In Praise of L.A. City Bus Service (2004)

[bennyp81]

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 8th [2003] 6:24 PM

I have noticed a marked improvement in MTA bus service in the City of Los Angeles in the past couple or so years. It seems to me that there are more buses on the streets that I travel, and that the frequency of service has increased. I am generally very pleased now with the MTA bus service, except for the continued overcrowding on many buses, and I applaud the MTA for the great improvements it has made!

I see many buses on the streets now! The steady flow of buses, for instance, through the intersection of Wilshire and Western is a sight to behold! On my morning workday commute, after alighting from the Red Line train at Wilshire/Western, I usually have to wait no more than 5 minutes, maximum, for a #207 or a #357 to come by, which I can board for the last leg of my transit trip.

And it is indeed rare that I have to wait more than 20 minutes for any bus on any of the lines that I frequently use! Even the #212, which I usually take back home from the 99 Cents Only Store on Saturdays and Sundays, has been coming within 20 minutes of the time that I come out of the store with my groceries! This is wonderful!

Another thing that I think has improved on many of the MTA buses is the air circulation. It is rare anymore that I have to ride for very long on an a bus that I would consider to be either uncomfortably hot or unventilated. It is particularly pleasing on the many hot days in L.A. to be able to step aboard a refreshingly cool MTA bus and ride in air-conditioned comfort! And on the few really cold days, it is likewise comforting to ride a bus that is just warm enough without being hot!

I think it's great to live in a city that has such very good bus service! With the exception of the continued overcrowding on many of the buses, I'm generally quite satisfied with the quality of service provided by the MTA!

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 14th 11:27 AM

I'm pleased about the establishment of the Vermont and Broadway Rapid Bus lines! It's good that better service will now be available on Vermont and Broadway; AND this will help ensure that the many other Rapid Bus lines that the MTA is planning will, indeed, be initiated!

I am especially looking forward to the upcoming Hollywood/Fairfax Rapid Bus line!

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 15th 7:42 PM

The frequency of MTA bus service just keeps improving! This afternoon I only had to wait 9 minutes for the #212 bus to come by after stepping outside the 99 Cents Only Store with my bags of groceries!

Bus Rider MTA
User ID: 1606604 Dec 15th 8:14 PM

John, this is an invite to request you join the people who have really worked hard over the last year to improve the wonderful L.A. Bus system.

WE are having a lovely party this Saturday, December 21, 2002 at 9:30 a.m. You can bring food to share with others. Won't you alert everyone and please join us?

Where? Immanuel Presbyterian Church at 3300 Wilshire Blvd. (corner with Berendo).

Get there by bus or rail: (Lines 20, 21, 720, 204, 754 and Red Line Station Vermont/Wilshire)

Children welcome. The meeting will be in English, Korean, and Spanish. Please call with any questions at 213-387-2800 or you can fax your questions to 213-387-3500

Looking forward to you joining us!

www.busridersunion.org Feel free to e-mail me should you need details: [e-mail]

:

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 15th 8:55 PM

Sorry, I won't be able to attend the party, Bus Rider MTA; but I hope you have a nice time! And thanks anyway for the invitation.

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 21st 11:40 AM

It's so nice to live in a city that has very good transit! On workdays, for instance, when I leave the stress of the work environment, it's such a relief to be able to get home within a very reasonable amount of time, thanks to Los Angeles's very good transit system! And there is not one, not two, but THREE convenient routes that I can choose from to speed me home!

When I take one of the two routes of which the Red Line is a component, I usually walk the few blocks home upon arrival at the Hollywood/Highland station. But, sometimes, after climbing the stairs, if I see that either a #212 or a #217 bus is waiting or approaching the bus stop outside the station, I just get on board and ride even closer to home! Ah! Such luxury! And all because I live and work in a city that cares a lot about transit!

Now, I must say that my partner's work commute is longer, less easy and enjoyable, and involves no passenger rail component. But it seems to us that this is inevitable, given that he works on the Westside. He thus accepts the commute, making good use of it by listening to music, reading, napping, and resting. Fortunately, MTA is allowed to provide service to the Westside! And on my partner's days off from work, he is then able to take advantage of the very good transit service which is such a great characteristic of the Hollywood/Fairfax area!

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 21st 6:01 PM

Well, after coming out of the 99 Cents Only Store this afternoon, two minutes was all that I had to wait for a bus to come by! Yes, only TWO MINUTES! MTA is great!

John
User ID: 9510053 Dec 22nd 5:49 PM

Today when I came out of the 99 Cents Only Store, the bus was waiting at the bus stop just outside! My immediate reaction was to trot on over to it, thinking that it might pull away at any second; but, as it turned out, I had to wait a few seconds to board, given that some passengers were still alighting and others were waiting to board.

Now, probably after such excellent timing both yesterday and today, I'll have to wait a full 20 minutes or thereabouts for a bus in the near future; but that's perfectly okay with me. Even 20 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time to have to wait for a bus on many streets in present-day, automobile-clogged L.A.! However, I definitely think that the MTA should be trying to plan busways for most of the major streets, so that the frequency of service could be five minutes or less in the near future.

Bart Reed
User ID: 8854703 Jan 31st [2004] 1:36 PM

Despite any happy talk from John, bus service is not that good or dependable. This morning my 8:55 a.m. Line 94 southbound made a no show. My 9:14 a.m. Metrolink train was right on time, without me.

