Tag Archives: Public transportation

Living in L.A. Without a Car: Airport Connections — and Connecting

photo by Victor L Antunez

I love cities where the urban planners have had the foresight to make the airport fairly painless to get to (thinking of Heathrow in London, right away). Believe me, this is not usually the case, especially in the U.S., what with our still crazy dependence on the private automobile making us anything but independent (the very thing it was supposed to do, for all of us, was to make us our own sovereign masters of travel. But don’t get me started. . .)

I recently took a trip from LA to New York, and since it was relatively last minute, the best deals were from LAX (which I try to avoid) even though I live much closer to that easy Burbank Airport. So that was not an option this time.

This post would be more accurately described as the various ways to get to and from the airport, and certainly not specific to car-free folks – cause you’d have to be crazy to drive yourself to the airport for anything other than a weekend getaway. Right? Or am I just crazy, not realizing that people throw good money away on long-term parking fees that add up really fast?

Maybe they do. So OK, then perhaps this will be enlightening, or maybe it won’t.

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I was gone for 20 days. So if I drove myself, I’d have that convenience, perhaps, and let’s just estimate the long term parking charge at $6/day, so that would cost $180, plus gas and whatever your time is worth.

I’m sure there are people who do this and don’t blink an eye. I’m not one of them.

The other ways I know of to get to the airport include 1) asking friends for a ride 2) taking a cab 3) taking one of the shuttle services 4) taking public transport.

This trip my plane was wheels up at 6:15 a.m., so I didn’t even consider asking a friend for a lift. I live in the close-in Valley, so I figured a cab would probably be somewhere in the $80-100 range, again, not really what I wanted to pay for this.

I generally dislike the shuttle services – because they pick you up so far ahead of time – this trip because of the early early hour there was no viable public transportation option (unless I wanted to go very late the night before, and stay overnight waiting for my plane – ummm, no thanks.)

So I did take Super Shuttle – they picked me up at 3:35 a.m. for that 6:15 flight. It cost about $38, which included a 10% tip and a 10% discount (I found a discount code on the internets that actually worked). Oddly, there was no traffic on the 405 at that hour so we got there in about half an hour – before even the TSA is open. I always assumed they were there 24 hours a day, but apparently not.

Coming back, I was able to make use of my preferred method – FlyAway Bus, Red Line Subway, Orange Line Bus. It cost $10. I took the FlyAway from LAX to Union Station, the Red Line subway all the way to North Hollywood, and the Orange Line Busline one stop to Laurel Canyon, which is about 2 + blocks from my house.

Prior to leaving NYC, my father asked me, if cost wasn’t an option, wouldn’t you rather just take a car? (As in, I think he meant, a taxi) I had to think, would I? I think no, not really. Because it’s not all about the cost. It’s about the ability to actually do this kind of a trip using public transportation options. Since I’m a writer, I really see the value in the “closeness” to my fellow passengers — because I don’t experience too much of anything new in a closed up car all by myself. The subway is a never-ending panorama of life in the Big Orange, including its ugliness and unconventionality. I’m constantly striving to fill up that depleting well inside. Being an integral part of the city (and immersed in it) is a way to make that happen.

Reinventing Los Angeles: Water and Transport

Los Angeles City Hall. Photo by Jimbolaya

Earlier today I saw a Facebook post warning about traffic jams on our freeways as a result of a messy oil tanker truck fire.

I then went to sigalert.com to verify this information and I realized I hadn’t gone to this site since I gave up my car in June. There was no need for it; bicyclists are not usually subject to traffic jams, and certainly not traffic jams on freeways.

In the attached article, writer Jeff Turrentine remarks on his culture shock moving from Brooklyn to L.A., and on the overwhelming insertion of automobile life into almost every aspect of how we go about our days here in Los Angeles. I recently spent a month in New Orleans, and upon returning, I also was surprised at how easily I became aware of the tremendous assault on the environment (and Southern California is truly a beautiful environment) the “car” has. From noise, to pollution, to vast amounts of space necessary for roads and parking lots, etc., it’s almost as if we exist to serve this status quo of machinery.

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In addition to the Southern California water situation (in a nutshell, we don’t have any, it comes from elsewhere) and plans to make that more sustainable, he talks about the resurgence of projects in public transportation, biking and walking infrastructure and what has had to happen politically to get there. A lot of the programs, such as the extension of the Purple Line Subway to UCLA, have a completion date of 2035, when I, gulp, if I live that long, will be 80. But heck, I see people much older than that riding the subway. So I’m looking forward to it.

Michael Woo, my former L.A. City Councilperson and current dean of the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona said this about the reluctance of Inland Empire City Fathers and Mothers to the idea of public transit/density issues: “Many of them believed that low-density living, automobile dependence, a culture based on private backyards instead of public open spaces simply reflected the L.A. version of the American Dream. They were reluctant to embrace transit or density as part of the solution. To them it all just seemed like going backward.”

