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A comment on LA’s new trains have not lessened the time spent stuck in traffic. Parent comment

Re:LA’s new trains have not lessened the time spent stuck in... by gkuan on Friday February 07, 2020 @03:24PM (#22270504)
I once did the LA transit ride from Thousand Oaks to Pasadena and back entirely by transit (40 mi one way by driving, transit was more circuitous than that). More frequently, I would take Thousand Oaks to Hollywood or Thousand Oaks to DTLA transit trips. The Red and Gold lines seem quite reasonable. Though short of something I would want to take daily given that I lived far away, it was still a lot less exhausting than trying to drive from Santa Monica to the other side of 405 during the afternoon. Now I’m in a different city and take transit daily.
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Re:LA’s new trains have not lessened the time spent stuck in... by mayneack on Friday February 07, 2020 @04:35PM (#22271226)
40 miles is a pretty long commute. A modern city shouldn't be optimized to make that experience the norm. Most trips are much shorter.
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Re:LA’s new trains have not lessened the time spent stuck in... by erik_seaberg on Friday February 07, 2020 @05:14PM (#22271660)
I moved to the bay area in 2006. Between then and now, each employer I've had was at least 30 miles away from the next.
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Re:LA’s new trains have not lessened the time spent stuck in... by mayneack on Friday February 07, 2020 @07:09PM (#22272569)
That makes you quite an outlier. 95% of trips are < 5 miles

https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips

I don't think we should optimize our cities for that.

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Re:LA’s new trains have not lessened the time spent stuck in... by erik_seaberg on Friday February 07, 2020 @10:02PM (#22273509)
They also report that under 17% of trips are for work, which is surprisingly low and seems like too much noise to learn much about the distribution of peak hour commuting distances.

If I had a five mile commute, I would use surface streets. Congested highways are full of people going far enough in roughly that direction that even the congestion plus the first/last mile is faster than countless stoplights on the direct route.

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