LA public transport: Where social problems meet trains and cars

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The man with the children's bicycle, standing at the bus stop next to the Japanese luxury restaurant Nabu – Ferraris and Range Rovers are a common sight here – in Malibu, looks quite worn out. He asks the bus driver to load his bike onto the front, as is usual here, which he does without complaint. Then he gets on and walks through the bus to beg for fare money. It takes maybe 30 seconds until he has it together. One of the mild donors receives a piece of hashish from the man, who thanks him kindly.

Then the man sits down a few rows in front of me and begins to take off his foot coverings. For the next quarter of an hour of the ride along the Pacific Coast Highway, he spends his time creaming his feet with something that reminds me of German mountain pine ointment. The whole bus stinks of it by the time most passengers get off in Santa Monica later.

Prefer to be stuck in traffic

Welcome to the madness of public transport in Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the United States. Anyone accustomed to public transport from Germany, or even just from New York or Chicago, will quickly be surprised by nothing here. It is a system where an important route like the E Line of Los Angeles Metro Rail attracts no more than 50,000 passengers on weekdays (for comparison: the U2 in much smaller Hamburg has almost double the passenger volume on its main section) and where an employee in a sports store tells me about the fulfillment of his dream of finally being able to get stuck in traffic on his way to work in his own car. He is so happy to have finally escaped "this shit" that Los Angeles Metro offers, he says triumphantly with a proud look.

At first glance, the offerings of the various public transport sectors in Los Angeles don't look bad. Granted, on the map of this urban giant, where one place seamlessly merges into the next, the public transport map shows numerous white spaces. Especially when you consider that before World War II, one of the largest (if not the largest) streetcar and Interurban networks in the world was located here. Then many lines were replaced by buses (wonderfully depicted in the film „Who Framed Roger Rabbit“) and since then the city has been trying to recapture past passenger transport successes with a mix of buses, the aforementioned light rail lines plus two "real" subway routes and a commuter train network (Metrolink).

Through the giant network for $1.75

This is only achieved with moderate success. Most recently, a new "Regional Connector" was built in Downtown L.A.. It has become gorgeous if you stay away from Skid Row – for a lot of money, which is intended to better connect the Metro Rail lines in the city center. However, this did not lead to a massive increase in passenger numbers. One of the problems is the spaces of fear that the public transport system provides. The traditionally liberal administration, faced with drug addicts and the homeless, has indeed realized that it makes sense to send more police (again) into the underground, and also operates its own security forces (who, however, are more likely to argue than intervene). But what good is it if you feel practically alone even at the Hollywood Boulevard stations? Or if at the Grand Ave Arts / Bunker Hill station you are forced to take one of the many elevators that seem to have regular residents. At least there is always beautiful classical music playing here now for calming purposes.

But back to the positive: The public transport system in Los Angeles, if you dare to venture into it, also has its advantages for tourists or business visitors. First, there is the extremely low price, which is because, according to statistics, most passengers earn less than $50,000 a year. A mere 1.75 dollars per ticket, which can be paid via "TAP" NFC card or – much easier – "TAP" app or Apple Wallet. For this price, you can travel in this gigantic system for almost any length of time, and transfers to other means of transport are possible for two hours. But many passengers don't even pay this cheap price. They skip the often poorly protected platform barriers. When Los Angeles Metro decided to improve the system's safety (and revenue) through „Tap-to-Exit“, i.e., the obligation to "tap out" additionally at the end of the journey, this caused protests. The fire department eventually stopped the "pilot" because it was allegedly too dangerous in case of fires. (Result: Crime increased again.) Ergo: It's hard to imagine a more user-friendly public transport system.

Protests in Beverly Hills

Then there is the network itself. As mentioned, it is actually far too small for the size of the region. But it is growing despite all the problems. If you are accommodated in Downtown, for example, you can easily take Line B to Hollywood, for example, to see the "Walk of Fame" or the Universal Studios City Walk. Soon, Line D will also go to the Westside. The D Line Subway Extension Project runs along parts of Wilshire Boulevard and will take the subway to Beverly Hills for the first time. In parts, there were protests initially, as it is always feared that public transport could also bring unwanted people into rich (er) areas. Work was also done on airport access. Line K is now routed via the newly opened LAX/Metro Transit Center, where shuttle buses currently run to the airport. Next year an automated rubber-tired train (Los Angeles Airport Automated People Mover, LAX APM) will operate, which is intended to improve connectivity and directly serve various areas of the airport.

However, there is still a central problem: getting to LAX/Metro Transit Center in the first place. Let's take our Downtown example. You are staying opposite the Disney Concert Hall in one of the chic new hotels and want – as crazy as it sounds – to take public transport to the airport. For this – if you would rather not take a bus that might get stuck in traffic forever – you first take Line E and travel to Expo/Crenshaw in Jefferson Park. According to the timetable, this alone takes 23 minutes, and on weekdays, the light rail trains run every 8 minutes at the densest intervals. You immediately notice two issues: Firstly, the train is not designed for your luggage, and secondly, it does not run on its own dedicated track, as one would expect from a rail-based public transport system for mass transit.

Trains have to wait

This means: the train still frequently waits at traffic lights or level crossings like a tram, even though the city has been trying to reduce these braking zones for years. Once you are at Expo/Crenshaw, you have to walk a bit to transfer from the above-ground station of Line E to the K Line, which runs underground here (also consisting of light rail trains). According to the timetable, this is another 23 minutes to the (almost too) generously expanded airport transfer station LAX/Metro Transit Center.

If the aforementioned LAX APM already existed, you could now transfer to it, but instead, only the shuttle bus currently runs. Result: If you're lucky, you'll complete the route in about an hour and 15 minutes. Unfortunately, completely absurd: The direct bus, which is still running, takes only 52 minutes from Union Station, including feeder traffic (Los Angeles' main train station can be reached from Downtown by subway line B), in the best-case scenario according to the timetable.

The man with the corona mask

The billion-dollar investment without time savings (depending on where you come from, of course) highlights the traffic problems of this city like a magnifying glass: the administration always tries, but then doesn't want to take the final step, whether out of fear of protests from powerful lobby groups or for ideological reasons. For the ordinary citizen, everything ultimately remains the same: they try to get out of public transport as soon as possible and continue to clog the streets. The private car feels safer and more comfortable than the public transport madness. Alternatively, one can afford a vehicle from Uber or Lyft (although finding them at the airport, the system is called "LAX-it", is a real catastrophe) or board the increasingly available autonomous Waymo vehicles from the Google subsidiary of the same name. It's enough to make you tear your hair out in this wonderfully crazy concrete desert, surrounded by mountains and forests that magically appear depending on the weather, when they don't start burning again at the "Wildland-Urban-Interface".

As I take the subway one last time shortly before my departure to see the Metrolink commuter trains at the beautifully preserved Union Station in Mission Revival style, I have a final, striking L.A. public transport experience. A homeless man, relaxing at the end of the car, urgently warns me about a person wearing a COVID-19 mask who doesn't look like they're concerned about their personal health. "He's going to rob you in a minute, brother." I thank him profusely and quickly make my escape.

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