If you build it, they will come

As transit ridership dips, people flock to L.A.’s new train lines.

The city of freeways is building light rail, and passengers are hopping on board.

We’ve seen a general decline in transit riders around the country as the economy has improved, gas prices have fallen, and public transport systems have aged. But Los Angeles is bucking that trend.

Take the Expo line, which opened in May 2016 and runs from downtown L.A. to the beach. It carried an average of 64,000 riders each weekday in June 2017 — an increase of almost 20,000 riders from a year earlier. Officials had predicted the line wouldn’t get that popular until 2030.

Nearly 70 percent of Expo line riders reported that they hadn’t used mass transit regularly before the line opened, and more than half of those new riders had switched from cars, according to the Washington Post.

That’s just one light-rail route. Here’s a peek at the L.A.’s plans to expand its lines by 2040:

For years, Angelenos thought that only the efforts of a hostile dictator would allow them to travel freely across their city. Now, they’ve found another way.