Los Angeles Metro Crossings (LaXing)

What it is

Every day, Metro trains and Los Angeles drivers meet at more than two hundred street-level crossings — behind gates, or waiting at ordinary traffic lights. LaXing tells that story on the map of the city itself: a scroll-driven narrative walks from the county-wide picture down to individual intersections, pairing Metro’s own collision and delay data with a merged, cross-verified crossing inventory (LA Metro KMZ + OpenStreetMap), then hands you the full dataset to explore.

LaXing Story Map on a desktop: the opening chapter over a map of Los Angeles — The Story Map: ten chapters from “223 crossings” to the fix, told over a live map — on a phone the map fills the screen and each chapter rises once the map has flown there.

LaXing Story Map on a phone: the map fills the screen and the chapter card floats over it — The Story Map: ten chapters from “223 crossings” to the fix, told over a live map — on a phone the map fills the screen and each chapter rises once the map has flown there.

The full interactive map data explorer

Beyond the narrative, the explorer maps all 223 crossings by type, 90 stations with real photographs of crossing-adjacent stops, a train-speed layer computed from Metro’s GTFS schedule, and a trip planner that estimates how much faster each journey would be if its crossings were grade-separated.

LaXing full interactive map on a desktop: every crossing and station with the Legend and Costs tabs — The full map: filterable crossings and stations, schedule-derived train speeds, and the grade-separation trip planner.

LaXing full interactive map on a phone with the layers sheet at the bottom — The full map: filterable crossings and stations, schedule-derived train speeds, and the grade-separation trip planner.

Plan a Metro trip — then see it without the crossings

Pick any two stations on the A, E or K Line and LaXing routes the trip on Metro’s own timetable: the minutes, the miles, and every street crossing you would roll through on the way. Then flip one switch. The comparison tool re-times the very same trip as if every crossing were a bridge or a trench, using the delay Metro measured on the E Line, and hands you back the minutes.

Built on the real scheduleTrip times come from LA Metro’s published GTFS timetable and the merged crossing inventory, not from a guess.

Specific to your tripEvery gated crossing and traffic signal on your route is counted, so the saving you see is yours: a Long Beach commute and a Santa Monica commute get different answers.

Why the gap is so largeAt street level a train crawls at 15–30 mph and can spend 4½ minutes of a rush-hour E Line trip waiting at red lights. Separated, the same train runs 40–50 mph and never stops between stations — the reason the initiative projects trips 40–50% shorter.

Try the trip planner → Free to use — opens the full map with the planner ready.

Why it matters

Slower trainsStreet-running segments crawl at 8–15 mph while grade-separated stretches run 40–50 mph — on the same lines.

Stopped traffic90% of train–car collisions happen at street-running crossings; gates trade car collisions for pedestrian ones.

A proven fixThe C Line is fully grade-separated: zero crossings, zero crossing collisions, zero red-light delay.

No new taxesThe proposed initiative directs existing Measure R and Measure M funds to separate the remaining lines within 10 years. See what it costs →

Watch three films

Three short films, two of them Metro’s own: streetcars in traffic on their last days in 1963, the near-misses the Blue Line brought back to the same streets in 1993, and the Regional Connector running under downtown with no crossings at all. Nothing loads until you press play; each opens in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player. The Story Map carries ten more, chapter by chapter.

“So Long Los Angeles Streetcars” (LAMTA, 1963), 1:28–1:50 · Metro Library & Archive, YouTube.

“Metro Blue Line Safety PSA” (LACTC, 1993), 1:30–2:30 · Metro Library & Archive, YouTube.

“Preview: Regional Connector” (Metro, 2023) · YouTube.

What it costs

A companion page lays out the financing: roughly $15–25 billion over a 10-year build, paid for by redirecting road and freeway funds voters already approved — starting with a $9 billion transfer from roadway projects — alongside charts of what Los Angeles currently spends on highways versus Metro at the federal, state, county and agency level, and the 18,000–22,000 jobs a year the construction would support.

What it Costs on a phone — What it Costs: the price, where the money comes from, the ten-year shift and the jobs, in plain terms.

Read “What it Costs” →

How to use LaXing reader’s guide

New to the app? The guide walks through the Story Map chapter by chapter, explains the legend and the collision history behind every crossing, shows how to time your own trip with and without the crossings, lays out the money, and ends with seven ways to use the data to understand the ballot initiative for yourself. A short PDF, free, no account needed.

The first two pages of the LaXing reader's guide: the cover and the chapter list — The reader’s guide (PDF): what LaXing is for, how to use each page, and what its data says about the initiative. The same guide is in every LaXing menu under **Help**.

Read the guide (PDF) → Opens in a new tab.

Data & methods

Sources: LA Metro crossing inventory and 2018 Light Rail Operations Update; LA Metro GTFS schedules; Streets For All signal-preemption analysis (2026); Metro Customer Journey Mapping study (2024); OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); station photography via Wikimedia Commons (attributed per image). Basemaps © Mapbox © OpenStreetMap. A citizen-led effort — not sponsored by LA Metro.

Who is behind it

LaXing is not an LA DOT or Metro project and is not endorsed by either. It is an independent, volunteer effort by Justin and his supportive friends: Justin Levy and Nico Tek Solutions / GeoidLife have been building it in our spare time to support a citizen-led ballot initiative for LA County.

On this page

GeoidLife