Difficult Commute Tarnishes Gold Line Experience

For seven long years, I commuted from the Westside to downtown Los Angeles, serving time in that gulag of concrete, the Santa Monica Freeway.

Then last summer I moved to Pasadena. The Gold Line had just debuted, and I believed riding light rail might be a nice alternative to driving to work. I would read the paper, sip coffee and gleefully thumb my nose at people stuck in traffic.

The result of this nine-month experiment in mass transit: My round-trip commute from Pasadena by car of about 50 minutes ballooned to 100 minutes by train. I didn’t sip coffee -- which isn’t allowed on the train -- and for reasons I’ll soon explain, I rarely read the paper.

And, I’m back to driving solo to work.

For those unfamiliar with the saga of the Gold Line, here’s a recap: After more than a decade of planning and construction -- about the same time it took to put a man on the moon -- the $859-million train opened last summer.

The 13.7-mile line runs between eastern Pasadena and Union Station in 30 to 36 minutes, depending on the boldness or timidity of the train driver.

The Gold Line’s chief attribute is that it’s very clean (no coffee stains!).

Its chief problem is that it’s always slowing down for something.

The Gold Line brakes for everything but its shadow. Curves, street crossings, straight sections of track are all reasons for the choo-choo to take a breather. Engineers often stop the train just before reaching station platforms, as if they fear passengers might hurl themselves en masse onto the tracks.

“Speed is not the reason you use this line,” The Times quoted Metropolitan Transportation Authority Deputy Chief Executive John Catoe as saying in March. “It’s about comfort. You can read the paper, relax. It’s a really great line that way.”

I tried to relax. But the more sluggish the train got, the more my road rage merely shifted to rail rage. Instead of screaming “Go!” at little old ladies on the freeway, I wanted to bellow “Go!” at train drivers.

On occasion, I’d glance down at the newspaper, but then would frequently look up, wondering why the train was stopping. Again.

I tried everything to shrink the time of my commute. The train ride itself continued to gobble precious minutes, but the black hole in which even more time vanished was getting to and from the stations.

I walked, rode my bike and drove to different stations in Pasadena. I pored over maps and bus schedules. Nothing worked.

Allow me to enter into evidence MTA bus line 267, which conveniently stops just around the corner from my home.

The bus runs down Del Mar Boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare in Pasadena. Logic would dictate that the Del Mar bus would stop at the Del Mar Gold Line station. But it doesn’t.

Instead, about one-third of a mile before reaching the station, the bus inexplicably swings north and away from the Del Mar station and instead proceeds to another Gold Line stop farther north.

On the downtown end, things aren’t much better.

The Gold Line terminates at Union Station, on the northern fringes of downtown. That’s great if you work for the MTA, which is located next door. But passengers traveling to the heart of downtown L.A. must endure another time-munching transfer to bus, subway or sidewalk.

On paper, the easiest way to get from The Times to Union Station is to ride the DASH “D” bus, which is run by the city of L.A. and stops across the street from the newspaper.

I’m not sure what the “D” is for, but let’s presume it stands for “dumb.” Instead of running directly to Union Station, the “D” line circles the terminal as if it’s prey that it is afraid to attack.

After 10 to 15 minutes of trundling about the backstreets of downtown, the “D” finally deposits passengers at Union Station’s rear end, at a new transportation plaza. As far as I can tell, the only reason the bus goes there is to justify the plaza’s existence.

Of course, driving to work is not always a picnic. But on most days it takes me 25 minutes each way. The drive would be much quicker if the city of Pasadena better synchronized its traffic lights.

The other problem with driving -- besides global warming -- is that it’s hard to avoid traffic caused by ... the Gold Line. Although it’s generally accepted in transit circles that rail is supposed to ease gridlock, three Gold Line street crossings near Arroyo Parkway cause traffic to back up.

Bahman Janka, the transportation administrator for Pasadena, said his agency is still working to coordinate traffic lights with the crossing gates, but there will inevitably be times the gates remain down for one to two minutes.

Are my expectations of the Gold Line unrealistic? I don’t think so. Before the Gold Line opened, the MTA proclaimed that 30,000 riders each weekday would use the train. The agency now estimates about 14,400 people are climbing aboard each day.

In response to my criticisms, MTA officials provided several explanations. They said that government speed limits restrict the train along many sections, thus the slowdowns. They also argued that in rush hour, the commute time is competitive with that of drivers, although they agreed that getting to and from stations consumes minutes.

MTA spokesman Dave Sotero said that compromises inevitably had to be made just to get the line finished within budget. He also said that riding the train could save car owners a lot of money -- hundreds or even thousands of dollars each year -- and that walking to and from stations is a low-budget form of exercise.

Fair enough. But I’m not interested in seeing how much time I can spend commuting. My suggestions for fixing the Gold Line:

* Run more trains during rush hours to eliminate waiting time at the stations.

* Have a few of them be express trains that mercifully skip some of the stations.

* Begin thinking about ways to extend the Gold Line into downtown -- maybe running it up the middle of Main or Los Angeles streets. A Gold Line extension planned to open in 2009 doesn’t fix the problem, with the only downtown stop at that outpost, Alameda and 1st streets.

And finally, I’d tell the MTA that when building future projects, to remember that every minute counts to prospective customers.

No coffee stains is a virtue. Performance is everything.