So, we are starting a new contest: "Complaints 2003, better service or else!"

Good service is your right!
Buses: On Time, On Schedule, Graffiti Free
Operators: Courteous and all Call the Stops
Service: Frequency, Hours and Routes

To Report Concerns, Get this information:
1. Bus Line Number
2. Date, Time and Direction: N S E W
3. Bus / Vehicle Number
4. Boarding Location
5. Operator Badge Number

Call Toll Free 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday-Friday
Phone: [phone]

Metro Customer Relations

Þ--Þ--Þ

John
User ID: 9510053 Feb 16th 2:40 PM

Well, ever since moving to the City of Los Angeles, I continue to be quite pleased by MTA's bus service. As I so often say, it isn't excellent, but it's very good.

Yesterday, for instance, I was impressed that some of the protesters at yesterday's huge anti-war protest in Hollywood chose to use transit. During my walk to the 99 Cents Only Store, I saw some waiting for the Santa Monica Bl. bus, and others waiting for the #212. I would imagine that still others traveled to and event via the Red Line.

I also thought it was nice that, even though some streets were closed for the massive anti-war demonstration, I was still able to get back home quite easily from the 99 Cents Only Store by bus. In fact, the bus driver let me off at Highland & Sunset: very close to the stage where the pro-peace speeches were being made! I stopped to listen for a few minutes, just as Ron Kovic was presented! How neat!

Yes, the MTA's service is indeed impressive!

John
User ID: 9510053 Mar 14th 12:02 PM

Well, yesterday afternoon my partner and I traveled to downtown El Segundo via bus-only and we preferred this to traveling there by train-and-bus. The amount of traveling time to El Segundo by bus-only and by train-and-bus is comparable, however we felt that the bus-only trip was a bit quicker. And of course it was nice not to have to make THREE transfers as we used to when we would go by train-and-bus: Red Line to Blue Line to Green Line to bus (whew!); haha! SO nice to have to make only ONE transfer: from the #210 bus to the #124 bus. Mike was able to get a much-needed nap on the #210 bus, too, since we rode it all the way from Hollywood to the intersection of Crenshaw Blvd. & El Segundo Blvd.

On the return trip, we took the #439 bus to West L.A. Transit Center, where we transferred to the #217 bus. Again, so nice not to have to make THREE transfers as we used to do when traveling by train-and-bus! Plus, this way, we got to stop by Farmer's Market for dinner! What a deal!

Having had the chance now to compare the two different modes of travel from Hollywood to El Segundo (and back), I think I'll probably choose bus-only most or all of the time now.

Andrew S
User ID: 0269124 Mar 14th 12:55 PM

I will differ with you as to my preferred method, but I do agree that the multiple changes of train is a bit of a pain.

I prefer rail because it moves faster, is smoother and more relaxing, has more frequent service and last but not least, because I can look at all the other passengers.

John
User ID: 9510053 Mar 14th 1:50 PM

That's fine, Andrew; I respect your preference. And yes, I agree that train rides are generally smooth, which I too like; however, I think that most bus rides are smooth as well, so for me rail does not win out on that point.

Regarding the relaxation aspect, that depends on the form of rail involved. I have always found heavy rail passenger train rides to be generally relaxing, especially Amtrak rides. However, as I think you already know, I do NOT find light rail train rides to be relaxing, since the seats are so cramped and uncomfortable, some of the passengers are so loud/obnoxious, etc.

Finally, as for rail being faster, I think that all depends on where one is going, what the connections are, etc. For instance, as of January, I've given up taking the Red Line part of the way to work, since I discovered that I can arrive more quickly traveling by bus all the way. And, as I described in my post above, my partner and I found that we can also travel from Hollywood to downtown El Segundo a little more quickly via bus-only. So it all depends.

As for looking at other passengers, I find that I can usually enjoy that far more, too, on the bus.

Roberto
User ID: 9161143 Mar 14th 6:12 PM

I've given up taking the Red Line part of the way to work, since I discovered that I can arrive more quickly traveling by bus all the way.

Duh ... you keep saying that the Red Line doesn't go anywhere near your work ...

PaulC
User ID: 9885643 Mar 14th 6:56 PM

I would have to say that bus service sucks right about now. I was in downtown and the bus was late and crowed like usual. As far as the ride, oh ya it was very smooth. I bet the old lady that got thrown to the floor of the bus thought so too, when the bus jerked like they do. Another thing too, once again the buses AC was out also. But that's improvement on bus service for you.

Paul

John
User ID: 9510053 Mar 14th 8:59 PM

LOL, Paul. I have never been on a bus that crowed; that is pretty amazing!

Now, seriously, every now and then I do experience a bumpy ride on a bus; but that is the exception to the rule in my experience since moving to Hollywood, I am happy to say. Also, every now and then I also get on a bus where the air conditioning is either not working or the driver doesn't turn it on. That used to be a common problem, but it seems to me that since the passage of the Consent Decree, that, too, is the exception to the rule. Indeed, one of the chief reasons why I enjoy riding the bus is that they are so often pleasantly air-conditioned!

