than 2,000 trains daily over 1,000 miles of track, reaching as far as Fontana and Newport Beach. I’m wary, though, of making too much of these comparisons. “The map looks nice,” says Ethan Elkind, author of Railtown: The Fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the Future of the City, “but at the time people didn’t love it. It was slow and often crowded, and there was more interest in driving to far-flung areas.”"

I can understand the Blue Line, especially since it paralleled what I called the Harbor Mains of the Southern Pacific, and since SP trains were always creeping at 25 while the Blue Line Trains were faster, it was always rough going especially after it opened!