So to my surprise yesterday, when I went to take the bus home (I had cycled all the way into work along the pleasant route I described here and here), a completely new bus design pulled up! It seems that while I was on walkabout, for a month, the MTA made some further improvements.
It’s one of those excellent “bendy buses” (as I like to call them), and it is a completely new design that is rather large and spacious. Together with the new 757 route on Western, (see below) these are the first Metro Rapid routes they have put them on (they first started using these buses on the Orange dedicated commuter line in the valley), and they’re excellent. It’s much more like riding the subway than a bus, as the ride is very smooth. Also, there’s even more room under the seats for things like my Brompton, and yes, there are bike racks on the front (as is usual all over the MTA) for those larger “regular” bikes everybody else uses).
(In the picture of the interior, the reason there’s nobody on the bus is becaue I took at 6:15am today, and it is at the start of the route. Within 15 minutes it was being used by several people.)
This continues to defy the lie that everybody tells about there being no public transport in Los Angeles. See my earlier remarks about that here.
In other news, the Exposition Line has now been fully approved!! See my report on this exciting public transport project (which will ultimately result in my being able to step out of my office and take the subway all the way to the beach) here. The news about the final approval can be found on the MTA website here, along with raftloads of further evidence that there’s public transport in this city.
Finally, there’s been another Metro Rapid line started, running along Western. This allows for more quick North/South connection of the middle of the city, and also connects up two branches of the subway’s Red Line. Red Line? Subway? Yes….take a virtual tour of the lovely stations, here.
So, maybe I’ll see some more USC people coming to work on my route? Come on…give it a try!
-cvj
January 10th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Just read about the subway approval, sounds wonderful:
http://www.happynews.com/news/172006/in-los-angeles-hope-revived-for-subway.htm
January 10th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Hmm, “bus rapid transit”, I believe it’s called. We’re considering getting some of those here due to some arcane formula used to determine revenue threshold that has to be met for federal matching funds.
Sounds interesting, and hopefully no one gets run over from the spectacle.
January 20th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
[...] Each morning on the bus part of my journey to work, for the last several months I pass a building site. A hairdresser I was speaking to on the bus one morning told me that it was a school being constructed, and ever since I always look to see how it is coming along. It’s huge. I took some pictures of it for you to see. Please excuse the reflections from the bus windows. [...]
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Clifford, I thought you would enjoy reading this blog posting (if you hadn’t read it already), which addresses some great reasons for improving public transit:
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2006/01/harebrained-theory-of-week.html
May 4th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
[...] So. On I go with the irrelevant. Time for an update on Public Transport issues, which anyone with a little wit knows is not just about my own travel lifestyle. It is about environment, health, and the future of our planet, just to name a few things. You’ll recall my delight in the new, bigger, generally excellent buses that were introduced on my route earlier this year. See this post. Well, about a month afterwards, they put flat screen tvs on the buses. Three or four in each bus! I was all prepared to be huffy and hissy about this. Can’t people be left alone to read a book or have a conversation with their neighbour without now having to deal with the noise of tvs advertising stuff at them? C’mon MTA people, I’m grading homeworks, writing film scripts and midterms here – do you mind?! [...]
October 1st, 2006 at 6:01 pm
[...] You’ve possibly read about my excitement about the long-awaited Expo line, connecting downtown to USC and the Science, Natural History (and other) Museums, and then connecting out to Culver City, and ultimately to Venice. I’ve blogged this here and here. They broke ground on the project two days ago. See here and here. Here’s a picture (yes, construction workers wear business suits in LA. They are very image-conscious here, and you never know when a casting director might be looking): [...]