So How Much Does the Expo Line Actually Stop?
September 27, 2012 5 Comments
The Expo Line has gotten a lot of bad press for being slow. For stopping at lights. For stopping in between lights. Metro says they’re working on it, and having ridden nearly every day since it opened, I believe it’s gotten better. Or I’ve gotten used to it. Really, I think a little bit of both. I’ve accepted that random stops are going to be normal for a while, but I’ve also noticed they’ve become shorter and fewer as time has gone on.
In order to see how much time the train could save if Metro was able to completely eliminate stops (other than those at stations, of course), I did a little non-scientific research. For two weeks, I timed the amount of time the train spent stopped while not at a station. Here’s what I found:
Total Time Stopped
| Mon 9/10 | Tues 9/11 | Wed 9/12 | Thurs 9/13 | Fri 9/14 | |
| OUT to Culver | 5:16 | 3:55 | 4:22 | 2:38 | 2:37 |
| IN to DTLA | – | – | 2:35 | 2:21 | – |
| Mon 9/17 | Tues 9/18 | Wed 9/19 | Thurs 9/20 | Fri 9/21 | |
| OUT to Culver | 3:19 | 3:58 | 3:25 | 4:32 | 2:28 |
| IN to DTLA | 3:33 | 3:12 | 4:06* (2:26) | 6:59 | – |
There are some holes in my data, as I didn’t ride Expo home every day (I told you this was non-scientific), but the surprising thing to me came in comparing the outbound and inbound trips. The Expo Line has mainly gotten bad press for it’s stops while heading inbound, or towards Downtown, but on many days, it stopped just as much or more on the outbound trip.
