Commuting With Strangers: Diary of an LA Bus Rider

Life in Los Angeles has a lot going for it.  The most obvious "pro" is the weather--the temperature reached a balmy 83° here at the end of February as the East Coast was gearing up for a blizzard.  We also have gorgeous coastal, mountain, and desert wild places all within close proximity.  Southern California's virtually endless growing season offers us delicious produce at farmers' markets year round, and we have all the artistic and cultural offerings of a major metropolitan region.  But ask any Angeleno what they would change about their city if they could, and I'm betting one answer will rise to the top of the list: traffic.

The traffic here is wearisome at the best of times and completely maddening at the worst.  As soon as the brake lights come on at rush hour, a miasma of anger and frustration descends, mingling with the polluting fumes above the cars and trucks as people sit--often only one per vehicle--in an unmoving queue stretching off into the horizon in both directions.  People become irritated, and their behavior takes an ugly edge.  They honk and curse and hurl insults at their fellow car-bound citizens, revealing an aggression that would never surface in the supermarket, on the sidewalk, at the coffee shop, or in any other situation where city residents normally interact.  The traffic isolates people, disconnecting them from their neighbors and neighborhoods--precisely the opposite of what our roadways and interstates are supposed to do.  And to top it off, the emissions from all those vehicles crawling down the freeway create smog, endanger the health of LA residents and contribute to global warming.  What a mess.

When I decided to move from Venice (a ten-minute jaunt from the NRDC office) to Hollywood (an hour and a half journey in traffic) and then a year later to Silver Lake, even a few miles further away, my coworkers thought I was crazy.  And if my choice were based on my commute alone, I would have agreed.  But LA is a huge city (44 by 29 miles, according to Wikipedia), and one that needs to be thoroughly explored in order to understand its charms.  For me, the bohemian allure of my new neighborhood outweighed the inconvenience of commuting.  Rather than being restricted to the West Side, I wanted to experience all that Downtown had to offer, go wild in the stands at Dodgers Stadium, and stroll along the curving, jasmine-lined streets that wind their way like spaghetti through the Hollywood Hills.  I didn't want to allow LA's transportation dysfunction to set boundaries for my way of life.  That's why I vowed to join the ranks of that rare breed--the Los Angeles Bus Rider.

Okay, so bus riders here aren't actually that rare at all.  Lots of people prefer taking public transportation to being stuck behind the wheel of their car for hours, stationed directly behind someone else's tailpipe.  Many more don't have another option, and rely on the buses to get them to work and back home again to their families.  Taking the bus is cheaper, greener, and I'd even argue that it is often more convenient than driving--after all, nobody loves driving around for half an hour just to find a parking spot.  But I have to admit, when the fifty or so people on the city bus become wedged into the same unnerving rush hour traffic jam as the millions of people sitting one-per-car, I start to ask myself "what's the point?"  Unlike many cities, our subway system only serves a small geographic region of the urban community, and buses use the same streets and therefore face the same obstacles car drivers do.

It's a problem the Metro agency knows needs to be addressed.  And they are working on it, slowly but surely.  Reading the blogs of my NRDC colleagues does give me some hope (it sure is nice to work alongside a bunch of transit experts), but I still don't know what to make of the currently planned Metro projects.  This week, Metro extended the deadline for completing an Environmental Assessment of a project they call the Wilshire Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Project.  Although it's frustrating to have to keep waiting to learn the outcome of the study, I'm hoping the extra time spent means they're making a sincere and well-planned effort to find a viable and environmentally responsible solution to expanding public transit options along a heavily congested thoroughfare.

If implemented, the BRT project would open up a car-free corridor for buses along one of the most popular commute routes during the busiest hours of the day, using equipment and roads that are already in existence.  No tunneling, demolition, manufacturing, construction, or decades-long wait required to shorten my commute by half an hour or more each way.  That sure would make me happy.  I bet the other 1,092,553 people riding buses in LA each weekday could also benefit from projects like this.  Incentivizing this simplified commute option might lure even more people out of their cars and onto the bus.  Maybe those people will start to enjoy the feeling of being out and about with their fellow citizens again, and we will all be able to breathe a sigh of relief as single-occupant cars disappear from the road and traffic congestion starts to loosen up.  Just thinking of it makes me giddy.  I can feel that murky rush hour pall lifting already.