As someone who’s lived in LA for 4 years now without a car, I think it’s a trap that we’ve all fallen into to assume SoCal was fundamentally designed exclusively for the car. While, yes, automobiles have dominated the regional planning conversation from the 1960s up until very recently (LA and neighboring cities are finally taking public transit planning seriously), up until the 50s Los Angeles had one of the world’s largest streetcar and interurban train systems in the world. The city was, quite literally, built by and for transit — even its far-flung suburbs, like the town of Huntington Beach or Claremont, were built and developed as terminuses to train lines (and the train line to Claremont, on the very eastern edge of LA County, still exists in the form of the MetroLink).

There’s been some serious sprawl since then, yes, but at its heart Los Angeles is a city that is conducive — not contradictory — to public transit. And I think our planning decisions will only get more effective once we, as a region, realize that.

https://usp100la.weebly.com/history-of-transportation.html (scroll down for a map — and note that this doesn’t include the downtown/central LA streetcar system, which essentially covered every other block in downtown LA)

Union Station in LA directly connects to several subway, light rail, and commuter rail lines. There are lots of places it's still not convenient to get to, but it's way better than it was 20 years ago, and at least a few million people live within the area that's easy to connect. For example you can easily get to/from Pasadena or Hollywood.

And on the San Diego end, Santa Fe depot connects to all 3 light rail lines as well as most of the major bus routes in the city. Once the Blue Line extension opens in 2021, you'll be able to get off Amtrak at Old Town and be in the center of the UCSD campus in 15 minutes.

San Diegans tend to have a bit of a defeatist attitude toward transit, and there are plenty of suburban areas where transit is bad, but there are also many places where transit is a reasonable option.

Also, not to mention SANDAG is proposing to drastically expand the existing public transit system with commuter rail and other modes of transit along major commuting corridors, even going so far as to divert funds historically used for (with, we can say now, disappointing results) highway expansion.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/transportation/sto...

I used to take the number 2 bus to work in downtown SD every day. It was fantastic: frequent, comfortable, quick, and a nice mix of passengers!

Very true, though "another form of transport" includes bikes, which you can bring on the train.

Then again, it's basically legal to use your car to kill cyclists in the states, especially in socal, which is why I gave it up.