A Shockingly Positive Review Of World Cup Public Transit In Los Angeles

Expectation is everything. Considering the public transit price-gouging SNAFUs in New York New Jersey and Foxboro that dogged World Cup transit public relations prior to the event, some heat was taken off cities historically hostile to the concept of “public” and “transit,” such as Los Angeles. Together, all three cities compose the “Doable But Miserable” tier of Aaron Gordon’s breakdown of World Cup stadium transit access, which also elaborates on how the new Los Angeles stadium and its surrounding area, despite proximity to a great deal of transit options, fails to directly connect to many of the most convenient ones. Unlike New York New Jersey and Foxboro, however, Los Angeles was only charging $1.75 for direct service to and from the stadium.

This posed some interesting questions. How easy and efficient would it actually be to take public transit—specifically the special shuttle service—in Los Angeles to a World Cup game? Would it be better or worse than “Secaucus Junction”? And so amidst threats made by my beloved colleagues to force me try walking to the Meadowlands for journalism’s sake, I fled to the West Coast to instead answer a question that was less likely to result in immediate death and/or severe bodily harm.

Here was the situation. I was planning on going to, though not directly attending, the round of 32 game between Spain and Austria in Inglewood. I was staying with a friend in her hotel room in downtown Los Angeles, right next to the Los Angeles Sparks’ arena. This is one of the more transit-accessible locations in Los Angeles, with access to four separate Metro stops within a 15-minute walk. Without the direct shuttle, the commute from the hotel to the stadium would, in an ideal world sans traffic, take approximately 25 minutes by car, an hour by transit, and three hours and 40 minutes by foot. (This last point would not be relevant, if not for the fact that as my friend and I were breaking this down, we discovered that one could walk across the entirety of Munich in that same three hour and 40 minute timeframe.)

An ordinary transit route would involve taking the J—a grade-separated, bus rapid transit (BRT) line—south, and then transferring onto the 115 bus on Manchester to reach the stadium. Even with the BRT factor, a bus transfer is always a daunting task, heavily influenced by headways, capacity, and traffic; one’s destination will be reached eventually, but the enjoyment or timeliness of that journey is a separate matter. What Los Angeles’ direct shuttle service provided, for my specific situation, was simplification: Rather than rely on two separate buses to function, I could take the Metro to Union Station, where there would be a constant supply of shuttle buses with guaranteed 10-minute headways. As a bonus, the fare was not only $1.75, but also counted as a free transfer from the Metro.

And so on July 2, a day during which temperatures hit 101 degrees Fahrenheit on the East Coast, rendering trains incapable of running, I left the hotel at approximately 8:50 a.m. in cloudy, temperate Los Angeles to make the 15-ish minute walk to 7th Street/Metro Center station and take the B or D. The station featured World Cup volunteers helping guide attendees to their destinations, and several cops doing nothing. Because both the B and the D go to Union Station and run on the same tracks, delays weren’t a real concern. Still, the Metro got off to a mildly ominous start: For whatever reason, the train waited for at least a minute at the stops prior to Union, which would have made me antsy, if I actually had tickets to the game or, for that matter, less time.

As it was, I reached a level of zen only attainable by those in a given position for no reason, or those simply at peace with their own destiny. Again, expectations. In the station, a security guard helped direct people from one line at the public bathrooms—the existence of which I will never again take for granted after experiencing France—to another bathroom further down the hall. This was about the most useful security guard I would see all day, and I saw a lot security personnel. The walk from the Metro to the shuttles was helpfully punctuated by extensive signage and volunteers waving foam fingers, along with a police officer or private security provider posted, without exaggeration, every three feet. There was great diversity in their standings. I noted officers and security from LA Metro Police, the LAPD, Allied Universal Security, and ASPIS Protection Service. Perhaps when NJ Transit cites FIFA’s strict security requirements as a reason for jacking up costs, that is what they meant.

I had a minor scare as a guard declared that riders should have their tickets out and ready; I did not have matchday tickets, as I was not attending the game, only figuring out how hard it would be to attend the game. Fortunately a game ticket was not necessary, and to board I only had to tap my credit card again—tap to pay is another great American transit innovation, though I was embarrassingly tempted to buy a limited edition $10 World Cup TAP card at the small tent they had set up at the shuttle pick-up point. A worker helpfully announced that each bus, of the standard LA Metro variety, would sit 38 people, and take approximately 40–45 minutes. Because of the length of the trip, they did not want anyone standing.

Volume and excessive demand was not an issue. I barely waited in line, the bus filled up quickly, and we officially set off at 9:35 a.m., where we were played into the loving and gentle hands of Los Angeles traffic. The original estimation proved optimistic, though some part of the delay was unpredictable. At 10:27 a.m., as the bus drove slowly down Prairie Ave., passing sign after sign reading EVENT PARKING, we were temporarily stopped on the road so that Spain’s team bus could drive past to the stadium. All in all, the bus journey took about an hour, and the total time from leaving the hotel and arriving at the stadium was roughly one hour and 40 minutes, or a little over the combined runtime of Dedicated and Dedicated Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen.

In comparison to other cities and other stadiums, that can sound awful. But I was, once again, judging against expectation, and the options I, and presumably Angelenos, had at hand. Though the journey was long, it required relatively low logistical and emotional lift. Navigation was easy, there were no massive crowds or wait times, and the hardest part of the journey required no transfers. At the nearby, heavily Spain-biased bar where I watched the game, I received firsthand accounts of how much it cost others to arrive in Inglewood. One man’s Uber from Pasadena cost $60, before wait-and-save and other deals, and he decided to call one because his friend told him that parking cost something like $80. That was a bit of an underestimate; another man had paid $150 for parking (“You should write that down,” he told me, after learning why I had come to the stadium), though he was splitting the cost with multiple others. Perhaps that was how, in part, Los Angeles was helping fund its special service—though FIFA still takes the revenue from official event parking, the cost of various park-and-ride locations were raised exorbitantly. If fans weren’t paying $65 to take the train, perhaps some were paying $65 to be able to park.

How much was my time worth? Would I have paid an extra $58.25 to get there an extra hour earlier, or to not have to think about transit at all? The answer, at least for me, was a resounding no, though I started to contemplate the question on the return trip. I left the bar soon after the match ended, and made it back to the shuttle lot at around 2:10 p.m. The bar was closer to the shuttle lot than the stadium, so my experience was not necessarily representative; depending on walking pace, I likely made it there around the same time as attendees who may have left around the 80th or 85th minute, when it became clear that Spain would win. There was no wait at the pick-up lot. I boarded at 2:13 p.m., and the bus left at 2:17 p.m., with about four of the aforementioned 38 seats left empty.

At approximately 3:04 p.m., as the bus waded through traffic on the 110, I began to feel hateful. Wasn’t it fucked up that the citizens of Los Angeles were so gratuitously poisoning the world with fuel emissions, and yet received such beautiful weather, while East Coast transit was directly suffering from a heat wave? Perhaps the only reason why there was so little wait to board the shuttle both times is because everyone else was too busy traveling by car, which was now hampering the bus’s progress. Should I have tried the 115 onto a grade-separated BRT instead? That is once again one of the finicky psychological burdens of transit specifically and travel at large. I doubt the new experience of the BRT would have left me much happier. At least it hadn’t even crossed my mind to have wished to drive. The only thing worse than being on the bus in that moment would be being in a car. At least the day’s transportation costs only totaled $3.50.

Anyway, speaking of psychological quirks, by the time I returned to Union Station and walked, once again, through two rows of security, it felt like my journey had already ended. I put on Emotion Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen, and made it back to my hotel room before the album ended. Now that’s efficiency.