Another Year of Falling Ridership for L.A.'s Metro System

"Since 2009, Metro has opened four new rail extensions at a cost of more than $4 billion. In the same period, rail ridership soared 21%, but bus trips — a much larger share of overall ridership — dropped 18%," writes Laura J. Nelson for the Los Angeles Times.

The reasons for the shrinking use of transit are multiple, according to Nelson's reporting. One is the complexity of serving a city with so many different commerce centers, which requires compromises in bus service. "But tweaks over the years to routes and schedules may have eroded the efficiency of some workhorse bus lines that serve major corridors, or made the routes more confusing for riders," Nelson writes. Nelson also reports that some transit experts see falling bus ridership as a side effect of an improving economy. "As L.A.’s economy has steadily improved, traffic has grown worse, and so has Metro’s on-time performance. Agency figures show that about 76% of buses arrived on time in the 2014 fiscal year." Ride sharing services may be partly to blame as well.

One reason for the decline in bus ridership Nelson does not cite is zoning and density. There's been much talk about how although L.A.'s downtown is becoming more popular, it's hard to build large dense transit-friendly buildings in the city. This phenomenon is noticeable by how few cranes you see in the city's downtown compared to even smaller, slower-growing cities like Chicago. Density continues to be on the minds of many as Measure S and the possibility of stalling the construction of more and taller residential and business buildings looms.