Tag Archives: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA)

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.

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.