Tag Archives: Los Angeles

Oren’s Reading List: L.A. by Subway

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Breda A650 564 at North Hollywood, March 10, 2022

Breda A650 564 at North Hollywood, March 10, 2022

Los Angeles is not thought of as being an easy place to get around by public transit.  To say that the lifestyle of most Angelinos is car-centric is not an understatement by any means.  However, the United States’ second largest city has a very extensive transit network.  Prior to the pandemic, only about 7 percent of trips originating in Los Angeles County used public transit, but this translates to an average daily ridership of 1.35 million and makes LACMTA the third largest public transit system in terms of ridership in the entire country.  

Recently, Elaine Glusac, the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times Travel section spent three days relying solely on LA Metro, LADOT DASH buses, (and the Flyaway Bus) to get around while visiting the city.  You can read about her travels here.  

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Bus Photo of the Month: July 2023

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NABI 40-LFW 7780

Arcadia Street at Main Street, Los Angeles, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Date of Photo: July 11, 2014

Nine years ago this month, I arrived in Los Angeles for the first time.  Since then, I have visited the United States’s second largest city on two more occasions.  Another trip appeared to be in the offing for next month but that ended up not materializing.  In any event, I thought it would be fitting to share a photo from my first trip to the City of Angels this month.  I hope you enjoy it!

For more photos of LACMTA Buses, please click here.  

Some Things Are Worth Waiting For…

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New Flyer XE60 19506
Very observant visitors to this site might have noticed two things recently.  First, it has been a very long time (nearly two years in fact) since any announcements of new photos being posted to Oren’s Transit Page have been made.  Second, the January 2023 Bus Photo of the Month came from a city that was not included on Oren’s Transit Page before.  The reasons for this are several fold.  In 2021, travel was slowly resuming and the Oren’s Transit Page Baby (as he was known then) required a level of care that was age-appropriate but one that does not facilitate frequent website updates.  In 2022, travel really took off again, as my travels took me not only up and down the Northeast Corridor but to the Florida panhandle, San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Israel, and Greece.  As you can imagine, travels that extensive generate lots of photos, which in turn, take time to organize, touch up, caption, and post.  The good news is I’ve made some headway on that front, and I believe any photos I took prior to May 2022 are now online.

The “highlights” from this update in my opinion in “chronological” order are:

The rest of 2022’s photos are still to come, and I’ve already taken one trip within the US in 2023 and I’m sure more are to come, so stay tuned.  The photos from all those travels will be posted.  Eventually.

Here is the full listing of where new photos were added to the site, with new sections highlighted in bold and italics.  

Rail Photo of the Month: October 2022

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Kinki Sharyo P3010 1062

Location: Downtown Santa Monica, Santa Monica, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Date of Photo: March 10, 2022

With the LA Metro’s newest rail line scheduled to open to the public next Friday (October 7), it seemed fitting to share a photo of the previous extension of the LA Metro rail network.  In 2016, the Expo Line was extended from Culver City to Santa Monica.  Most of the route follows what was the right of way of the Santa Monica Air Line, which provided passenger and freight service between Los Angeles and Santa Monica beginning in 1908.  Passenger service ended in 1953 though freight service continued until 1988.  The extension to Santa Monica means it now takes about 46 minutes to travel from Downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica.  

Although Los Angeles is often an afterthought in terms of rail transit projects due to its car dependence, there are a number of projects of note in the works to expand the city’s rapid transit network.  The K Line is the first phase of the Crenshaw/LAX line which will ultimately connect to the LAX Automated People Mover systen in 2024.  In addition, the Regional Connector, which will create a one seat ride between 7th Street/Metro Center and Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles is scheduled to open in early 2023, at which point the current A and E lines will be through routed along the current L line to Azusa and East Los Angeles, respectively.  

For more photos of LA Metro Light Rail rolling stock, please click here.

Enough Teases, Here’s What’s New and Updated for the Start of 2021!

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Ventura County Railway No. 2
Anyone who knows where I’ve traveled or has visited the site with some frequency over the years may have noticed that the Bus Photo of the Month for January 2021 was from a city that had not been included on Oren’s Transit Page before, and that I’ve been highlighting a number of new website sections over the past few weeks. 

The biggest and most noteworthy additions are the brand new sections for Baltimore, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin.  As I noted in a recent post, there was a certain amount of irony to the fact I grew up 40 miles from Baltimore and am an avid Orioles fan, yet the city had not been featured on this site until recently.  Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Austin were destinations that I traveled to in late 2019 and early 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to make those trips when I did.  

