Is this called "going brown?"
LA TImes business section profiles Cliff Moore. The Altadenan used to ride the bus for four hours every day to get to his job in Sun Valley and back. Now, in his own car, it takes 25 minutes.
Bus service is very Wonderland-like around here. When Altadenablog was young, lived in Arcadia and worked in the Wilshire District, a bus stopped in front of his apartment, took him to El Monte where he’d hop an express bus, and it dropped him in front of his office, 75 minutes total time, tops.
But, when we were older, lived in West Pasadena and worked downtown — a considerably shorter distance — it would’ve taken us 25 minutes just to hike to the bus stop. Spending an hour just on foot for the commute seemed like diminishing returns to us. Driving one way took 45 minutes to an hour total.
Something else for the mix …
michele Zack said…
It is the simplist thing that transportation planners in LA seem not to get or maybe just don’t have the ability/will/money to achieve: mass public transit has to be convenient and save time in order to be successful. Anyone who has lived in or visited places all over the rest of the country and world where these two requirements have been met wonders why we’ve done such a poor job here.
The government pours zilions into roads that serve private interests (all of us in our cars and commerical trucks) yet doesn’t want to spend on or subsidize mass transit which would benefit society as a whole. I suspect it is because they think only poor people, who possibly don’t vote, will be the beneficiaries and so their patronage won’t keep them in power.
Monday, May 12, 2008 at 09:03 AM