anon Wrote:
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> Ok, I'm not from there. Do you think the GL is
> positioned to be heavily used by commuters within
> a few years of completion?

Well, the L line (formerly the Gold Line) has had ridership as high as 54,000 daily as recently as 2015. The original Blue Line had ridership at one time as high as nearly 90,000 riders daily. I must unfortunately report that the total for the L line last reported in June 2023 was only around 20,000 daily riders.

These "post Covid" numbers reflects to nearly 20% cuts in service hours that the LACMTA has made to Light Rail services, and 8% to heavy rail service hours. And, of course, the incredible failure to maintain security and safety by MTA on the rail system particularly, which has seen MTA lose over 500,000 daily riders since 2015.

The original Gold Line Segment to Pasadena had over 26,000 daily riders by 2005, when NuStats did very accurate on-board hand counts. The extension to ELA added about 20,000 more (now part of the line from ELA to Santa Monica), and the Azusa extension added about 12,000 more at the height of ridership back in 2015. The line to Pomona was, back when it was planned, was supposed to have added about another 10,000 daily trips.

This LRT route is on the former ATSF second District, originally the route of trains like the CA Limited, and later the Chief, Super Chief, and El Capitan, via Pasadena to San Bernardino from LA. The Gold line will use the western end of the line, and meets the Metrolink Commuter system at the new station in Pomona, which uses the remainder of the former ATSF 2nd District main to San Bernardino from there on. A further short extension with two stations at Claremont and Montclair of the LRT system parallel to the Metrolink (regional) Commuter Rail line.

The route parallels the I-210 which is one of the highest daily freeway volumes in LA with near continuous all-day congestion and is actually "time/cost" travel competitive to some of the many on-line trip generators, with actual stations at major employers like City of Hope and Huntington Hospital, about seven Colleges and Universities, on the line, and places like Downtown Pasadena, as well as Downtown LA and through to other connected trip destination clusters in LA, during congested periods.

But like all MTA services today, the Gold Line has suffered from cutbacks to the already crappy bus connectivity, with long waits and poor connectivity, with less service hours operated (longer waits always equals way less riders), and of course the serious crime issues. And all of this is entirely because of MTA's failures to properly operate the system and protect the passengers. So, the ultimate ridership use of the next segment of the line (all of the lines for that matter) will entirely depend on MTA fixing those things first, just to get back to the ridership numbers that the line had before MTA sank into the mental and moral abyss, through incompetent operations management and a failed law enforcement strategy (really having absolutely no public safety "strategy" at all, after the 9/11 lessons began to fade from memory, back when security on all of LA's rail lines were actually very safe).