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That says a lot about why things evolved the way they did. Still, as even car and backyard lovers don’t like sitting in gridlock much at all, everyone realizes some things must change, and we’ve finally found that there’s political will here to do it (and that will extends into Republican Orange County, as well as that Inland Empire). The end result will be a much more livable Southern California, perhaps more garden-like, as the earlier boosters liked to claim.

Now if they could just do something about that pesky seismic problem. . .

Enjoying Los Angeles Arts and Culture Without a Car

La Cienega/Jefferson Station on the Expo Line

Step-by-step intrux on how to: How to Enjoy L.A. Arts and Culture Without a Car.

Thoroughly enjoyed this enlightening and entertaining story by Alissa Walker in the L.A. Weekly blog. It’s really a blog post about a book, Car Free Los Angeles and Southern California, by Nathan Landau, a transit planner.

Walker, who navigates L.A. every day car free, writes about Landau’s ideas as how they work for a skeptical resident as well as someone visiting or a casual tourist. Both authors emphasize how Los Angeles public transportation has and is being improved, seemingly on a monthly basis — for instance, this week (on Saturday, April 28) the Expo Line light rail opens. Not only will this be the first light rail link to the west side in 50 years, it will also take one to museums in Exposition Park and some nice restaurants in Culver City.

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I recently had the opportunity to show my brother and his family some sights of L.A. in one day – and we did make use of the Red Line subway for part of the trip. Sightseeing Goal: Staples Center. We didn’t need to park downtown, and we didn’t need to get on the Hollywood Freeway. That in itself, I’m sure, lowered my blood pressure a few points. Continue reading →

Carfree Week Wrapup

This is my car, a 2005 Scion Xa, parked in Shorewood on a visit

My one week long Carfree experiment is over today.

Honestly, it wasn’t all that much of an adventure, and there wasn’t any palpable angst involved. Meaning: it was really easy to not use a car for a week.

Why did I do it?

It’s a recommended activity in Chris Balish’s book “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car”, which I’ve been studying, wondering if I could really live in Los Angeles without one.

The answer is probably yes. I probably could, in fact with my current conditions for work (self-employed at home) and social engagements (so far I haven’t found any not within walk, bike, bus, train or taxi parameters) lend themselves well to not owning a car.
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Will I go carless? I don’t know. I love the idea of saving $6,000 a year (that’s what the Edmunds website true cost to own tells me I’m spending on the car I actually own) and I love the idea of walking and riding my bike a lot, and I also love the idea of reducing my carbon footprint and actually walking the enviro walk, so to speak, trying to do something more than recycle my soda cans.

And can we talk parking? I have never enjoyed driving all that much, but parking is an activity I absolutely loathe.

But it’s interesting. It’s the social thing. I don’t want to become a social pariah (more than I already am!). When you mention the very idea to people, they become confused, it really doesn’t register in L.A. You get questions like, “oh, your car is in the shop?” “If you didn’t have a car, how would you get anywhere, how would you do anything, how would you get food?” Etc. It’s true, many ~~white~~ people have never been on public transportation and have no idea how to go about it. Also, walkers in L.A., except in a few neighborhoods, can be few and far between, so you do feel exposed and vulnerable.

I was telling a friend last night about my carfree week when he realized I had ridden my bike to the restaurant where we met. It was like it didn’t compute at all, like why would a sane person do such a thing?

Why indeed?

Alfred W. McCoy: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025

LINK TO: Alfred W. McCoy: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025.

McCoy’s piece is well worth reading. It’s depressing, quite frankly, and was unsure about reposting it here, after all, it is the holiday season, and we’re supposed to be cheery and rosy-cheeked and happy and gay and all that.

Basically, in the piece, McCoy gives a few scenarios about how the end game of American dominion might/will come to an end, and quicker than we thought. Not that this is news, but still it’s like a slap in the face.

I remember my first encounter with the concepts of Peak Oil in the 90s, and walking around shell-shocked for a few days. But after that, I consciously thought about my own fuel use, and how I could reduce it if not eliminate it. A decade later, I have a very fuel-efficient car (OK, it’s not a hybrid, that’s the next car if indeed there is a next car) which I try to use only judiciously (I work from a home office). I’ve learned to love walking, biking and public transport.

Just a small illustration of change that can come internally, then builds like a wave when more and more people get the message. I’m still hopeful that Americans can somehow avoid the most horrifying of these scenarios – but it just so often seems like we’re walking off that cliff, eyes wide open, for some reason refusing to see what’s apparent to the rest of the world.

Oh, Happy Tuesday! And It’s Pearl Harbor Day – Remembering you.

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