Another great thing about bus riding since the passage of the Consent Decree is that the buses I ride almost always arrive within 20 minutes of the time I get to the bus stop. I think this is a pretty good record. Now, yesterday my partner and I did have to wait at least half an hour for the #439 in El Segundo. After 25 minutes had passed, I began to get a little angry, but I quickly told myself, "No. You cannot blame the MTA, since you are awaiting a bus in the 'burbs. It is not the MTA's fault that so few 'burbanites take the bus. If they did, as people in the lively parts of Los Angeles do, then the buses naturally would pass more frequently." I felt much better then with this feeling of fairness toward the good MTA.

So, Paul, if you find the buses to GENERALLY be late, and the rides to GENERALLY be bumpy and jerky, then your experiences with the buses are simply very different from mine. As I say, I do have such experiences once in awhile, but since the passage of the Consent Decree, they have become the exception to the rule.

Overcrowding, on the other hand, continues on many lines, and I think much improvement is still needed in that regard.

Robert
User ID: 8214233 Mar 14th 9:40 PM

John aka Wilhelm Grimm.

John
User ID: 9510053 Mar 14th 10:29 PM

If I wrote that buses crowed, I would agree with ya, Bob. Ha HA!

Roberto
User ID: 9161143 Mar 15th 3:14 AM

the buses I ride almost always arrive within 20 minutes of the time I get to the bus stop. I think this is a pretty good record.

Again, life must be beautiful when you have such low standards. Studies show that the "tolerable" waiting time for most people is no more than 10 minutes. 20 minutes at a Hollywood bus stop would be a hellish experience for just about anyone else.

Andrew S
User ID: 0269124 Mar 15th 11:24 AM

Studies show that the "tolerable" waiting time for most people is no more than 10 minutes.

Especially given the lousy conditions in which passengers have to wait. If you seriously want passengers to ride a bus, then the places where they wait for a bus need to look and feel more like oases than the middle of the desert.

[bennyp81]

John
User ID: 9510053 Mar 15th 12:03 PM

Thanks, Andrew, for mentioning two of the various reasons why I think the MTA's service is very good but not excellent.

By the way, as can be seen from various of my posts, I don't usually have to wait a full 20 minutes for a bus to come by. Indeed, sometimes I wait less than 5 minutes. But even if I have to wait a full 20, this does not cause me to have any negative feelings toward the MTA at all, since I realize full well that most Angelenos are car culture proponents.

John
User ID: 9510053 Mar 26th 6:25 PM

Well, late yesterday afternoon I needed to go to Santa Monica Bl. & Fairfax, so I walked on down to wait for the #4 bus at Santa Monica Bl.& La Brea. Although I didn't look at my watch, it seemed to me that the #304 (which, of course, is even faster than the #4) arrived within 5 minutes. After completing the errand, I walked out to the bus stop at Santa Monica Bl. & Fairfax, and again, though I didn't look at my watch, it seemed that the eastbound #4 arrived within 5 minutes! Excellent!

John
User ID: 9510053 Apr 6th 11:50 AM

One of the many qualities of bus riding that I very much appreciate is the carefulness and rationality of most bus drivers, especially when having to deal with the dangerous and irrational behavior exhibited by some of the more militant car culture proponents.

It is so remarkable, for instance, that bus drivers are able to maintain their composure during the frequent occasions when car culture proponents honk their vehicles' horns at the bus. Some of the militant car culturists will just honk and honk, long and loud; and who knows whatever for? Perhaps they are just trying to call attention to themselves and their gas guzzlers. When they do this, I enjoy looking out the window and laughing at their ridiculous antics.

Then there are the frequent occasions when some SUV driver will cut in front of a bus to make a turn into a parking lot or onto another street. Sometimes the bus drivers will honk the horn of the bus at such dangerous, irrational gas-guzzler drivers and I very much enjoy and appreciate that! It seems to me that by this action, the bus drivers are attempting to educate such SUV drivers, and I think it is very nice of them to take the time and effort to do that while continuing to carefully and rationally drive the bus.

And there are times when traffic is stalled and a bus driver will honk the horn of the bus. I look up at such times and usually see at least several cars and SUVs ahead of the bus. I think to myself that probably the bus driver is trying to get the traffic moving again, and I appreciate his or her efforts in this regard. I think, "Yes, why are those cars and SUVs just sitting there, preventing buses from moving?! We bus riders have places to go and things to do, and the bus drivers have schedules to meet!"

Yes, I very much applaud the carefulness and rationality displayed by the vast majority of MTA bus drivers! These drivers help to make Los Angeles a better city in which to live!

John
User ID: 9510053 Apr 7th 1:18 PM

I doubt that I will ever again think of Northern California as a liberal area, having read "Bus service cuts for Marin and Sonoma: Idea is to stop flow of red ink in the Gate Bridge district," by Peter Fimrite, in the on-line edition of today's San Francisco Chronicle.

Of course, Southern California is not a liberal area, either, in my opinion; but at least Los Angeles is ADDING buses to its fleet, unlike Sonoma and Marin Counties in Northern California, which have chosen to CUT bus service.

Robert
User ID: 9934403 Apr 7th 2:16 PM

John,

Being a liberal or conservative has nothing to do with cutting bus service if you don’t have the money to run the system. The companies can not just put some paper in a printing press and print up some more money, like the federal government seems to do.

