Getting Around: Los Angeles, CA

The greater Los Angeles area is made up of literally dozens of transit agencies. Until recently, each had their own fare structure, payment media, and transfer policies. Now, they still each have their own fare structure and transfer policies, but they all use the same payment media: the Tap card.

The Tap card makes Los Angeles transit massively easier to use. You can get a physical card, or (I recommend) just activate it in your phone’s transit wallet. You’ll need to add value to it before riding. Then just tap it whenever you get on, and it will figure out the fare and any transfer situation.

When I rode from Norwalk to just outside of Beverly Hills, a trip involving two trains and two buses, it cost just $1.75 total, including 3 free transfers.

Sometimes transfers cost extra, like the 40 cents when I went from Culver City to Big Blue Bus.

How you pay may differ for each ride. For buses, you typically pay as you board. For rail, you tap to pass through turnstiles, or there may be little pillars in the station where you can tap your phone or Tap card.

Just make sure that you tap before/as you board every piece of transit. Fare inspectors may check your card or phone to ensure you’ve paid. I never encountered any, but I’m told they exist.

The light rail C (Green) and E (Expo) lines were fast, clean, efficient, and a pleasure to ride. The A (Blue) had poor signage and was missing arrival information, and was rather crowded on board. As the oldest and (I think) most traveled line, the A is a bit of a crunchy experience, especially in parts of downtown LA where it has to battle with traffic, making it an excruciatingly slow slog for a couple miles. One you’re past that segment, it’s nice enough.

In fairness, the Transit app told me not to take the A, but I wanted to see the situation for myself. It added about 30 minutes to my trip.

The J (Silver) express bus that runs in the median of the 110 freeway was a mixed experience. Signage was less than clear, and several routes pick up on the freeway median where it intersects the C (Green) line. It was unclear if I was getting on the right bus, but I lucked out and guessed correctly.

Picking up the J was unpleasant. It was very noisy, the signage was outdated (it still referred only to Green and Silver rather than the newer C and J), and generally felt neglected. Not too much garbage, thankfully, but very “is this still open?” brutalist. It all felt very unfinished.

The bus itself was fast, pleasant (as pleasant as a highway can be anyways), and efficient.

Transferring from the J to the E downtown was messy. The bus leaves you a couple blocks from the E station in a less than magical area of downtown Los Angeles.

The routing in the transit app suggested one stop further than I think may have been ideal, and the bus driver blew right past our stop, only stopping after several people shouted.

I rode three local bus lines: MTA, Culver City, and Big Blue Bus. Each had its own fare situation, but Tap handled it well. It was seamless, painless, and less expensive than I expected. I got to my friends’ places quicker than expected, multiple times, though I lucked out with light traffic. (Or maybe the buses follow light traffic routes?) The buses were all well maintained and not crowded.

In one instance, the Transit app got confused when I was switching transit agencies, thinking I was still on one bus when I had already gotten off.

And by Los Angeles, I also mean Culver City. Culver City, around 2020, had prided itself on being a pedestrian- and bike-friendly city, so I wanted to visit and see what that actually looks like. Apparently, in the past couple years the city has rolled back some of its infrastructure after some NIMBY whining. What you’re left with is a really disjunct situation, with friendly walkable urbanist nooks adjacent to car-choked hellhole boulevards with “No Pedestrian Crossing” signs.

Transit in LA can get you pretty far. But the area is just so massive. Transit often didn’t efficiently get me right where I was going, just relatively close. I’ve found that often, for the last half mile or so, it can be more efficient to walk, rather than wait for a bus transfer that’s headed that way.

I love walking and am rather good at it, so it’s not a big deal for me, but if walking is slow/difficult/impossible for you, this is probably going to be the factor that turns transit from “pretty efficient” to “takes all day”. I can walk 15 minutes at the start and 15 minutes at the end of a trip, but if you can’t, you may be adding as much as 2 hours, as you wait for the extra bus and the extra transfer on each end of your route.