People who have never been to L.A. really have no idea how insanely huge it is. Driving to my apartment from the start of city (before you even get to L.A. county) and having the city just keep going and going and going for two hours and not because of traffic jams is something you have to experience to truly understand.
It sure is a good thing that land elects presidents.
Taking the idea further, it is notable that the entire population of California is smaller than that of Tokyo.
Tokyo is also unfathomable large, but the most astonishing thing is the amount of people. Tokyo has about 10 times the population of L.A. on an area of the same size. Of course there’s traffic jams too, but not as bad as in L.A., because the metro system is a lot more efficient than the highways. During rush hour each train carrying thousands of people depart from each station every 2-3 minutes. You have to see it to believe it.
I was in Tokio last year and it’s really amazing. I have never seen such perfect efficiency and punctuality, and I’m German! A huge factor though is that all the people follow the rules and are mindful of everybody else. Nobody standing in the way, nobody pushing or shoving other people. Also, despite being a mindboggingly huge metropolis, there seem to be hardly any traffic jams. The world could learn a lot from Japan concerning transport.
One of the big reasons we can’t have nice things in the US. High speed rail, for instance. There’s just plain old NIMBY, to start. Concern over property values. Then eminent domain. Then the lawyers drag it through courts over whatever argument because billable hours. We haven’t even looked at what expensive safeguards are necessary because every idiot will try to get around the rail crossing restrictions or do shit to the tracks thanks to “me first” and a complete lack of social responsibility like Japan displays in this context. Then every fool politician will try to starve it of funds because good public transportation costs money, and we can’t have evil taxes happening when you should buy a car or pay for an airline ticket. Hundreds of millions spent and we can’t even get started thanks to people just placing their wallets and special interests first.
There is no reason to push and shove and stand in front of the door to get in before letting people out if there is a train every 3 min. Seen the same in Singapore. You arrive at the station, see your train is already there but you dont care. You dont run you dont rush because it doesn’t matter. You just take the next one
I’ve had the same experience in Copenhagen. Their metro is fully automated, and the schedule is published as “one train every x minutes during rush hour, every y minutes otherwise”, which is very nice. You just turn up at the station knowing you’ll only have to wait that many minutes. The automation takes it to the next level as well, because the trains run on this schedule through the night.
Paris is quite insane too, smaller but with an insane number of inhabitants per square km. Their metro isn’t as clean but ut shuffles people around for sure, 650.000 passenger per day for metro number 13 for example. Or so it was when I lived there.
LA seems to have so much amazing culture but it is drowning in an addiction to cars perhaps worse than almost any other US city and it totally turns me off from going. edit, I didn’t mean this as a dig at the average person in LA I literally mean the city itself
I have flown over the endless sprawl and traffic jams on approach to LAX and like vomits in trash can nope. It looks like 1000% the kind of city where it takes at least an hour to get somewhere no matter how close on paper it is.
It is a phenomena of a place, and easily creates and does more to make the world better than all of those rural conservative states combined I just wish it wasn’t a car hellscape so I actually desired to visit.
It seems like LA has been making serious progress on becoming more walkable, so I am excited to see where it goes though!
as an expert on the topic of los angeles (i spent 3 days there, many years ago), i can confirm that it is exactly the kind of city where every drive takes 1 hour. if you have to get on the highway to go somewhere, you better cancel your plans for the evening because your new plan is to sit in traffic forever.
but it is drowning in an addiction to cars
That’s like saying people are addicted to food and water. There is no significant effective public transportation in Los Angeles. You have a a car, or you suffer immensely. It’s not a desire, it’s a necessity.
that’s exactly why it’s addicted to cars, correct….
there is a decent light rail system connected all the cities in socal, but the buses suck
Being able to travel from one city to another doesn’t mean anything if you’re not able to get to where you need to go within that city. These are not small, walkable cities.
I understand that reaction but I didn’t mean to blame this on a mass addiction of the average person to cars nor did I intend a tone that implied any high horse from which I was trying to beat up on some cultural aspect of the humans who live there.
When I said “LA” is addicted to cars I literally meant the city in all its infrastructure, systems, and narratives allowed or not allowed to be repeated and canonized about the past, present and future by the rich who actually have a say on the trajectory of the city…
Believe me in my head I am chillin with Doc Sportello having a blast with how many amazing different kinds of humans LA contains. I didn’t mean shade at the average person who live there only that LA exemplifies in many ways the tragedy of american car centric urban design because of the cities incredible vibrance and ability to imagine alternate futures.
Right on. Thanks for the response. Commuting is somewhat of a nightmare down there. It would be a much better place to live if they had effective public transportation. I used to live down there and I would spend 3 hours in my car commuting to and from work every day. It fucking sucked! Especially since my car was an old junker with no climate control, and no stereo. Eventually I got an old boom box and put it on my passenger seat to try to maintain some sanity.
LA does not have a bigger population than Georgia, and probably not Michigan and a few others. Map is bs.
Still, a shitload of people in trouble rn
2 senators each.
I mean that’s why we also have representatives that match the population.
Unfortunately no because in 1929 the House of Representatives got capped at 435. For example, a Congressman from California represented 494,709 people while one from New Hampshire represented 3,448 people in the year 2020.
Maybe time for a Port of Oakland tea party but with… Oh wait… we don’t need imports from the rest of the country and should just stop paying taxes without representation or something
Even that is capped though, so the smaller states are still vastly overrepresented. Living in LA means your vote is only represented at ~1/100th as much as the least populated areas. Because even the least populated areas still get a representative, but the populated areas are capped on how many they can have.
But the power differential between large population states and small population states matters a lot. Ain’t much national news coverage of Vermont’s or North Dakota’s senators or representatives. But a California, Texas, New York, politician can get major news reporter’s ears in a heartbeat. Low population density state politicians either need some unique point to make or be batshit crazy to garner attention. And when was the last time a viable presidential candidate came from one of those low population states? Let alone actually achieved office? On the national stage, no one cares much about what happens in Montana or Minnesota.
While I agree that California needs more members in the House, there is also a limit to just how much the House can expand before the whole thing becomes so unwieldy that it stops to function at all. Perhaps those large population states should be broken up into smaller population states to make a more manageable system of representation. But, I suspect California’s lack of representation per person will be be solved by the untenable living conditions they have created for themselves soon enough.