If the riders paid their fair cost that it takes to run a bus, you would not see any change in service. With the folding of the primary areas market, the dot-comm industry; the states’ budget crunch and the fact that bus riders are subsidize from tax-money that you push so much for, it is no wonder that the bus service is folding in on itself.

But I guess with the lose of jobs; you don’t need as many busses anyway.

Also you should be happy that San Jose VGA is selling 29 of its light rail vehicles.

Bob

John
User ID: 9510053 Apr 7th 6:29 PM

Today my partner wanted to have lunch at Kookooroo in West Hollywood, so we walked down to catch the bus at Santa Monica & La Brea. There was no wait at all, as the #4 bus was just pulling up to the bus stop. Then, on our return trip, we probably waited 10 minutes maximum at Santa Monica & La Cienega. Fantastic!

Way to go, MTA!

Bart Reed
User ID: 1606604 May 31st 12:00 PM

Los Angeles Magazine: June 2003

Article: On the Bus: The almost invisible existence of the passenger class.

by D.J. Wade

THE WONDERFUL MAP
THE THING IS, THERE'S A map that shows all of it. That's important, because there wasn't one (at least not for years). Before the map, taking the bus was mostly folklore.

How far you had to walk to find a stop. What transfers got you to your destination. Where you could go and where you couldn't.

Some of this you could have learned if you spoke Tagalog or Khmer. Some you would have learned only if you were brown or black, like most of the other passengers. Some of it you would never know.

If the route begins under the shade of sycamore trees in the foothills or if it terminates in an empty parking lot by the beach.

Before the map, you could only know the precise slice of the route through your neighborhood and the safe stops identified in the folklore of the line.

But the map, which the Metropolitan Transport-ation Authority republished in January, shows the whole thing.

It puts the extraordinary reach of L.A. transit right in front of you—the San Bernardino and Riverside MetroLink trains to Union Station, the Blue and Green rail lines that make a big cross over the heart of the county, the thousand intersections in the bus routes of the MTA, and the little shuttles that recycle old ladies and bored teenagers between home and shopping centers in Cerritos and Rosemead.

To show 1,433 square miles of service area at a scale of one inch to a mile, the map is barely readable at a yard wide and nearly 43 inches tall (it covers my desk) and fills both sides of the sheet with 500 color-coded transit lines printed over a skeletal grid of Los Angeles streets.

Where a knot of these lines overlay each other on the off-kilter grid of downtown, the stacked ovals of route numbers and the colored lines crowd into an unreadable tangle.

It isn't beautiful, but the map is a nearly perfect rendering of our 20-year investment in public transit (whose big-ticket examples are the Blue, Green, and Gold rail lines and the Red Line subway).

The map also makes laughable the myth that there's no public transit in L.A.; in fact, there may already be too much of some kinds. If only on paper, Metro bus and rail lines appear as what they are—carriers of the nation's second-heaviest transit load (after New York).

If L.A. were as abstract and flat as that map, if riding the bus required no further preparation than your longing to get going, then you'd be an easy half-mile walk from a bus line almost everywhere in the nonmountainous parts of the county. If, of course, you'd walk half a mile to ride a bus.

I have a copy of the map of the Metro system, which I keep talismanically. It's hard to get a copy (it's not available on buses, and it wasn't displayed among the ranks of schedules in the basement of the MTA building next to Union Station; I had to ask for my copy).

The map doesn't show the schedules of individual lines (the map would have to be a thick book).

The map is too ridiculously big to open casually at a bus stop to consult (and to make your way on your own through unknown neighborhoods you'd still
need a guide, since the Metro map, reasonably, shows only major highways and transit routes).

The map also can't tell you what kind of wait you'll have before the bus arrives, whether the stop will be correctly marked or even have a bench to sit on, if the driver will be indifferent or kind, or if you have to stand in a crowded aisle for an hour, paying enough attention to the physics of inertia at each jolting stop so not to press too closely into the curve of the belly of the rider standing behind you.

If you're smart and you must ride the bus, you listen hard to the spontaneous community you pay your way into every workday.

They've been here before you. The word of mouth of beauticians and factory hands will make bearable your powerlessness when the bus driver ignores your questions, knows as little as you about where you must go, fails to call the stops, or leaves the bus rack stocked with schedules of some other route and not the one you're riding.

The Metro map assures me (even as I doubt it) that "here" is connected to "there" with a bright, colored line and not with the memories and habits of actual riders. But as a cure for my anxiety about being hauled into the unknown without access to the folklore that extends back 60 years on some bus routes, the wonderful MTA map is nearly worthless.

A MAGICAL SENSATION
GO SOMEWHERE IN L.A., BECAUSE the map says you should, because you should be in motion like a true Angeleno. Go from downtown Long Beach to Cal State Northridge and get there by noon on a weekday by public transit.

No bus or train directly links points as disconnected as Long Beach and the Valley. There are never enough connections across the real and imagined divides of L.A.

Depending on your tolerance for uncertainty and your indifference to appointed times, you'll ride three or four transit lines between 1st Street in Long Beach and the university campus, and you'll spend a total of 20 or 30 minutes waiting at stops along the way.

That's not much for a trip across the great flat of the southeast county, through downtown Los Angeles, and into the northern Valley.

Time is different once you're on the bus. It's like being a kid again in the backseat of your parents' car.

