L.A. Metro. It's our city's public transportation system. Buses and trains. You see the advertising all over town to "Go Metro and save $$". They're trying to get people to realize that, yes, there is alternate transportation other than a car in L.A. It's true, it does work during usual work hours. I take the bus to work when i'm not riding my bike. It gets there in a reasonable time, and I can get home in a decent time as well, but anytime after work hours and you're screwed. The problem is the waiting. I don't know if the buses are just running less later at night or if they're horribly off shedule, but it sucks balls..
Example 1: Last Wed. I went out for some drinks after work with some coworkers. I left the bar/restaurant at around 7:30. At that time, my normal freeway bus isn't running anymore, so I have to take a couple buses instead of just one. No bid deal right? Wrong.. first bus comes quick, and before you know it, i'm at Pico/Fairfax, the location where I'll hop on the next bus. Well.. I have to wait for it I guess.... and wait some more.... and friggin' wait some more... eventually, at least 45 MINUTES LATER!! the bus finally came. (some old lady next to me was complaining too). So now it creeps up Fairfax at a snails pace, picking up and dropping off people. Eventually we get to Hollywood to find that the path is blocked because of a movie premiere so we have to go around, and traffic is fucked meaning that's an extra half hour of bus riding instead of what would've been about 10 minutes.. Ok, this isn't the bus's fault.. i'll give 'em that.. damn Hollywood! So to the point.. what takes me a little over an hour on my bicycle, just turned into a 2 hour bus ride... ugh...
Example 2: Last Night, Sunday July, 27. Gnarls Barkley played at the Hollywood bowl. My friend and I rode the bus down there because parking is a bitch, and the 217 bus is a straight shot to Hollywood/Highland. Worked ok, this was around 6:30. So after the show, 10:30-10:45.. somethin' like that. We're walking down and when we get to the red light at Hollywood/Highland, what do I see across the street? Our bus home... of course it leaves before we can cross the street and catch it. So now we decide just to walk down the street in the direction of home instead of waiting... we get to Vine Metro station and figure, surely a bus will be by soon.. at this point it's around 11:30-ish.. so about an hour after that last 217 bus. Still nothing in sight.. annoying as hell. We decide to take the subway train to Western and walk from there... we get into the subway station and the train takes about a half hour to get there.. so by the time we get home, it ended up taking us 2 hours.. that's only 2 miles away! We shoulda walked...
Go Metro indeed! So LA Metro wants people to take public transportation and that'd be great if it wasn't such a pain in the ass. Maybe i'm missing something, but it seems like they don't think about night life. I guess in the end, LA really is just a car town.
...end rant...
1 comment:
Oh, yeah - Metro TOTALLY sucks 'after hours' - like, anytime between the hours of 6:45 p.m. and 5:35 a.m. Other than that, it rocks, right?
I'll go you one better, though, in this 'car' town. They've turned regular carpool lanes into 'Fastrak' lanes - oxymoronic, if not plain moronic, but I digress. So, finally, breaking down, I go purchase a transponder at AAA, since you HAVE to do so in order to use carpool - even with 2+ people in the mobile. But then, you have to go online to register it - can't just hook it up and be good to go - HELL, no - where do you think you are, the rest of the United States, where E-Z Pass makes tolls a breeze, and there's no discrimination based on number of people in a car, or socio-economic standing?! So, I go online to register the bleedin' contraption and - voila! It (the website) doesn't work! Has some sorta glitch, whereby it adds extra initial '0's (zeros) onto the transponder number, so I continually get an 'invalid transponder number' error message. And, believe me, I tried every way around it, but...no go. So then I call Metro, hoping to be able to register the darn thing over the [you would think] obsolete tool known as the TELEPHONE. Only to find that, that's right - customer service is only open between the hours of 8:00 am and 6:00 pm - because NO ONE DRIVES/TRAVELS ON PUBLIC TRANSIT at any OTHER time, right?! Geez, Louise - for a city and state that are supposed to be so progressive, LA & CA got some effed up issues!
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