Does the data for LA Metro's A Line show that some stations can reasonably be skipped for an express service from Long Beach to Los Angeles?
LA Metro's A line runs along the old pacific electric line right of way, with people traveling along the corridor just as they did 100 years ago. In fact, the old pacific electric line from 100 years ago was faster than the current A line. If you look at this old timetable from the Long Beach- Los Angeles pacific electric line you'll see that it only took 48 minutes to get to the pacific electric station in downtown Los Angeles compared to 55 minutes for the A line today. Notice that they also had "Limited" trains that skipped several stations on the way to Los Angeles. This shaved the total travel time down to around 42 minutes. 100 years later, the travel times on the A line are worse than they were on the Pacific Electric Line. Though we do have twice the train frequency that the Pacific Electric Line had and we also serve about twice as many stations, perhaps we should consider whether it is worth running express tra...