Case Study - The Rapid Bus

Anyone who says that nobody takes public transit in L.A. hasn’t ridden a bus lately – they’re packed. The L.A. County Metropolitan Transit Administration is the second-largest transit agency in the country, surpassed only by New York City. However, L.A.'s public transit system has had a reputation for being slow and dirty.

The MTA is working on both of those problems. A new "Metro Rapid" project that slashes bus travel times has been implemented on four different routes, with 24 more planned for the five years.

Natural gas-powered Rapid Buses run straight across town on major arteries with fewer stops, more frequent buses, and no set schedules. The bright red buses have low floors and no steps to climb during entry and exit for for fast boarding, making the Rapid Bus is a whole different experience than the roaring, belching, stops-at-every-corner city bus. Downtown bus shelters are modern cantilevered steel creations, some with electronic signs telling riders when to expect the next bus. Each bus also has special sensors to keep traffic signals green when a bus is coming.

A ride on the Rapid can be up to 25 percent faster than regular local service buses, and for the same price. A Rapid route is also a whole lot cheaper and faster than building a light rail system. “They're like rail on rubber wheels,” said Mark Lipman, spokesperson for the MTA.

Rapid Bus alone is not going to fix L.A.’s traffic and air pollution woes, but it’s part of the effort to get individual cars off the road and more people into larger, cleaner vehicles.

“In my opinion, unless you do everything, you're never going to solve the traffic problem,” said Professor Stephanie Pincetl of the University of Southern California. “You have to throw everything at it. Every other city has layers of transit. Paris has buses and subways and rail and taxis. Here, there's just so many people and so many cars. It’s too complicated to have one solution.”