Yes, Virginia, it’s Easy and Cheap to take Public Transportation from the Valley to Long Beach


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Last Thursday, I had a lunch date with my friend and colleague Krys Grondorf, down at a place in Belmont Shore (Open Sesame) which is near where she lives. Time not being an issue, I decided to take the train options we have in Los Angeles to get to Long Beach, and document that trip for you here on the blog.

The trip involved two buses and two trains. It’s a distance of about 40 miles or so, according to calculations. I live in Valley Village, about a mile from the end of the Red Line Subway in North Hollywood. So I took the Orange Line (an express bus line that operates like a train, dedicated roadway with few stops) the one stop from Laurel Canyon to the North Hollywood Station.

From there, I took the Red Line Subway through Universal City, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Koreatown, etc. and got off at 7th Street/Metro Center, where I transferred to the Blue Line light rail.

The Blue Line runs mainly directly south after going east along Washington for a short distance just south of downtown L.A. It follows the previous right-of-way of the famous Pacific Electric Railway (red cars) which was dismantled after WW II – and then rebuilt in the 90s. I got off at the Long Beach Transit Mall, the end of the line, a couple of blocks from the ocean. I still had to take a bus, probably about 2 miles, to Belmont Shore. It was Passport Bus A or D, which I picked up around the corner from the Transit Mall.

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Trip Time: about 2 hours each way

Cost: Each leg of the metro cost $1.50, debited from my TAP card. So that part of the trip cost $9.00, round trip. The bus in Long Beach was $1.25 each way, so the total cost of this trip was $11.50. According to the Trip Planner function on the Metro Website, the driving cost (round trip) would be $41.56 (which doesn’t include any parking fees that might be added). And actually, I think I could have used some kind of transfer for the Long Beach bus — but I didn’t know how to do that, so it would have been less than that $11.50.

So, it’s definitely doable. Would I do it every day? Hell, no. I did get a lot of reading done, and I did all my email and calls on the smart phone on the Blue Line. The nicest thing was the zero stress, and seeing parts of the city I don’t ever get a chance to see when driving. Oh, and there was a hooker on the Blue Line coming back, which was entertaining in its own way.

First, let me apologize about the crappy video below. I’m still learning how to use the smart phone video app, and the worst part about it is in bright daylight you can’t really see the image on the screen, so you’re pretty much shooting blind. Sorry about the last shot in Long Beach, I must’ve turned the camera off before I thought I did, and heaven knows why I turned the phone upside down. Ooops.

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