Riding the Metro

My worldwide traveling is mostly done for now. I'm back at home and catching up on things that I've let pile up. My next project is to start taking public transportation to work and blog about it so that anyone else who is curious about public transportation can see what its like. Between Cary and I, we pay around $400 a month in gas. That's just not acceptable.

So in the spirit of being environmentally and fiscally conscientious, I want to start taking the bus and subway/light rail to work. There is a Gold Line stop right by my office, which means if I can find a reasonable route from my apartment to downtown L.A.'s Union Station (where the Gold Line starts), it'll be a breeze.

So I started by going on line and trying to figure out how to do this. You'd think it was simple, what with the Internet being what it is, and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority having its own website and all. Think again.

I always see the Red Line bus on Wilshire going east and west, and found out that it goes to Union Station from near where I live. When I went to find out the schedule of pick ups at the Fairfax intersection, it told me that the Fairfax/Wilshire stop was located on Fairfax/Olympic. It even shows up on the map that it is on Fairfax/Wilshire, but calls it Fairfax/Olympic. It calls the stop the LA County Museum stop, but the museum is on Wilshire, so why oh why does it say Olympic?? Look:

Image from "trip planner" on the Metro website.

You can see on the map, the green "S" is where I want to leave from, but it tells me I have to go south to Olympic and Fairfax. That's a good 10 minute walk. This little project is already tacking on an extra 15 minutes to my commute each way. So another 10 minute walk to and from the Olympic stop is an extra 40 minutes total round trip.

I know there is a main stop with the double long buses at Fairfax and Wilshire, I've seen it with my own eyes. But the simple fact that it said something else on the website, was enough of a deterrent to hop in my car this morning and drive to work.

After all this contemplate, I was even more aggravated when I hit a detour on the 110 because there is a massive sink hole on the northbound side in South Pasadena - exactly where I needed to drive through.

This must have been a sign that I should have taken public transportation to work.

So, tomorrow morning, I will try again. I will pack my laptop, a small snack, a concealed weapon, my Nintendo DS, a small journal to write down any juicy observations, my make up so I can put my face on, my camera, and I will find the proper bus to get me to the Gold Line. This should be interesting...