Los Angeles Rapid Transit

Most of us who live in Southern California prefer to rely on our personal cars for tooling around the freeways, which has helped make our traffic jams world famous. It is widely considered that rapid transit in Los Angeles County is a joke, but is it?



People from out of the area might be interested to learn that there is a system of metro trains and buses that offer a reasonable alternative to hopping on the 405 to the 105 to the 110 to the 101.....

When I was in college, living on just the other side of the Orange Curtain, I regularly rode buses and knew that it was possible to get close to where I wanted to go as long as I didn't mind stopping every hundred yards, turning a three mile ride into a fifteen or twenty minute affair. I would play my guitar or read on the mostly empty buses.

Downtown Los Angeles

I always thought that if they would just make people walk up to a half mile in either direction, the buses could be much more efficient (and riders healthier). To that end, the LA Metro system includes the Silver Line, which is a super bus that takes this concept a step further, with even fewer stops than my every mile or so recommendation. It starts due south of downtown Los Angeles in Artesia, makes stops at major points of interest in downtown like L.A. Live and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, then heads east to El Monte, stopping at points of commuter interest like USC Medical Center and Cal State Los Angeles along the way. But in the end, it is, after all, still a bus, and so it doesn't have that mass transit panacache of riding the Tube in London or some other rail system.

Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant.

Yesterday I headed to the Redondo Station of the Metro Green Line to check out the Metro Rail System for myself. With free parking at the station, I found that in 50 minutes, I could take the Green Line to the Blue Line and make it to Staples Center for a Lakers game for $1.50 per person each way.

While theoretically it should take less time to drive it, that is certainly a viable alternative to slamming into the almost inevitable traffic jam and paying $10 or more to park near Staples.

Disney Concert Hall

Riding further on the same ticket, I changed to the Red Line (although I could have taken the Purple Line) to Union Station, which is the hub of not only the Metro System but also Amtrak and buses to other parts of the country. There's also a shuttle to the L.A. Airport there, as well as the Dodger Stadium Express bus for baseball games.

My trip to Union Station took almost exactly an hour, despite changing trains twice. Because the trains run every fifteen minutes or less rather than on a specific schedule, there certainly will be some leeway.

USC logo, etc.

I was actually on a mission, to see how easy it would be to get to USC Medical Center, because my oldest daughter will be doing research there soon. At Union Station, I was picked up by a white bus clearly marked with the USC maroon and gold logo, which took me to the Medical Center in about ten minutes.

Between 10 AM and 3 PM, shuttles run routes between the main campus and the USC Medical Center about once an hour in each direction stopping at Union Station. In the mornings and late afternoons, the shuttles come every ten or fifteen minutes. This shuttle is free, but you need to check to see which direction it is headed before you get on, or you could end up at the wrong campus.

The Southern California lifestyle.

Where else can you go? Well, to quote Randy Newman, "from the South Bay to the Valley, from the West Side, to the East Side."

For cruise passengers, the Long Beach station for the Blue Line isn't too far from Carnival's year-round cruise port. From San Pedro, it's a little more challenging but do-able. For passengers flying into LAX, it is even easier to get to the Metro rail. Come to where "everybody's very happy, 'cuz the sun is shining all the time."