It's too congested even for buses to quickly get by. I've walked/biked 5+ miles faster than it took a bus to get where I was going during peak traffic hours, and I am no avid runner/biker.
I've spent 30 minutes trying to go 1 mile.
I've been stuck in completely stopped traffic at 3AM caused by multiple concerts let out at the same time
One time I remember walking to the bank 2 blocks from my house. It took about 5 minutes because I was taking it slow. By the time I got out of the bank, and went outside to walk home, an impromptu Katy Perry concert had started (That's Hollywood & Highland for you) and there wasn't even walking room for blocks in every direction. I ended up having to loop around everything and it took me 20+ minutes to get home.
Basically, the traffic/transit in LA is not a predictable monster. When it comes to getting from point A to point B, no quick glance at a map can help you guess how long anything will take.
Nah, the second phase of the Expo line will be complete in a few years, and the purple line will be finished long before then, too. Won't be quite 15 minutes, but should be under 25.
Here's my observations :
1) despite not paying for itself (the state pays hundreds of millions yearly to make up for the losses of the public transport system) it's a little bit more expensive, per kilometer, than taking a car (train + metro vs gas). Even for longer distances, planes are actually cheaper than trains. If you get a company car and just pay for fuel, it's half the price. Otoh, parking in some places drives the price back up (but then you can park near a metro station and only use public transport for the last kilometer or so. Or a folding bike, I've had colleagues who did that).
2) when you want to use them to commute, they're not just busy, they're off the scale full. You can only stand and sometimes you miss your train because you literally can't squeeze in. (I tried first class for a week, but that makes it a multiple of the price of using a car, and you still need to stand)
3) the comfort level, compared to a car, is off the scale worse. You can take things along in a car, whereas there is a clear and very small capacity limit to what you can take on public transport. 40kg, backpack size, no more, groceries for a week is doable, furniture, electronics, not really doable (I tend to put those on a bike and walk home beside it). And I'm a 200 pound guy, I'd hate to think what the limits are if you're 80 pounds.
4) In Belgium you have one or two days per year where cars can't actually get around in the capital (frozen snow on the road combined with a lot of sloped roads makes it just too dangerous for cars, even if you walk you'll probably fall down painfully). A few more days accidents on the highways will mean you're late by 2-3 hours (I was once 7 hours late due to traffic). That is less than the days public transport doesn't work due to union actions. Because of the amount of times this happens, your boss will not, in fact understand. 5-10 days a year you can't get to work using public transport. With a car, 5 days a year you'll be 2 hours late and 1 day you won't show up.
5) If you calculate cars versus public transit capacities, it is obvious : cars scale better (I think this is mostly because car capacity expansions are cheaper for the government to implement, so they happen every time a rightist government comes to power in a given municipality, car capacity expansions happen, usually by diverting traffic. Public transport expansions happen once in a decade at best, and one line at a time. Recently a public transport line to the airport made traffic on a few lines much better)
Imho, the solution to public transport is fast, efficient, driver-less, door-to-door, car sharing. That can work, and won't be bogged down into a morass of substandard service by unions. We need to improve matters, and I no longer believe buses and trains and even metros are the answer.
Here's an article describing things from the perspective of a commuter http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm
They are also worse for the environment and kill lot's of people.
PS: Cars also have huge direct and indirect subsides, consider who pays for your parking space while at work? Hypothetically in a major city ~2 * 100$ parking spaces + ~100$ insurance = ~300$ a month or 15$ per workday day even if your car, gas, and roads where free.
Cars seem to have much better support for their expansion from governments, and that this results in better real-world scaling. It seems to me this is in no small part because car infrastructure is way cheaper per extra person of capacity than mass transit.
Both cars and mass-transit have huge subsidies, at least in Belgium.
The TCO of a wholly-owned personal transportation vehicle is substantially more than the cost of fuel. It's hard to come out ahead, financially, unless you're a semi-decent mechanic, don't mind buying old machinery, and don't value your spare time very highly. Something bombproof and frugal, like a C90 underbone, could do well. A car, not so much.
(I have met people who, for example, might commute from Berlin to Dresden daily and it always boggled my mind)