I also took advantage of some time I had recently to move some photos that had been on the Uncaptioned Photos page for quite awhile and put them in more appropriate places on the website, most notably, the photos of the Pikes Peak Cog Railway now have their own page.  Perhaps you found the new material on your own, but if not, here is the full listing of where new photos were recently added to the site, with new sections highlighted in bold and italics.  

Bus Photo of the Month: March 2020

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NABI Metro 45C 8392

NABI Metro 45C 8392

Location: Arcadia Street at Main Street, Los Angeles, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA)
Date of Photo: July 11, 2014

As mentioned in this post, I recently took the Sunset Limited and Texas Eagle from Los Angeles to Austin.  However, in order to catch the train, I had to fly out to Los Angeles where I had about 10 hours to fill before the train departed.  I ended up making an impromptu trip out to the Southern California Railway Museum, but my previous plan had been to use most of those 10 hours for transitfanning, and at the suggestion of a good friend, focus my transitfanning on the Silver Line BRT route.  The Silver Line extends 38 miles from El Monte to San Pedro, with much of the route utilizing two transit ways in the middle of interstate highways.  As a result of this setup, the Silver Line (and the other buses using these transitways) have dedicated stations in the interstate medians that give off a “full fledged” transit station look from afar.  It is certainly a unique operation!

While I have no regrets about how I spent my Sunday in Los Angeles, I wound up taking no photos of LA transit other than some photos of Angels Flight, which was closed during my previous visit in 2014.  However, I did get a photo of the Silver Line on its street running section in Downtown LA on that same 2014 trip, which I offer as the Photo of the Month for March 2020.  On a future visit to Los Angeles, perhaps I will have the opportunity to check out the Silver Line in actuality (I did see the Harbor Transitway from the Flyaway Bus that operates between LAX and Union Station) and get additional photos of it.

For more photos of LACMTA Buses, please click here.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2016

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NABI 40-LFW 7051

NABI 40-LFW 7051

Location: 1st Street at Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA)
Date of Photo: July 14, 2014

Los Angeles has far more public transit than one might expect for a city with such a car-centric reputation.  In fact, it has the second largest bus fleet in the entire United States, with almost 2,500 buses!  Los Angeles is also the inspiration for at least one other city’s current paint scheme.  Since June 24, 000, LACMTA has been operating the “Metro Rapid” brand.  Metro Rapid service is limited bus service that runs in the same corridors as standard “Metro Local” routes, with some of the components found on full fledged bus rapid transit (BRT) lines.  One of the BRT features incorporated in to Metro Rapid is a special paint scheme for the limited stop buses.  In the photo above, the Metro Rapid bus is painted maroon, while the Metro Local bus is in the “standard” orange LACMTA livery.  I’m pretty sure that WMATA’s relatively new “MetroLocal” and “MetroExtra” schemes are inspired by Los Angeles’s schemes.  This theory is bolstered by the fact that the general manager of WMATA at the time those schemes were adopted was John Catoe, who spent much of his career at LACMTA.

Personally, I’m not a fan of branded buses unless the operating agency can ensure that the proper bus is almost always assigned to the proper line.  Otherwise, the branding is diluted.  However, from what I could tell during my stay there, Metro Rapid buses seem to stick to the Metro Rapid routes and the same goes for the various other paint schemes that LACMTA has employed.  What do you think of branded buses like those featured in the photo of the month this month?  Leave a comment with your opinion!

For more photos of LACMTA’s buses and their various paint schemes, please click here.

Oren’s Reading List: The 11 Most Beautiful Train Stations Across America

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Even if the golden age of train travel in the US is more of a memory than anything else today, its remnants are still visible to anyone who still travels by rail.  Thrillist.com has put together a list of the 11 most beautiful train stations in the United States.  I’ve been to 7 of the 11.  How many have you been to?  Which is your favorite?  Was something left off the list that you think should have been included?  Check out the list here and then answer any or all of these questions in the comments below!

Rail Photo of the Month: May 2016

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Nippon Sharyo P2020 156

Nippon Sharyo P2020 156

Location: Expo/Western Station, Los Angeles, CA
Operator of Vehicle: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA)
Date of Photo: July 14, 2014

Despite having a reputation for having a less than stellar public transit system, the Los Angeles Metro has been expanding quite a bit recently.  In March, the Gold Line was extended from Pasadena to Azsua, and later this month, on May 20th, the Expo Line will be extended from Culver City to Santa Monica, terminating just short of the famed Santa Monica Pier.  There are aspirations to extend the Gold Line even further to Montclair in San Bernardino County in the future.  In the nearer term, projects such as the Regional Connector will allow through routing of Blue, Expo, and Gold Line trains, which is not possible at this time.  Once that project is complete, an Expo Line train like the one featured here, could operate from Azusa and Pasadena across downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, currently a three seat ride.

