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I know its redundent but FUCK Los Angeles Public Transportation!!!
Serious, we have one of the largest rail networks in the WORLD and yet the bus system to link up with the rails is terrifying heartless and unreliable. Even the newspaper commented that trying to get across town can "leave commuters in tears" and though I've been doing it for well over 6 years now, I still get fucked up and frustrated waiting hours for buses.
at least every other week I get basically stranded hours across town waiting for a connecting bus to show, and what sucks is they are often ridiculously late and sometimes simply DO NOT SHOW UP!! It is soul crushing to try to get to places on time, you have to leave hours early, and stand around waiting forever forever forever. Its great practice for Ethiopia ;) LA, wake up. How do you expect to survive global warming if you do not prioritize public transportation? How will people get out of their 10 million cars in LA county and ride the rails if there is no bus to get there? |
 The history of LA public transportion lies in a junk yard. |
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Build and Destroy, thats all Babylon knows.. |
i thought this was going to be about sex on trains, but shit, hellay is a car town-- all of california is except maybe san francisco? anyway, get yourself a horseless carriage mang.
 alternatively, move to a fully civilized city. i love the dc metro. |
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been there, done that. I've had my scraper sittin on chrome, subs sounding like a gorrila tryin to get outta the trunk, diggin the scene.. but then I retired that shit in a wave of mushroom induced, anti-materialist diehardism..  however 6 months ago I was finally breaking down to get one, but then all my funding dried up, so I'm back on the original plan. However, honestly, I don't even want a car, I just want a few buses to show up less than fashionably late. And SF has a remarkble transportation network with only ONE flaw, it is more ridiculously expensive then LA's is ridiculously inefficient.. |
move to new york. you can get a bus to go anywhere. hellay seems to be an ultraviolent place-- i like the beaches, but i would never wanna live there. well maybe in some pockets but not the city at large. still, everyone is an actor-- and HORRIBLE freeways-- GTFO for your own sake.
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been on that scheme for well over 9 years now, I woulda been in Ityopya but the world recession voided the viability of my meal ticket :/ but I will miss LA when I'm gone, it is a weird place that will swallow your soul for no particular reason, and you will never escape its clutchs, swearing all along you're gonna leave but truly loving the drama too much to fathom ever doing so.. what would I do without trendy veganism, terrifying traffic, Nigeria level govt corruption, police brutality and blinding gang violence? |
Sounds like LA could do with these. Get the out of work immigrants to pull them. Whip them if they're too slow.
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new york city has the best public transportation system of all time, period.
i love los angeles though. it's fucking evil. |
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spot on.  |
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damn dood...lol propzz for goin' through with that shit. |
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give thanks. I just had an Malcom X epiphany moment with my head in the toilet and realized that I was "working for my car" so I gave it up cold turkey and hopped on the bus. Six years later I honestly don't even want a car, just for a few buses to show up on time from time to time.. but I did have a car and all that nonsense, it had shinny chrome rims, bumpin woofers, leather interior and was always polished, this is LA, you have to have your car with style or you might as well not even have one ;) |
i used to have legs but i realized they required calories so i cut them off. now all i hope for is for handicap ramps at street crossings.
ha ha ok, sorry for the teasing. i had no car in DC (only a zipcar membership), but living in the southwest without one would be crippling. LA is so fucking big, i can't imagine the pain of going around without wheels. are there buses to the beach? fuck your vanity, get yourself a rusty clunker, and help the american dream of choking the planet with our exhaust fumes. eh, holy fuck, time to get on the tv. |
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if you want to go to the playa it is quite the excursion on the bus, I work there and it takes a while. That is precisely the problem with MTA here in LA, this city is literally vast. Other cities are dwarfed by us in terms of square miles.. To go from Long Beach to Downtown is like going from Bronx to the burbs, NYC transport in actuality is not as good as LA in this regard, MTA here in LA is enormous. That is why it takes to so so so long to get places, because in LA we travel long distances from place to place, the average american drives 40 miles a day. The average person in LA probably drives twice that, and just going out for a night or to an afternoon gathering perhaps could tripple that. I have easily put 300 miles in a single day just driving around to a few places here in LA to catch some cool happenings. I have even covered over a 100 miles in a day on the Metro alone!! yr right.. game is on, got to see this super hyped up US vs UK match, though honestly, half of the US team are from England.. I don't understand the 21st century World Cup teams, they are all far to internationalized to honestly call them "American" or "English" or "Argentinian" because they import players worldwide like US baseball swallows up Latinos.. |
move away from the LA area asap. that is the only smart thing that can be done in your situation.
