Week 9 - Bus or Car - which one's better?

This week I set out to explore the public transportation systems of Los Angeles. I will be completely honest and admit that taking a bus trip sounded absolutely horrible to me. My prior experiences with the Santa Monica blue buses have included grumpy drivers, crazy passengers, getting off too early, getting off too late, and getting completely lost... and the Santa Monica blue bus I took only went from UCLA to Santa Monica and Venice and back! After my freshman year I begged my parents for a car and never used public transportation in Los Angles again until today.

With the many different types of public transportation, including the Metro Rail system, Metro Bus system, Dash, Flyaway, and Santa Monica Blue buses it's difficult to even decide which public transportation to use, let alone which lines to take. There's no doubt that prior research is necessary for first timers attempting to use public transportation in Los Angeles. It was only after taking Geography 151 that I realized why this transportation system was so difficult; as a city of the 4th Urban Revolution, Los Angeles has decentralized social institutions connected by decentralized transportation networks. Unlike cities of the 2nd and 3rd Urban Revolutions, Los Angeles doesn't have one core surrounded by a periphery, but instead has many different cores that specialize in different areas of interest. Also, we learned in lecture that twentieth-century labor is concentrated into office spaces more than factories. America's suburbs contain more office spaces than the cities, and therefore the workers in the post-metropolis go to different office spaces in different parts of the city (in contrast to the metropolis laborers that all went to the same few factories). Because of the multiplicity of cores in this decentralized city, public transportation is complex. The multiple different types of buses with their complicated line systems is the result of an attempt to cover a vast amount of travelers with destinations in all directions. If you add in the amount of traffic caused by individual cars, forming a decent public transportation system with the highways and roads that are currently in place is nearly impossible. All that being said, the buses of Los Angeles are pretty reliable. Nevertheless, I still prefer my car. Why?

Pros of taking the bus:
cheaper
safer
no parking hassles
gives you time to do other work

Cons of taking the bus:
Must remain punctual or might miss the bus
Possibility of unpleasant passengers and/or bus drivers
Have to walk some distance to the bus stops
lots of stops
confusion with changing lines/missing your stop
without traffic, taking my car is much faster

When there's no traffic, there's no doubt that taking a private car is much faster than using public transportation. The one question I didn't know, however, was which one was faster during Los Angeles's rush hour?

To test this, I had my friend Melissa drive her car while I took the bus to MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in downtown Los Angeles. We both left our apartment at the same time ( 4:50 pm) and said we would race each other to see who could get to MOCA first.

Melissa got a head start as she rushed passed me in her car while I had to walk to the bus stop at the corner of Hilgard and Le Conte. I then paid $1.50 and boarded the Metro Local Line 2 at 5:10. I luckily didn't have to transfer lines or buses and got off the same bus an hour and 33 minutes later (6:43pm) at the South Grand Los Angeles stop. Melissa had been waiting for me for 37 minutes.

Despite a few payment issues with passengers boarding at some stops, the other passengers were pleasant enough and the bus driver kept to himself. Regardless, it wasn't fun. The bus was crowded and I was forced to stand for most of the way, limiting my ability to do any homework or reading comfortably.

This experience confirmed what we learned in class about the importance of auto mobility in cities of the 4th revolution. You can get around Los Angeles without your own car, but it certainly isn't easy. The layout of the city with its multiple centers combined with the structure of the roadways creates an urban design that favors individual automobiles over public transportation. This poses a real problem for people that cannot afford their own cars and intensifies social difference in Los Angeles. Poorer people without the ability to purchase their own cars are limited in their mobility around Los Angeles, making it hard for them to leave their carceral enclaves.

Update: Week 10

Also, although the bus was cheap, it wasn't free. This is one of the results of a neoliberal city. As we learned in lecture, "in the 19th century up until the 1970s, urban infrastructure in the West was seen as centralized, unified and standardized. Infrastructure was a common good." Now that Los Angeles has been "neo-liberalized," "access to urban resources becomes dependent on a resident's ability to pay for them." Public and social goods (like public transportation) have been given a price tag.