For more photos of the Expo, Blue, and Gold lines in Los Angeles, please click here.

New Arrivals

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Over the course of redesigning Oren’s Transit Page, I was also continuing to travel, take photos, and add them in to the queue to be included in the redesigned website once it launched.  Now that the redesigned website is here, keep reading to find out what new material was added in conjunction with the redesign.  This isn’t an exhaustive list but rather just the “highlights”, there is plenty of new content scattered around the whole site.

NABI 60-BRT 9574 on Main Street at Aliso Street
Los Angeles, CA
July 11, 2014

Starting off in the United States, I traveled to a number of places for the first time in my life in 2014.  I made a Midwest swing in May 2014 that resulted in the creation of sections for Minneapolis-St. Paul (just prior to the Green Line opening) and Kansas City.  After that, in July 2014, I did some long distance Amtrak travel (with some flights in between) and visited Los Angeles and San Diego for the first time.  Also on this trip were stops in Denver (in time for the soft reopening of Denver’s Union Station), Chicago, and San Francisco.  I had passed through Denver before but I had never used or photographed its mass transit prior to that summer.  The stops in Chicago and San Francisco were my first in each city since 2007 and were quite brief, but there are new photos in those sections as well, including my first photos of the CTA 5000 Series cars.

The Washington, DC section now includes photos of some of the newer buses to ply the region’s streets, such as WMATA’s New Flyer XDE40 buses and Ride On’s Gillig Advantage/CNG buses.  On the rail side of things, there is now a gallery for photos of the new WMATA 7000 Series railcars, manufactured by Kawasaki.

PCC 3263 at Capen Street
Milton, MA
May 2, 2011

I last traveled to Philadelphia in 2012 and was able to get a last round of Silverliner II and Silverliner III photos, in addition to my first Silverliner V photos.  I made two trips to Boston, one in 2011 and the other in 2013.  On the 2011 trip, I rode the southern end of the Orange Line for the first time, and both trips included a number of trips on the Green Line and Red Line.  I also was able to get photos from along the Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line right of way and of various MBTA buses, including the trackless trolleys, in Cambridge.  Finally, for the first time since Oren’s Transit Page’s initial launch over 15 years ago, there are new photos in the Atlanta section.

There are also new photos from New York City, but due to the immense size of that section, it was decided to leave it “as is” in the old format and add the new photos to the Uncaptioned Photos gallery for now.  The New York section will be updated with the new design as soon as possible.

North of the border, there is a new section for photos from Niagara Falls, Ontario.  My only trip to South America to date was in 2010 so there isn’t anything new in the Brazil and Argentina sections (while Buenos Aires is on my bucket list, I haven’t found the occasion to get myself down there just yet).

Crossing the ocean to Europe, I visited both Hungary and Portugal for the first time.  My stop in Budapest was a layover between flights in 2011 that was measured in hours rather than days, but it was enough time to photograph some of the city’s trams, buses, and trolleybuses and whet my appetite for another trip there that will be longer 13 hours. I spent almost a full week in Lisbon, a city that shares many similarities to San Francisco including the fact that its trams are a tourist attraction in and of themselves, and visited continental Europe’s westernmost bus stop for good measure.

Bombardier Flexity Outlook “Cityrunner” 3069 at Place Royale
Brussels, Belgium
November 21, 2013

In 2008, I unexpectedly found myself with 90 minutes in Brussels due to a missed train connection, which was just enough time to get some transit photos before the next train to my destination came.  In 2013, I was in Brussels yet again, this time for a full 8 hours between flights, so that section has seen some additional expansion including a new gallery for photos of the Belgian National Railway.

Finally, in the Middle East, the Israel section has expanded further and to my knowledge, Oren’s Transit Page’s Israel section is the largest of its kind on any English language website.  The Jerusalem Light Rail opened to passengers just after I began the long process of overhauling the website, so many photos of revenue service along the length of the entire line are now included on the site.  The Metronit bus rapid transit system in the Haifa region opened in 2014, and there are also photos of that.  In addition, there are many new photos of the many bus operators that operate throughout the entire length of the country.

I hope you enjoy exploring the site, whether you choose to browse the new sections, old sections, or a mix of both!  And if you have a favorite section, let everyone know what it is in the comment section below!