By virtually any measure, Cliff Moore has a great commute. The kind of commute, I suspect, many of you would dearly love to have.
Moore lives in Altadena and works in Sun Valley, where he runs a real estate records library. On most days, he can leave home about 7:30 in the morning and make it to work in 25 minutes. That's a little quicker than the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
But Moore, 53, is not the happiest of campers these days. Why? He'd rather take the bus.
About five years ago, Moore got rid of his last car -- it kept breaking down -- and gave himself over to the bus, traveling about two hours each way to work. But when the MTA changed one of its routes and made the trip a little longer and more unpredictable, Moore used the $6,000 he had saved by riding the bus to purchase a 1995 BMW, thereby chopping his commute by 95 minutes.
"I'm not fond of driving," Moore says, "but if I'm going to drive, this is the car I'm going to drive."
Now that's exactly the kind of ad I would like to see on the side of a bus.
I like Moore's tale for two reasons: Anyone who can stand riding the bus four hours each day is inherently interesting. And, it also says something about how difficult it is in this sprawling region to move people from suburb to suburb on mass transit.
In fact, difficult enough that Moore offered to show Road Sage readers. So, on a recent morning, I joined Moore at the corner of Fair Oaks and Las Flores in Altadena. It was 6 a.m. and Moore already had doubts that he'd make it to work by his 8 a.m. start time.
"My whole day is contingent on that first bus," he said. "That first bus is late and I'm late."
But the first bus, the 260, was nowhere in sight. "The bus driver is up there taking a smoke break," muttered John Clark, a rider about to embark on a two-hour commute to the Westside via a bus, two trains and another bus.
At 6:20 a.m., the 260 rolled up, a few minutes after Moore needed it to be there. The smell of cigarettes lingered, but it's always best not to assign too much blame for the cornucopia of odors offered up by local buses.
Anyway, we were on our way.
The ride was actually, and sadly, uneventful from there (it helped that I gave up liquids starting the night before). We transferred to an express bus in downtown Pasadena, switched to another express bus in Glendale and then in Sun Valley hopped on a local bus that deposited us in front of Moore's office at 8:01.
