Dateline>City of Angels

This week I had an appointment with some musty old manuscripts in the Rare Books Dept. of the Los Angeles Central Library, located downtown at 5th and Flower. Unlike some respected fellow bloggers who enjoy using mass transit to buzz about the metro area, I’ve always been an unrepentant disciple of Southern California’s automotive cult.

The one exception was a few years ago when I took the daily Metro to a PR job in Orange County. I never could get used to it. All day long, simply knowing my car was 50 miles away in my garage produced roughly the same jitters smokers experience when going cold turkey.

But with my last field trip to the Central Library about a month ago racking up a fairly hefty parking tab, I decided it was time to face my irrational anxieties and give the MTA another try. After all, that’s what any socially conscious Angeleno is expected to do nowadays, right?

Noble intentions notwithstanding, doing my part for a better L.A. turned out to be quite an adventure in true grit. Rather than recount the entire escapade in minute detail, let me simply present the highlights in plus and minus form, starting with the latter…

In the Minus Column…

1. The Planning. Nifty as the online MTA Trip Planner seems, it continually spit out bus information not for the L.A. Central Library, but for a similar address across town in East Los Angeles. After several tries, I finally got it to suggest a bus route to where I really wanted to go — but the final stop was a full seven blocks away from the library. Across the 110 freeway. Mostly uphill. With virtually no safe pedestrian access.

2. The Packing. Being away from the car for a day also demands some forethought — and a good backpack. Camera, computer, files, research equipment and sundry personal items are not light. Being new to this, I didn’t even consider the books I’d be taking home from the library. That pack got very heavy by the end of the day. Especially when walking between bus stops.

3. The Parking. Memo to urban planners: City lots near major bus routes do little to encourage park-and-riders like myself when there’s a 2-hour limit on leaving the car there. (Yes, I suppose I could ride my bike to the bus stop, but I’d rather show up to my engagements appearing and smelling reasonably fresh and clean.)

4. The Ambiance. Let’s just say I spent considerable time walking through alleys and hanging out at street corners filled with the sort of unsavory characters that I’m sure my mother (and the police) would advise keeping at a safe distance.

5. The Lost Time. Honestly, I could have made the entire round trip by car in about 1/3 of the time — and used the countless wasted minutes a lot more productively.

In the Plus Column…

1. The Phone Lady. The extremely pleasant staff person on the MTA 800 line was able to suggest a much more sensible route than their Website, depositing me within a block of the library. (Memo to MTA: Your human face is fantastic. Your web interface still has a few kinks.)

2. The Bus Driver. Clearly recognizing me as a novice rider, he went out of his way to welcome me aboard, direct me, and make my commute enjoyable. Again, excellent customer service.

3. The Chuckles. Apparently also sensing my out-of-place demeanor while waiting for a connection, a neighborhood passerby with two kids in tow offered me her street-smart advice: “Boy, you need to find yourself a job, get a car, and stop hanging around waiting for buses.”

4. The Savings. According to MTA computations, I saved well over $30 in parking, fuel and related automotive costs.

5. The Sightseeing. Walking from place to place offered some terrific glimpses of the downtown core and and its breathtaking architecture.

6. The Smug Feeling. Yep, there’s nothing like the satisfaction of joining today’s cosmopolitan elite by doing my share to ease congestion and fight so-called green-house gases.

Worth the Trade-Off?

So, would I do it again? Maybe, provided: (a) I had an entire day to kill, (b) I were in a touristy mood, and (c) the weather forecast didn’t include an impending downpour or 90-degree heat.

Let’s be real. Despite all the public service campaigns depicting smiling, progressive young professionals happily trading their cars for mass transit, few on the bus fall into that category. We can moralize and rally against our car culture all we want, but we can’t escape the sad truth. For most of us average commuters — especially business people with precious little time to spare — the “cure” that our city officials are currently prescribing for traffic congestion is still worse than the disease.