LA without a car (part 2)
Planes, buses, and automobiles
Click link for part one of Walking LA
It is pretty easy not having a car in LA, easier than most people think, but that’s only because it has an exceptional network of buses. The actual walking from place to place part is pretty grim because LA is huge, spread out, and chopped up by highways, concrete rivers, and broad streets that might as well be highways.
None of that is surprising, because LA is built for cars, especially at the macro level, and buses are just shared cars.
I usually choose a cover photo with people in it, which is easy to do in most places because walking means meeting lots of people, regardless of if you want to. Which is over half the reason I walk.
In LA though, few people walk longer than from their vehicle to the store, so for long stretches it’s only you and the hum of traffic.
Beyond the homeless.
The cover photo does have someone in it, hidden beneath their blue tarp home in the far left of the picture. Out of sight, lurking behind me, is a guy on a bicycle, his eyes glazed from drugs, who for over a mile pestered me for money, advice, and perhaps something else.
He was harmless, I think, but I’m a larger guy. His general air of furtive menace drove off a few older women out for a morning stroll.
Still, you can exist in LA without a car, but it requires a fair amount of planning and patience. You can always get from any point A to any point B1, but it requires knowing the bus schedule very well — when your bus is coming, where to change to the next bus(es) — to keep the time spent waiting from ruining your day.
That’s easier now with smart phones, especially Google Maps, which has a serviceable transit option in its directions function. Even with that though, it requires months of learning by failure, to become a truly functional car-less Angeleno.
You also need strong legs, good shoes, and a thick skin, to navigate the many dead zones of bright sun, chalky dry dirt, discarded needles, and the desperate who demand your attention, either from their aggressive shouts or your own empathy.
Despite all that, there are plenty of rewards from walking LA, and seeing it at its most granular. Many of them are aesthetic.
LA, with its soft desert light, its not so distant mountains, its swooping overpasses, its perfectly curated hedges, its bright primary colors, its Art Deco inspired advertising, is beautiful, in a rugged industrial way, especially at dusk.