You don't control anything, and it's going to take a while to get where you're being taken. You're free to read, gawk at the passing scene, daydream, or risk sleep. I do them all on the bus.

By public transit the trip from Long Beach to the Valley will take about two hours and 50 minutes.

It's faster than it once was because part of your trip will be by rail. By car it should take about an hour. A return trip to Long Beach by car in the late afternoon would take far longer, but L.A. drivers, when they were polled in 1998, said that waiting for a bus would be worse than waiting in gridlock.

If you have the resources to use the online trip-planning software at the Southern California Association of Governments, you'll be told to wait ten minutes for one of your connections on a street corner downtown.

If you use the Metro trip planner, you'll be told to ascend from the Red Line subway at the Universal City station to wait on a windswept transit plaza until the Metro 166 bus pulls up to a shelterless stop.

Ask the two machines how to get from here to there and you'll get different answers; both systems have allegiances to their own mechanical folklore.

Too often, Metro will tell you that you can't get there at all; most of the time, SCAG will show you a way. But in either case, only if you read English and have access to the Internet and a printer.

It helps, too, if you have the Thomas Guide, because the online maps aren't very good. Riding the bus requires premeditation—for example, there are no public rest rooms—or it requires stolid habit.

Even with these limitations, finding a way across L.A. is easier now than it was.

Before the Internet all you had to go on was hope, because transit information centers only made available the schedules some manager downtown presumed your neighborhood would need, ghettoizing riders a second time with a selection of individual route maps whose lines always dead-ended in unmarked white space.

The Universal City transit plaza has a shelter—which looks like something from the old Tomorrowland—but it's reserved for riders waiting for one of the distinctive red-and-white buses of the almost too successful Metro Rapid service that travels down Ventura Boulevard to Warner Center.

It is one of four lines of "bus rapid transit" in the Metro system; the others traverse Wilshire Boulevard, Vermont Avenue, and Broadway.

These buses make limited stops, have onboard electronics that extend green lights, and are driven, from my experience, as hard and as fast as traffic conditions will allow.

On a hot Valley afternoon the crowd of riders standing with me under the Rapid shelter swells until it's over 50 people (more than I know the bus will seat).

We immediately begin an exchange of rider folklore, dividing into two camps—those speaking Spanish (who seem to know what they are talking about) and the rest of us.

Each new arrival asks which line this is and where to stand if this isn't the bus they're waiting for and is the bus on time.

I'm asked each of these questions in the span of ten minutes, because I'm always asked when I'm waiting for the bus (the result of appearing both competent and harmless). The red digital readout overhead would tell us how many minutes to the arrival of the next Rapid bus if the readout were working.

Eventually, two Rapid buses, designed as freight cars with windows, arrive together and discharge all their passengers.

The driver of the lead bus motions away the surge of expectant riders around me, and both buses pull from the shelter and wheel into the transit center's layover bays a tantalizing 20 yards away. We puzzled passengers resettle ourselves and wait.

Five minutes later, the two buses pull around to the shelter again, where the loose crowd has now congealed into a tight knot without a head or a tail.

L.A. bus riders don't know how to queue on their own, an essential urban skill, and everyone in this bunch now realizes that only the first onboard will get seats and the unlucky will continue to stand.

We push forward, thronging into the first bus but with exemplary restraint—L.A. transit riders are typically polite when they are thrown together, even if they don't know how to wait in line for a bus.

That means, however, that everyone waiting at the stop gets on the first bus, even though the head sign on the second bus says that it, too, is heading down Ventura Boulevard.

But there's no knowing if that's true or if the decision to abandon this crowded bus for the one behind, still empty, is a stupid gamble.

Those who know aren't talking now. The aisle fills with standees hanging on to bright metal supports that sprout from the seat backs to the ceiling.

It turns out, of course, that the two buses leapfrog through the 12 stops between Universal City and Topanga Canyon Boulevard, although the bus I'm standing in always appears more crowded than the bus that began behind.

It's not until Reseda Boulevard that I can finally slide into a characteristically hard, uncomfortably warm seat to sit elbow to elbow with a young man reading the fútbol news in La Opinión.

The ride west through the Valley was unusually white; the return east an hour later is filled to overcrowding as usual with domestic workers.

The second Rapid bus, shadowing us back to the Universal City subway station, is full, too.

For as long as the federal government has been collecting ridership data, Los Angeles buses have labored with the heaviest average passenger loads; on some lines they exceed 140 percent of seating capacity through much of the day.

As a cheap alternative to more light rail, the MTA hopes to run a lot of Rapid buses on major highways or in specially constructed bus lanes (like a surface subway).

The MTA thinks that Rapid buses running at three-minute intervals will appeal to middle-class commuters more than ordinary buses, with their slow, confusing, and circuitous routing through shabby neighborhoods that business passengers, I suppose, would dread.

One night while I stood in the aisle of another crowded Rapid bus, this one on Wilshire Boulevard, with the bus leaning at least ten degrees because of the camber of the street and taking the gentle swales of West L.A. and the occasional pothole at 45 miles an hour or more, the unexpected sensation of forward momentum was magical.

Bus riders are accustomed to crawling up to stops that come as often as every quarter mile. But the Rapid buses are lords of the street and in nearly continuous motion.

