How to get from Santa Monica to Century City on the Bus

Last week I had an appointment in Century City, near Santa Monica Blvd and Beverly Glen.  I got there on an LA Metro bus.  Last year, Los Angeles Metro took an important step in making LA’s public transit system more accessible by  releasing its route and schedule data publicly, so I was able to route this trip using Google maps.  Here’s how:

 Go to maps.google.com and enter start and end addresses

• Click on the bus icon to get public transit directions, rather than driving directions
• Find that the “704” will pick me up a half a block away and take me to within a block of my destination in 27 minutes.
• I don't want to leave immediately, so I change the “depart at” time to 3pm, and find that the next bus comes at 3:01pm.
• 

• Fare is $1.50.  (you can pay cash, or, if you ride a lot, you can get a TAP card with a daily, weekly, or monthly pass on it)
• I avoided the hassle of traffic and parking, and was able to get a little work reading done during during the bus ride.
• One annoying thing to note is that the departure information is scheduled data, rather than real-time data, meaning that if the bus is not running on schedule it will not depart or arrive at the times indicated.  In other words, you could wait at the bus stop unnecessarily long and be late to your meeting.  Luckily, the 704 usually seems to run within a few minutes of its scehduled time.