Los Angeles’s Metro faces fundamental challenges preventing it from mirroring New York City’s subway, rooted in urban design, population density, and cultural factors. Unlike NYC’s tightly packed 27,000 residents per square mile, L.A.’s sprawl—8,000 per square mile—forces a car-dependent lifestyle, with nearly 90% of Angelenos owning vehicles. This sprawl undermines the efficiency of L.A.’s mono-centric rail system, which funnels most lines into downtown, a relic of its early 20th-century streetcar network. By contrast, NYC’s radial subway design thrives because Manhattan remains the dominant job hub, while L.A.’s jobs and amenities are dispersed across neighborhoods like Santa Monica and Burbank, making centralized transit impractical.
Efforts to expand L.A.’s rail system face modern hurdles, including soaring construction costs and lengthy timelines. Building underground lines in car-centric L.A. costs up to $1 billion per mile—far higher than NYC’s 20th-century projects—due to labor regulations, environmental reviews, and hardened infrastructure. Meanwhile, disjointed connections between rail and buses leave gaps in last-mile service, discouraging ridership. While NYC’s subway moves 5.5 million daily riders, L.A.’s Metro struggles to hit 900,000, as trains often crawl through traffic-heavy streets.
The solution proposed by former Metro executives involves decentralizing the system—creating regional hubs linked by frequent buses or light rail—rather than forcing all lines downtown. However, political fragmentation and taxpayer reluctance to fund transit in auto-dominated neighborhoods persist. Until L.A. embraces high-density zoning near stations and prioritizes transit over freeways, its Metro will remain a secondary option for most residents, unlike NYC’s subway, which remains indispensable despite its aging infrastructure.
