Green LA Girl just had an interesting article on parking meters on her blog. In the discussion, the subject of public transportation (of course!) came up. And the usual argument: “L.A. has public transportation. It’s not so bad - people just think there’s a stigma to it.”
The answer here is, we don’t lack public transportation. We lack decent public transportation. I love taking the bus, I take it whenever I can - but it still drives me nuts. Why?
Schedules
To say the schedule is unreliable is the understatement of the year. There is no real schedule. There is some approximation of one on the web sites, but even that only lists times for particular stations. Take the bus inbetween? Take a guess. And plan for some wait time - plus/minus 10 minutes aberrations are the norm.
Drivers
Many of the drivers drive like they’re crazy - either their gas/break is in dire need of maintenance, or they didn’t get proper training. Or maybe they mistake themselves for a reincarnation of Mario Andretti… To be fair, there are many excellent drivers, too. Once you become familiar with their schedules, you can arrange your bus trips around that - being catapulted about a bus is not my idea of fun. But as somebody just trying the bus for the first time, you will inevitably be riding with one of the nutcases. Probably some law of nature…
Metro/BlueBus split
So we have two bus companies servicing the same area, with slightly different prices. There are some rules when you can or can’t transfer between lines, but I couldn’t tell what they are. The pricing model of the two lines is different. They don’t accept payment from the other line - if you have a Blue Bus card and need to take a Metro bus, you better hope you’ve got quarters on you.
Bus Stop organization
Partially, this is an outflow of the split mentioned above, and partly this is just strange. At my home adress, I have three bus stations within 300 yards. First one: Blue Bus #2, and bus #20 - which I guess is part of Metro. It has different pricing, and it’s orange, so it can’t be Blue Bus. Right? (See what I mean about the confusion?) 100 yards further a stop for the Metro Express 720. Another 200 yards, and there’s another stop for #2/#20. Why do we need three different bus stops? Combined with the schedule being what it is, I have to divine which line is going to arrive next to pick the right station. Or, alternatively, stay at the second station and break into a mad dash to station three if I was wrong.
And the list continues. Public transportation in L.A. is certainly good - for a city in the U.S. Compare with Europe, and you’ll cry. A common suggestion is that we just need to educate people, and demand will kick in. That’s simply not enough - all the education in the world doesn’t fix the problems mentioned above. We need to fix public transportation - just repeating the mantra “It’s not so bad” won’t increase usage a bit.
And we can’t just make small fixes. To get people to switch between different experiences, there needs to be a significant gap between both experiences. Public Transportation can’t only be as good as a car ride, it needs to be a good chunk better.
Educating about the environment will only help a bit. Most people don’t think about long term impact when they make everyday decisions like “car or bus?”. So we need to give them a short term effect that they see right away - i.e. “Riding the bus is much more pleasant than parking on the 405″. That’s not entirely there right now.
Tags: Environment, Los Angeles, bus, Public Transportation
When I lived in Santa Monica, I tried to take advantage of using the bus system several times:
I took the bus to the Getty once, and it took nearly the entire morning. it was simply ridiculous.
I took the bus to the hollywood bowl, and again, it took forever…. but getting home afterwards, OMG, it was awful. We waited hours for a buss that never came, but we were entertained by watching drug dealers, johns and prostitutes do their thing. Finally getting home after 1am, when the show ended around 10pm. Horriffic.
I’ve taken a string of busses from montana/20th to LAX, and it was not only uncomfortable and stinky, it took freaking forever. YEAH, we made the trip for under $2 per person, but it took almost 2 hours to travel (it would have taken about 20 minutes by car) and we had to manoeuvre luggage on and off several busses in the process.
I’m from Chicago and the bus system worked there. Maybe it’s because Chicago has winter and we don’t?
Even though gas is well over $3/gal, it’s still not worth it to try to take public transportation from burbank to santa monica. My time & sanity (plus my desire to be ON TIME) is worth more than a quarter of a tank of gas.
sorry for the rant…
Hey, I know how you feel. I used to live in Chicago, too. (Wrigleyville - beautiful spot). The buses there were way better than the L.A. system - and it still can’t compete with the bus system we have in Germany. (Where I’m originally from)
It’s frustrating to see that, because I know we could have a better system.
omg: addison & pulaski, after living in River Forest for 4 yrs during college. small world
Small world, indeed - missed you at Barcamp LA. Oh well, next time…
I can understand your frustration. I can’t drive for six months, so I have to use public transportation in small Columbia, Missouri. I’m blogging about the experience…and it has been frustrating at times…my town only has eight busses…