Even as the region's rail network grows, too many stations remain engulfed by single-family housing and park-and-ride lots.

Given the tens of billions of dollars that L.A. will spend on transit over the next few decades, it's all the more important to invest it in ways that will be useful and attract riders. But since 2014, ridership has been dropping.

What Indianapolis is doing deserves attention, especially from other spread-out American cities looking to spend their transit dollars as efficiently as possible. The big change is a complete reshaping of bus service, which will be like setting up a brand new transit network.

Transit service in Indianapolis is scarce and very few people use the existing system. A key reason for these lackluster outcomes is the city's sprawling pattern of development.

Suffice it to say that it’s simply not convenient for most people to use the Indianapolis transit system. Things are looking up, though: Last fall, Indianapolis residents voted massively in favor of a funding package that should significantly improve service in the coming years.

The city seems to have learned from mistakes like its mixed-traffic streetcar and is looking to give future transit lines dedicated rights of way. Still, there are many more decisions ahead that will determine whether the city spends $2.5 billion in new transit revenue well or not.

Unable to assemble new funding from the state to significantly improve the rapid transit system, the city of Atlanta chose to focus on a cheaper-to-implement streetcar line. But more than two years after launch, ridership on the streetcar is falling far short of expectations.

Darin Givens is frustrated with how Atlanta is planning for the future. “We don’t feel like the city is building transit that fits needs, or places that fit transit,” says the founder of local advocacy site Thread ATL. “You see nodes of density nowhere near transit, located nowhere near a MARTA station or a regular MARTA bus. We’re not matching development and transit.”

With more American cities raising impressive sums to expand transit, the question of how to invest effectively is increasingly essential. So far, few places have hit on a policy combination that makes transit more useful to more people. To help cities "get transit right," Streetsblog is launching a new series about which transit strategies are working and which are not.