Taken for a ride

Welcome aboard Metro -- the buses and trains that are boarded 1.4 million times every weekday. Once on board, you'll probably have to stand in the aisle, because thousands more riders have already crowded ahead of you. Daily boardings on Metro -- L.A. County's principal mass-transit system -- are rebounding after a 20-year dip. Passenger loads on commuter rail are up an average of 15% in 2008, while bus ridership has risen 8%. The new riders are largely commuters priced out of their cars by $4-a-gallon gas, according to news reports, but increasing numbers of seniors and young adults are riding Metro for the same reason.

There are more riders in suits on the trains and the subway too, and some with laptops. But transit riders in Los Angeles remain mostly people of color and people with blue-collar jobs. And you'll find them mainly on the brutally overcrowded buses of the shiny Metro fleet that run on Western Avenue and Pico and Sunset boulevards. That's been my experience as a transit-dependent rider -- lots of new rolling stock in candy colors and lots more passengers pressed into thin, hard seats with only the nap of the fabric between them and molded steel. When those uncomfortable seats are gone, a swaying, shuffling, chest-to-back mass of men and women stand in the limited aisle space. When that's gone, the badly overcrowded bus will skip the knots of riders standing at the stops ahead.

The disappointed will wait -- for how long, they cannot know -- until another crowded bus arrives with some standing room left. And when they do get on one of the overcrowded buses, it will be traveling the same congested streets they would otherwise be driving themselves. As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority notes in its 2008 Long Range Transportation Plan, average bus speeds have dropped 12% since the mid-1980s because of increasing traffic. To get from Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley to Dodger Stadium by bus could take about 2 1/2 hours and require three transfers. It would be a short evening, however. There's almost no way back after 8:30 p.m.

I know the humiliating qualities of public transit, having been unable to drive for nearly all my adult life. I've seen the worst that transit delivers -- frightening encounters with abusive passengers and the sullen indifference of some bus drivers. And I've seen the best in ordinary riders and in transit workers too. The mix of good and bad is about the same as it's always been. The quality of service has never been defined by the size of the buses or how new they are but by how well they make daily life possible without a car in Los Angeles.