I'm coming out.
In these pages I have told readers that I like to and that I am a . Today I am telling you something that in West Los Angeles is perhaps far more shocking.
I take the bus.
Oh, I can and do drive. I do not, however, like to commute. For that I prefer to be driven, where I can stare out the window in air-conditioned comfort while someone else does the stop-and-go. Since limousine service was not provided by my downtown employer, but a company-subsidized bus pass was, the #14 bus became my friend.
Over the years using Metro, I've noted the service changes on the Westside in general and Beverly Hills in particular. In a wholly inexplicable move, they cancelled the #21 bus down Wilshire Boulevard to UCLA in favor of the #20, which stops at Westwood and Wilshire boulevards.
Metro's Rapid buses on Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, for the most part, stop in West L.A. now rather than going all the way to Santa Monica.
The majority of #16 buses on 3rd Street stop at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center instead of going into Century City, and the #14 on Beverly Boulevard tends to stop at the Beverly Center rather than terminating at Beverly Drive and Pico Boulevard.
I'm sure that the good people at MTA have figures and costs that justify these "improvements" (to use their words). But I have to wonder if any of them remember the movie Field of Dreams and the line "If you build it, they will come."
Clearly they do since they're going forward with the Westside subway. But as someone who uses almost daily the system METRO has in place in the here and now, I have to say that when I check their app and see that the next bus to Santa Monica will be in almost an hour, the "they will come" turns quickly into "they will come by car."
