Los Angeles residents both love and hate the public transit system. If there ever was a love-hate relationship, it is one which Los Angeles residents have with the city’s public transit system.
It’s not as simple as branding the transit system – which includes surface transport in the form of buses, the subway system, and special connections servicing certain areas as the Orange Line does (options like the Dash and certain city-specific public transit such as the Santa Clarita shuttle are outside the purview of the all-encompassing Metro although you do get a discount on the Dash if you have a Metro transit card) - a necessary evil and moving on to other things. There are no other things if you are one of those people who is absolutely dependent on the transit system to get around. As I am.
So if the bus decides to show up forty minutes late for a date, suck it up. Call your workplace or wherever you were supposed to be forty minutes earlier and tell them the bus messed up. Again. They will probably understand. And it is a good idea to plan things at least two buses ahead. Say you have to be somewhere at 3pm and the bus connections on Google Maps show you can easily start around 2pm and make it on time comfortably. Don’t trust it. Start at 1.30pm and save yourself a stress-related episode while you wait endlessly at the bus stop for the promised bus.
It is amazing that the Metro system is so capricious when it is used quite extensively by LA residents. I wonder what a New Yorker’s reaction would be if they were at a subway station for longer than five minutes and the train they were hoping to be on simply didn’t show. Call it the California sunshine or the golden state’s legal marijuana options, a public transit user here doesn’t baulk at the idea of spending hours at the bus stop. We are all very, very patient.
That said, here are a few pointers on how you can ace this particular system:
#1: If you know you’ll use the Metro fairly regularly, get a TAP card and refill it regularly. It’s the magic key to navigating LA using public transit and almost never lets you down. There are those occasions when you have fifty dollars on your card and it insists on showing zero balance when you tap it at the sensor (and you are all red-faced and trying to explain to the driver that you just refilled your card) and there is a line behind you a mile long of people waiting to board and they all have impeccable TAP records. But please don’t be that person who holds up ten people behind you because you decided to pay the fare with pennies you accumulated over a year.
#2: Last heard, a weekly Metro pass cost $25 and a monthly one $100. If you are in LA for a day and want to explore it using the public transit system (not a good idea), you can get a day pass for $7. You get unlimited rides as long as you are using transportation under the Metro system, for a 24-hour period. Otherwise, a ride on the bus costs $1.75 whether you are riding two stops or twenty.
#3: Being a student helps. You can buy a discounted Metro pass each quarter – in my time here, the rates went from $60 to $77 a quarter - and this allows you to ride anything under the Metro system. I rode Bus No. 534 all the way to Trancas Beach in Malibu and took the same bus back. I got off the bus at Malibu pier and then took the next one back to Santa Monica pier. It was almost a hop-on-hop-off experience and quite pleasant. Pack some snacks if you plan to do this.
#4: Save like a maniac and buy a car.
Hi Tanushree,
It's Hawra. I agree. The public transport in L.A. is extremely unreliable. If a person wants to use the public transport here, they are basically wasting a huge portion of their lives since they have to leave ahead of time and wait for the late buses and trains.