Having grown up in Los Angeles, a city of freeways and disorganized, spotty public transit has given me a fascination with how transit systems work. Very soon after gas hit its all-time high recently (peaking at nearly $4.75 a gallon in most of L.A.!), I decided to be adventurous and try to save some dough. I bought myself a Metro Day Pass, and headed out to see what the world looked like from the inside of one of those big orange buses lumbering all over town--something Southern California suburban dwellers never do, according to the legends, anyway.
Real Life, on the other hand, is different. Los Angeles suburbanites can and DO take public transit, despite Metro's rather haphazard bus network. Despite gas dropping back to semi-reasonable levels, I am now a converted transit rider, and my urban infrastructure obsession took its next turn, from freeways, interstates and interchanges, on to the ways to move people around who do not have cars, or choose not to drive them. Yes, I guess it is an obsession when I can close my eyes and tell what make and model of bus I am riding from the sound of the engine. ;-)
But it was not the buses that truly caught my interest that day that I ventured out into the big scary city without the safe hideaway of my car. It was the fast, sleek, smooth-riding Metro Gold Line--14 miles of light-rail heaven.
I never liked trains much before that day. Interesting.
Take a ride on the Windrider. You'll like it. ;-)
--Wenda
