Transit Hub Back on Track

Los Angeles Times ^ | May 22, 2003 | Kurt Streeter

[liberallarry]

Is this Los Angeles, the land of the Jetta and the Jaguar, the freeway interchange, the molasses-thick traffic? You couldn't tell it, at least on weekday rush hours, by going to Union Station.

The place is full of commuters. None in a car.

They pile out of subway stations on their way to work. They run, shoulder to shoulder, to Metrolink trains. They sit on leather seats waiting for Amtrak and stand — with briefcases and baseball hats and book bags — waiting for buses that shuttle to points all over the region.

[liberallarry]

Surprise!...Good news.

[VOA]

The place is full of commuters. None in a car.

Well, at least one part of the mass transit system works in Los Angeles.

Who says the mainstream media only prints negative stories?

But, as a Westside Los Angeles resident for more than five years who lives
without a car...here's "The Rest Of The Story".

Mass transit in this liberal paradise mostly SUCKS.

Oh, there are bright points such as the rail system to move rich, caring, and
mostly liberal folks from their far-flung compounds without needing to drive to
downtown Los Angeles.

And the Santa Monica Blue Bus is a nice system with clean busses, but try to catch
one between about midnight to 6AM...you're out of luck mostly and dependent on
"The Voyage Of The Damned" busses haunted by some of the most pitiable members of
our society...those ravaged by rough lives on the street...if not actual
mental defect.

And the subway system...beautiful, efficient...and nearly worthless for getting to
many areas of the city.

Not to mention often running basically empty.

A few months ago, I was on jury duty in downtown Los Angeles; I rode the convenient
Santa Monica Blue Bus #10 to downtown. Arriving a bit early, I strolled around and
stumbled across the "Civic Center" depot for the subway. I rode the magnificent
escalator down to the platforms, just to see if there was any of the artwork
the LA Metro system ballyhoos on TV.
Incredibly, at at about 8:45 AM, as the streets above are crammed with traffic...
the subway station was AN EMPTY TOMB. I bet I only saw something like four or five
people coming up/down the escalators and NOT ONE PERSON standing on the platform
or buying passage from the vending machines.


My life in Los Angeles has been an interesting sojourn for someone who is
white, male and conservative.

And from all I can see, the mass transit system in this liberal one-party-rule
Democratic paradise is a three-tier system.
1. Nice trains to shuttle rich limousine liberals to/from the Civic Center.
2. A passable subway system to make sure a certain influential demographic group
can make their way from downtown to their digs in Hollywood or another demographic
group to South Central.
3. A passable-to-hideous bus system to make sure the Hispanic/Latino labor force
makes it to work.

OK, that may sound harsh, but with all the money (state, local AND FEDERAL) thrown
at this system, it would probably have been cheaper to buy everyone in Los Angeles
a subcompact and free gasoline.

And the greatest irony for me?
Being the white, conservative male who uses mass transit...while basically
all the liberals I work with refuse to have their Volvos, Land Rover, Beemers,
and other pleasure barges pried from their hands.

[liberallarry]

I was born in L.A. and lived there for 60 years. I'd say your description of the current system is spot on.
I can barely remember the great Red Car public transportation system of my early youth, which was begun around 1900 and got progressively better up until WWII, but then was abandoned because it couldn't compete with automobiles.
I remember the freeway system when it was first built. Magnificent.
Now we have the incredible subway and light rail system. Probably it will soon become overcrowded and dirty.
The lesson here is that every more crowded cities are not better.

[daviddennis]

Actually, I think the subway system was built with a combination of prestige and pork in mind. It created a lot of construction jobs by sucking the blood out of our retail sales through the 50c increment in the sales tax. It also used a lot of federal money.

The Metro Bus system, which I used to call the Sluggish Transit District (STD) because it was about as popular with its patrons as a STD, is definitely the pits.

Santa Monica knows how to run a great bus service, but let's face it - it's a small city and doesn't have the funds needed to create citywide service.

I used to take the bus. I have to say that now that I have a car, I would never go back to the sluggishness and inefficiency of public transport. Not in a million years.

I solve my commuting problems by simply living close to work - about five minutes from it, to be specific.

D