Week 9 - Metro Rail and Little Tokyo

            This week for my blog post I decided to visit Little Tokyo, a section of Los Angeles that I have never had the opportunity of visiting before. To get there I decided it would be easiest to take the train since I didn’t feel like dealing with the inner city traffic and also had tickets to the UCLA game at the Rose Bowl, which is along the same rail line. It was a win/win situation as far as transportation was concerned.

My route required me to travel on four separate rail lines from Downey all the way to Little Tokyo. Each of these rail lines had their own unique characteristics in terms of scenery and ridership. The Green Line was the least crowded of the lines and perhaps the most uninteresting as well since it simply follows the 105 freeway until you get into the Hawthorne area.

The Blue Line took me through some of the poorest parts of Los Angeles as it made its way up towards downtown. The ridership on this segment of the trip was entirely made up of Latinos and Blacks and the scenery appeared largely industrial and quite old. My favorite part of this segment was actually all of the street art that was readily visible from my seat. I attempted to take some pictures but they all came out blurry and didn’t do the artists any justice. (For anyone interested on the state of street art in Los Angeles and it’s relationship with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority I strongly recommend this LA Weekly Article: http://www.laweekly.com/2012-08-30/news/los-angeles-war-on-street-artists/ )

This map shows the income levels of the downtown area. Note the region around the 110 freeway where the Blue Line runs through. The outlined yellow region is ZIP code 90023 in which much of Little Tokyo is located.

7th Street/Metro Center where the Blue and Red lines connect.

The Red Line is one of two subways in Los Angeles. As it is underground, there wasn’t any scenery to look at but I thought the demographic of the ridership was a tad interesting that day. It was largely comprised of white USC fans on their way to the Coliseum. This trend was even more interesting when I got off at Union Station and saw that many of the USC fans were coming from Metrolink trains that service Orange County.

Union Station

Downtown LA from the Gold Line platform at Union Station. The building with the pyramid looking roof is city hall.

More platforms at Union Station.

The Gold Line is the newest of the routes that I took on this trip. The segment from Union Station to Little Tokyo is very short but it takes you through an interesting part of Los Angeles across the 5 freeway and right up against the federal detention center until you hit first street. This is where we got off and explored Little Tokyo…

This Christmas tree was at the Japan Village Plaza shopping center. There were a lot of neat little Japanese shops here.

This is another shot of the Japan Village Plaza shopping center.

While I was originally going to discuss Little Tokyo this week, the different transfers I made while traveling there ended up being more interesting and in particular the Red Line which travels under downtown. In many ways, the subway felt akin to the throughways that Engels described in 19^th century Manchester despite being public transportation. With the other three lines you are able to look out at the urban environments and watch the different interactions between people and space occur. On the Red Line you are underground and shielded from seeing anything going on outside.