(New York City Subway and PATH), Boston (MBTA), and Philadelphia (SEPTA).
Metro's light rail system is the second busiest LRT system in the United States and largest in the Western United States and California by ridership, with 200,800 average weekday boardings during Q4 2014. Additionally, the Blue Line is the second largest light rail line by ridership in the United States with an average weekday ridership of 89,646 in 2013, after the Boston Green Line's daily ridership of 221,400 (in Q4 2013), though the Boston Green Line has four outbound termini, so that its 23 miles (37 km) of route service a larger lateral area than the Blue Line's 22 miles (35 km), but over a shorter length. There have been an estimated 1.5 billion boardings on Metro Rail since 1990, according to Metro.
One other perspective about the Blue Line is that the line is considered by Metro as a mobility workhorse with the highest ridership by far of Metro’s four light rail lines. The line has improved access to jobs, schools, medical facilities, shopping, sports, culture and entertainment, in particular to residents in Watts, Compton and other low-income communities. The fact that it’s so busy and well-used is one reason behind the current project to refurbish stations, tracks, rail cars and more.
On April 7, 2015, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced a proposal to assign a letter name to each of Metro's "fixed guideway" lines -- that is, the Metro Rail lines along with the two Metro Liner bus rapid transit lines. The renaming is meant to accommodate the service changes that will be put into place with the opening of the Regional Connector and Crenshaw/LAX Line projects. Metro stated that the current naming scheme, with its mix of color and geographic names, is inflexible and inconsistent, and can cause confusion, especially among people with limited proficiency in English. Changing from using color names to letter names will also be cost efficient, as signage retrofits and adjustments would become much simpler. Each line will also be assigned a color as a
Vermont/Santa Monica
Station
Porcelain enamel steel panels
employ a mathematical formula to
manipulate ridership statistics
in bold, kinetic visual patterns.
59 - Ceres Magazine - Winter 2016