Comments | little_details: Los Angeles County public transportation, address searches

rebelintosanity in little_details

Los Angeles County public transportation, address searches

Feb 01, 2008 01:18

All right guys, I've done the relevant Wikipedia research for the first question (I looked up articles about public transport in LA County and information about the Metro specifically because it seemed the most likely), but it's fairly subjective. For the second I've done some Google fu, search strings being various permuations of +address +search ( Read more... )

usa: public transportation, usa: california

Comments 11

avt_tor February 1 2008, 15:57:50 UTC

There was a transit strike in Los Angeles some years ago. A lot of servants, nannies, and other housekeepers couldn't get to their jobs.

glock35gal February 1 2008, 16:37:14 UTC

I live in Burbank. Every fricken time I'm called to jury duty in Los Angeles, I use METRO -- it's easy. I'm not sure how it was in 2001/2002, but I'm pretty sure we had the METRO Red Line by then. It runs from North Hollywood (in the San Fernando Valley) down to a place where you can catch the METRO Blue Line, which can take you into parts of Long Beach, IIRC. Google "Los Angeles Metro" or "Los Angeles Red Line" and see what comes up. I know there is a site with a map of the stops, but I don't recall the link ( ... )

rebelintosanity February 1 2008, 17:04:19 UTC

2) The person searching for addresses is a child (an older, resourceful child). He would prefer not to get anyone else involved more than he has to, because if he says who he's looking for people will ask inconvenient questions and adults will get in the way.

This takes place in an AU where the legal system is fairly... interesting... (ICON) so I'm sure I can bend something to make it work, or I can have the relevant scenes take place in a semi-public area.

coloredink February 1 2008, 22:38:01 UTC

Metro accessibility: It depends on where you are and where you want to go. The Metro will take you lots of places downtown, esp. the touristy places (Union Square, Chinatown, etc.), but it will NOT take you to the airport or City Hall, which now that I think about it, is really strange. I grew up in East LA-ish and Metro was not accessible to me at all; actually, I would have had to take a bus, transfer to another bus, and then take the Gold Line in Pasadena. However, my friend who grew up in Burbank lived like a ten minute walk away from a Metro. . . and yet still didn't take it. (She drove everywhere.)

And if your searcher is very industrious, s/he probably knows about search engines such as zabasearch and other slightly creepy people finders.

kevlarman February 1 2008, 23:09:48 UTC

LA County is a big county. Good luck finding any close Metro stations in the far north (Antelope Valley).

rosaleendhu February 2 2008, 00:58:41 UTC

In Los Angeles city or county? There are tons of routes in the city. Once you get out to the edges of the county, the local lines might be better. Long Beach has a great system, for example.

A lot of school kids take the bus. I always try to not be on them when school gets out.

However, the users really have to look up the routes in advance. Most busses will have a selection of route pamphlets that have little to nothing to do with the area they are actually in. I've also found that most drivers don't seem to know any route but their own and can get pretty hostile towards people who dare to be confused. Or maybe I just had cranky drivers.

rebelintosanity February 2 2008, 01:21:36 UTC

The county. He's looking for someone who doesn't live in LA proper, but outside it (somewhere fairly posh but not all stereotypical Los Angelino: I do not yet have a bead on what area).

Did LA have a good bus system in the right time, though? WP suggested the buses are fairly new, but I'd prefer to get a response on that from someone who's actually lived there, XD.

rosaleendhu February 2 2008, 01:53:10 UTC

LA has never had a good bus system. >.> It does, however, go pretty much everywhere if you don't mind occasionally walking a bit between routes and waiting for obnoxiously long amounts of time.

I can clearly remember taking the bus 20 years ago with my girl scout troop, so they've been around. Certain routes might not have existed, and the routes do seem to get changed minorly every year or so, but the system is pretty old. The route that goes from Downtown LA to Disneyland gets tweaked frequently, for example.

The Gold line is pretty new, but I don't remember how new. It's one of the long routes, but I don't remember if it has trains or just busses. If I was up that way, I always bummed a ride from a friend instead of taking those busses.

The Lines might be a new-ish addition. Try googling "history la metro" maybe?