Point of View: Fixing Metro train service

LOS ANGELES - In a city with far too much traffic and congestion, you would think a mass transportation system would be embraced, right?    

But in Los Angeles, train ridership is declining.  From November to November, train ridership is down a whopping 14%.  That’s 50,000 fewer rides per day on all train lines.   

With roughly 19 million people in the LA area, there were only 301,000 rides taken per day in November.  If most of those rides were part of a round trip, that means maybe only 150,000 people rode the trains per day.  

So, what would get more people to use the trains?  I’ll give you five quick ideas, and the Metro Transit Authority should be working on these things before they do anything else. 
1.  Homeless people sleep and often do worse things on the trains.  Get them off the trains.  
2.  From the book Trains For Dummies, page one, make sure the trains run on time. 
3.  Do more to assure that passengers, especially women, feel safe.  That means 100% of the time.
4.  Clean the train cars and keep them impeccably clean.
5.  Consider changing the name from Metro Transit Authority to Metro Transit Services and start focusing on improving the entire customer experience instead of behaving like a faceless, non-caring government agency.  You can’t make people take the trains.  You have to give them a good experience so they will choose to.

Call us with your thoughts on Metro Transit.  I’d love to hear from you. Call us at 310-584-2030 or email us at fox11pov@foxtv.com.

I’m Bill Lamb and that’s my Point of View.

The views expressed are not necessarily those of the station or its employees.