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true. but this is less a thread about my own personal gripes as much as a place to discuss the pitfalls of LA public transport and perhaps those of other systems, and also the successes. For example, if you wanna get around downtown, hollywood, the westside or the valley then MTA is actually not that bad, even can beat traffic. Its the eastside and the southbay that are not connected at all, and MTA critically neglects these areas, as well as overall neglecting the necessary amount of buses. But I believe this is a funding issue, and I also do not know of ANY public transportation system in the world that supports itself, most like MTA here are subsidized as much as 90%. It all comes down to priorities and in Los Angeles, Metro also has to manage the roadways and in reality most Angelinos want the money invested there.. What are the public transportation systems like in your respective cities/areas? |
dear suchfriends,
time is short, but I would like to purchase for you a tasty cold beverage. bradders is invited too. yr pal, spacerock ps: I own a car. |
 Pacific Electric map, 1949 Are you using the buses to get across L.A. or to get to a railway station to get the train across L.A.? The latter method is known as a 'feeder' system and really shouldn't be that hard to organize. |
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if you noticed the redcar lines are parallel to the current Blue and Green lines, which I am critically dependent on.. yes, a feeder system seems easy to negotiate on paper, but the LA city planners and the MTA authority are not very bright in this regard. Who actually rides a decent public system out there? Anyone boardies have success? |
when i lived in DC i was a metro-only person. walk to metro, shuttle bus to school. then metro to all my city errands-- rarely i would catch a bus transfer for a place out of the way. i had a zipcar membership but i never needed it. i would take cabs at night, say, after drinking till 4am. a few times i rented a car to get out of town, always got good deals. i used my bike a lot too, but dc drivers are aware of bicycles in a way that drivers in other towns aren't-- in albuquerque people get run over a lot. and walking was a pleasure, always something to see on the way. some people bitch about the lack of freeways inside dc but it's a blessing.
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that sounds like paradise compared to LA, as I said, our city is simply overwhelming in size.. for example, when I took the MTA green/Blue line and a few connecting buses to church yesterday, it was the same distance as traveling from DC across to Baltimore!!! |
dc-baltimore had a nice little commuter train, you could get monthly tickets.
yes, living in the city was good, but in the dc suburbs you MUST have a car or you're really fucked. there's over half million people in the city and about 5 million people in the suburbs. i haaaaaate the suburbs. they are horrible, sterile, dull, impersonal, and confining (to the house/office/car/mall). walking in the street seeing a bunch of strangers is delicious-- every face a story. |
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to !@#$%! again.
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As Satan noted, NYC's system is pretty darn good. I do NOT drive in the city if at all possible. 20 min walk to the train and 45 on the train gets me into the city. From there you can get pretty much anywhere. |
Melbourne doesn't have a metro, just an extensive commuter train network with railway lines radiating out from a city centre terminal to and through the suburbs to a rural-ish fringe. 20-45 miles away from the city centre in Ye Olde measurements, longest take an hour.
Frequency is good in the morning and evening peaks, 15-10 or less minutes, afternoons and nights can be 20-40 minutes, on Sundays its practically dead and finishes too early.  In addition to that scheduling problem it overall isn't working too good because they've been neglecting maintenance and upgrades and new lines for about 40 years, now with a surge in patronage it barely copes. However in that same time frame they managed to build 10 freeways, and now want to build even more some of absolute monstrous proportions  Then there are trams in the inner area, they're good but could do with some lines crossing them. You can get to/from the city centre to a lot of places, but suppose you're wanting to get across?  Buses routes can range from good to very shonky. Also depends on how many service a train stations since they're mainly geared towards a feeder. I can get a bus that circulates through the local neighbourhoods and be at the train station in 5 minutes or walk via a bike trail in 20 minutes, its got a reasonable frequency in the morning and evenings but only once an hour during the day and finishes at 7:30pm, finishes at noon on a Saturday, doesn't run at all on a Sunday. So overall, it is okay but not good and has problems that are not inherent to infrastructure but due to policy decisions and (mis)management. |
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that was a fascinating lesson on your local system, much thanks for the contribution, all these slackers (myself included) could learn how to be more collaborative. |
Anchorage's bus system is a joke. They run very infrequently and make no effort to connect. You have to go to one of three hubs. Unless you only need to take one bus, it will take you hours to get anywhere.
And, busses in general suck donkey meat. I lived in Fort Lee and the express bus was the last stop before NYC but the local was the first stop. If I made the express, probably 20 minutes. Local, close to an hour. And then, on the way home, I couldn't get the express so another hour to get home. And people stopping the bus every single fucking block! Would it really kill you to walk a block? I don't think I've ever been closer to suicide than on that bus. |
Yes buses are the least form of public transportation, should be used for the suburban neighbourhood commute and hops in between places - not your primary traveling.
Various kinds of rail should do that. |
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I know what you mean.. "nobody says, anything on buses and thats why people kill themselves!" |
Oh I forgot another picture, graph showing how much patronage has gone up in the last couple years
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SFAD: CLEAR YO PMZ, YO.
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have you tried the LA subway?
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thats a redundant question. Of course I ride the subway, but only when I am in Hollywood where it runs :) I often have to ride ALL the trains, green to blue to red (subway) to gold. |
I did not know where the subway actually ran.
hell, I was shocked a decade ago when I found out it existed! |
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most people in LA have no idea. I just took my homegirl on it for the first time ever for her last friday when we went to see deftones@ Jimmy Kimmel. It is a great system, a bit expensive to build (something like a $1billion per mile) but a trip none-the-less.. LA has everything, we just hide a lot of the dope shit. The subway runs from Union Station in downtown to the North end of the Valley and also to the Mid-Wilshire area downtown.. the first time I rode it I got all confused when I came out to the street, I had no idea which way was up down, east west.. |
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Pfft! Hell, I do that everytime I get out of the subway in NYC unless its a stop I use frequently--which isn't too many. Its also challenging to find the PATH stations--9th st is very well hidden. |
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