An aggressive motorist might find the sweet spot in the outside lane next to one of these ultimate SUVs and ride the wash of its speed through green light after extended green light, like a dolphin surfing the bow wave of a freighter.

AN EXALTATION OF CARS
RIDING THROUGH A WINTER NIGHT on a local bus that takes nearly two hours to traverse immigrant neighborhoods from Boyle Heights to north Long Beach, I don't see any of the middle-class commuters the MTA hopes to lure from their cars.

On this bus the driver sits in front of a brushed-steel wall, so that from our seats behind him it looks as if no one is driving.

On the night bus it's the passengers who are on public display—unlike motorists at night, who are invisible in their cars—and the bright overhead lights turn the pairs of facing bus windows into both showcases and partial mirrors that re-reflect faces like a carnival fun house.

In the glare and the surrounding night, in a crowd of their reflected images, on display at every red light, the riders are only tired working people washed a hard, greenish yellow.

The night bus is full but silent, without feeling the need for exchanging transit folklore. Everyone here is running on habit except me.

My unexpected whiteness at this hour on this bus means that the seat next to mine is the last to be filled. When it is, we've already descended from downtown, stop by stop, into the dark valley of the Los Angeles River. We're not part of the L.A. that drives; we're the other L.A. that's driven.

The MTA has been accused of engineering a two-class transit system—the first for the white and well-off (the riders of Rapid buses and all forms of rail) and the second for the dark and struggling (like the night bus).

Except color is always too simple an explanation in L.A. The difference isn't about race; it's about whether you have any choice. If you don't have a choice, the bus is where you negotiate a place in the other L.A.

But now we're driven better. In the early 1990s, the aging buses on the line from Pasadena to Lakewood would be kept in service without air conditioners.

Those buses had six-foot-long, four-foot-high solid plastic windows—crazed by repeated heat and cold to complete opacity—that could not be opened for ventilation.

Passengers in September would pop the emergency-exit lever under a window section and hold the window up like a broken wing to let in some air until the awkwardness of holding it forced the window from their hands and it slammed shut and the temperature inside the bus went back above 100 degrees.

The driver would be at the wheel, her side window open for her relief, and as unmoved as a guard in the gulag.

It would be hard to imagine in the Los Angeles Times anything comparable to the Metropolitan Diary feature of The New York Times, in which so many of the quirky stories that console New Yorkers with the harmlessness of life in their city are taken from their positive experiences on buses.

Public transit is a kind of finishing school for a New Yorker's urbanity. The L.A. bus rider is, by definition, a diminished Angeleno, and riders know that life in L.A. doesn't have a story unless it's narrated with a car.

If there's anything on the bus equal to the primal
L.A. experience that begins with an adolescent joyride in a car at dusk and ends, after advent-ures across half the county, with an amazement of bodies in the backseat, I never found it.

When I tell people here that I don't drive, they express admiration, as if riding the bus had a moral, not a transit, purpose.

Then I tell them I don't drive because an acci-dent of genetics makes my eyesight unreliable.

It's at this point that the conversation becomes awkward, for no Southern Californian can imagine that an otherwise fit, middle-class-looking male does not drive, unless he is actually blind. Maybe they think it's something else that keeps me from driving.

If they ask, I tell them about taking the bus in L.A., how it's an unstable, third-world country on wheels and permanently separated from the familiar, intimate room they've made of their car, but I'm describing habits they have no intention of acquiring.

They imagine a future in which they'll always be drivers. They think they'll always be in control, if only of a car. They tell me about the high cost of driving, the terrible traffic, and the ugly behavior of other drivers. They tell me how lucky I am.

I'm lucky those drivers have been so willing to tax themselves to benefit a transit system few of them will ever use. I'm luckier still that I can be in the company of strangers, far from my home with no certain way back, trusting the folklore they'll tell me. And if I could, of course I would drive a car.

Despite more than 2,000 MTA buses on the road every day and 18,500 marked stops in the MTA system alone, public transit is almost invisible to you—you who are almost certainly part of the L.A. that drives.

When I watch you from the bus stop, you seem oblivious, wrapped in a second skin of safety glass and sheet metal.

You won't ever have to learn how to make your way through a baroque assemblage of systems that have subjected their poor and working-class dependents to every taxpayer-funded transit enthusiasm of the past 20 years.

You won't ever see the civil gesture of the tall, young black man toward the old white man whose leg he must brush aside to pass down the aisle of the packed bus, a light double tap with the side of the young man's hand on the old man's shoulder and a low word of excuse answered with a nod and a word, and the old man's mild face half-turned to the young man's.

We who do not drive are equally remote from you. We're the ones at the periphery of your gaze, standing in a cluster at the intersection where you've just turned right on red without even slowing.

As you turn, the most anxious one among us, who had been peering in hope into the oncoming traffic for a bus that's 20 minutes late, abruptly steps back from the curb, a bulging white discount-store bag digging a red band into the flesh across the back of the hand she has thrust through the plastic handle (that red line across a numbed hand is the pedestrian stigmata).

The most resigned of us has been hanging back, leaning his left shoulder against anything (the light standard, the stucco wall of the strip mall, a struggling tree), his head down and hands jammed into the pockets of a drooping warm-up jacket, and all of us in silent attendance on the traffic bunching and flowing in its minute-long pulse as the traffic lights change red to green on the imperial grid of the city, not one of us observing with anything like the exaltation it deserves the glowing arc of cars turning left against traffic, as lovely and perfect as the advancing line of dancers in a corps de ballet.

Þ--Þ--Þ

[bennyp81]

JROC
User ID: 0478154 May 31st 2:06 PM

The Metro Bus has come a long way from the days of the RTD, and the 1990s MTA. I've seen some much improvement in the Metro, In fact I'd rather ride the Metro than take the Santa monica blue bus, The #7 used to be good, but now it sucks. Oh well keep it up MTA.

John
User ID: 9510053 Jun 7th 9:23 AM

I was pleased to be offered a customer service survey while riding a Metro Bus yesterday morning.
It felt good to be able to give the MTA almost all positive feedback regarding Metro Bus service!

PForce
User ID: 1808544 Jun 7th 10:17 PM

Today, my wife and I took the Santa Monica Blue line from West LA to downtown, where we caught the Red Line to Normandie Ave. We did the same to come back home. The difference between these two modes of traffic were like night and day. The Red Line was smooth and comfortable (as well as roomy), extremely safe, and very reliable. I was surprised by the large number of people who descended the stairs to ride on a Saturday afternoon.

Our trips by bus on the Santa Monica freeway were rough, noisy, and a little frightening. (Who likes riding swerving and speeding street buses on the freeway at 60-65 mph--with no seat belts ?)

John
User ID: 9510053 Jun 15th 6:32 PM

I think it is SO NEAT that the MTA provides bus service to what is, in my estimation, L.A.'s number one TOD: the Grove and Farmers Market!

I declare again: One of the very best things about living in L.A. is this city's very good transit system!

Way to go, MTA!

Robert
User ID: 2037954 Jun 15th 10:09 PM

I declare again: One of the very best things about living in L.A. is this city's very good transit system!

Way to go, MTA!

And from the other thread:

I suppose one of the most obvious advantages of taking the bus is that one can travel most anywhere in the county on it.

Yes bus and train service is getting better in the Los Angeles region, but there are still many problems with getting around by public transportation. For example, how would you travel by bus and even train for the following:

Weekends, Travel between Los Angeles North County and South County.Very limited even for weekdays.

LAX to almost anyplace.

Long Beach Airport other than downtown Long Beach.

Huntington Library today by any type of public transportation.

Mt. Wilson, Castaic Lake, Magic Mountain (weekends), problems to lots of places, the list goes on and on.

Any cross county trip, in a reasonable period of time is next to impossible.

I now have a 50 mile trip, it would take 3 busses and 3 1/2 hours travel time during non-rush hours with the drive time being about 55 minutes. But no way to work 8 hours and get return home by bus or even rail.

John, assuming you worked in Diamond Bar, how long would it take you by Bus/Subway from Hollywood and Highland Blvds., I was wondering what the travel time would be. All times shown are the best of two from the MTA website.

TOTAL COST: $3.25
Estimated Travel Time: 2 Hours 8 Minutes
Go to Hollywood Highland Sta
Take Metro Rail Red Line East (UNION STA RED LINE) at 6:17 a.m.
Pay $1.35 plus .25 transfer
Get off at CIVIC CENTER STATION at 6:35 a.m.
Go to SE corner of 1st St & Hill St
Take Foothill Transit 482 East (POMONA) at 6:38 a.m.
Use transfer plus 1.65
Get off at COPLEY DR and S.C.A.Q.M.D. BLDG at 8:25 a.m.
Ending at 21660 COPLEY

Now lets look at the return trip after you get off at 6 p.m., still using the better time.

TOTAL COST: $2.85
Estimated Travel Time: 2 Hours 3 Minutes
Go to OP corner of Copley Dr & S.c.a.q.m.d. Bldg
Take Foothill Transit 482 South (EL MONTE) at 6:14 p.m.
Pay $1.10
Get off at INDUSTRY METROLINK and BUS BAY 3 at 6:24 p.m.
Go to Industry Metrolink & Bus Bay 4
Take Metro Bus 484 East (DOWNTOWN LA) at 6:38 p.m.
Use transfer plus 1.50 plus .25
Get off at 1ST ST and HILL ST at 7:42 p.m.
Go to Civic Center Station
Take Metro Rail Red Line South (NORTH HOLLYWOOD STATION) at 7:59 p.m.
Use transfer
Get off at HOLLYWOOD HIGHLAND STA at 8:17 p.m.
Ending at HOLLYWOOD/HIGHLAND

Interesting, $3.25 to get to Diamond Bar from Hollywood and only $2.85 from Diamond Bar to Hollywood. Also you would board the Red Line 2 hours and 43 minutes before you would have to start to work taking the subway and one bus, but getting back is faster, only 2 hours and 17 minutes after quitting time with two busses and the Subway. The total elapse time from leaving the Hollywood/Highland station to returning the same day is 14 hours and no minutes.

Very, very interesting, if you did it this evening, Sunday, from Hollywood to Diamond Bar, it is the best time yet, the Subway and two busses, but the cost is $4.25 and I won't even look at the return trip.

Starting at HOLLYWOOD/HIGHLAND
TOTAL COST: $4.35
Estimated Travel Time: 1 Hour 50 Minutes
Go to Hollywood Highland Sta
Take Metro Rail Red Line East (UNION STA RED LINE) at 5:33 p.m.
Pay $1.35 plus .25 transfer
Get off at CIVIC CENTER STATION at 5:52 p.m.
Go to SE corner of 1st St & Hill St
Take Foothill Transit 480 East (MONTCLAIR TRANSIT CTR) at 5:57 p.m.
Use transfer plus 1.65
Get off at CAL POLY TC at 6:55 p.m.
Go to Cal Poly Tc
Take Foothill Transit 482 South (EL MONTE) at 7:02 p.m.
Pay $1.10
Get off at GOLDEN SPRINGS and GRAND at 7:23 p.m.
Ending at 21660 COPLEY

Yes John, LA has the best bus transportation system there is.

Bob

John
User ID: 9510053 Jul 13th 6:50 PM

I say again, it is so neat that the MTA provides people living in the livelier parts of L.A. with so many options! This afternoon, for instance, I just missed a #217 southbound bus. But, no biggie, I decided to walk on over a block east to Sycamore in hopes that a #212 would soon pass by. And, lo and behold! just as soon as I finished throwing away what I consider to be the junk sections of the Sunday L.A. Times (Sports, Classified Ads, etc.), there came a #212!

Then, upon disembarking at La Brea and Beverly, I saw a westbound Beverly bus (I think that's the #14 line) coming! I had to jog across the crosswalk when the light turned green; but, partly thanks to some fellow transit users/supporters who were waiting to board at the stop, I made it! Talk about perfect connections!

I figure that I arrived at Farmers Market/the Grove about as soon by taking these two buses as I would have had I been in time to catch that #217 bus!

It is so nice of the MTA to provide Angelenos with so many options, and with such very good service in general!

John
User ID: 9510053 Jul 19th 10:23 AM

Well, as happens so very frequently now, a portion of Hollywood Bl. was obstructed this past week, and the buses couldn't pass through. I guess these shutdowns are due mainly to movie premieres, movie filming, etc.

I never saw any sort of sign at the bus stop at La Brea & Hollywood Bl. advising passengers as to where they might catch the southbound #217. I don't know if there was such a notice posted there at any point or not, though, since, when I saw the street obstruction, I just kept on walking east to the subway station at Hollywood & Highland. But if there was, in fact, no notice at the bus stop on any of the days when the obstruction was in effect, I don't blame the MTA. How would it be possible to do so, given that the MTA is in no way responsible for either the frequent obstructions of Hollywood Bl. or for the car culture in general?

So, on at least two mornings last week, I just took the subway instead of the bus. No biggie. My main thought about the matter was that it was so nice of the MTA to build a subway that Hollywood residents can use, especially when portions of Hollywood Bl. are shut down to bus traffic! This is really neat! What a very fine transit system!

Anyway, I think it was Thursday morning when I saw one of my fellow bus passengers waiting at the northwest corner of La Brea & Hollywood. He motioned to me to come over there, which I did, and sure enough the #217 stopped at that corner. Then, yesterday morning, it stopped at the usual stop again.

I just love having so many transit options! Hooray for the MTA!

Robert
User ID: 2037954 Jul 19th 12:49 PM

MTA is in no way responsible for either the frequent obstructions of Hollywood Bl. or for the car culture in general?

The MTA is also responsible for "the car culture", they are the ones that approve what Caltrans and others do. The MTA is more that controlling BUS, and METRO RAIL, part of the budget also goes to Metrolink, with some say in its operations, as well as other transit agencies.

Bob

John
User ID: 9510053 Jul 26th 6:31 PM

Thursday night on the way back from Farmers Market/the Grove, my partner Mike became involved in a conversation with some members of a group of English people. Later he told me they were very complimentary of the MTA. One of them told him that where his group lives, the bus service isn't good, with some lines running buses only once an hour (I am reminded of the South Bay), with buses frequently breaking down (again I am reminded of the South Bay), etc.

How nice that these English visitors noticed and were gracious enough to be complimentary of Los Angeles's very fine bus system!

John
User ID: 9921013 Dec 29th 9:07 PM

Hurray! The #317 express bus is now operating! How excellent that this bus stops only at major intersections! Talk about a smoother, faster ride! I love it!

Chris Ledermuller
User ID: 9690803 Dec 29th 10:44 PM

Line 317 was supposed to be part of Line 780. For right now, 780 is running just the duplication of Line 180. At least the service is running middays as well.

PaulC
User ID: 8548253 Dec 30th 1:14 AM

I must say that I do like the new 780. I took it the other day from PCC to Glendale and it was very fast. Before I knew it I was in glendale.

Paul

John
User ID: 9921013 Jan 1st [2005] 12:15 PM

I was just sitting here thinking, especially in view of Bart's excellent comments in another folder regarding the Ventura County transit situation, how wonderful it is that wherever there is a great demand for transit, transit not only exists but expands/improves!

The Hollywood/Fairfax corridor is a perfect example of this. The #217 line had such a hefty, constant ridership, that the #317 express bus was finally added! And now it's so nice to just walk up to a bus stop on that line and be able to board either a #217 or a #317 in just a few short minutes!

Isn't it wonderful that in areas where the people strongly support transit, transit inevitably expands/improves?! I just love it!