Only ten hours until the Big Transformation! The Expo line will open to the public at 5:00am tomorrow (Saturday). I think that this first major thrust to the West, connecting downtown to USC, Exposition Park and the Museums, and points West to Culver City, should be truly transformational for not just the locations involved, but the city at large.
I hope it will change minds about what is possible for public transport in Los Angeles in a huge way (the old “it doesn’t go anywhere” complaint will be heard a bit less maybe?), and connect and enrich all the neighborhoods involved. (And yes, on the personal side of things I hope it ends up, in combination with the Red Line, being better than just sitting on the bus all the way. We shall see.)
There’ll be a special schedule for this opening weekend, with the line (free to travel on for the two days) stopping at 7:00pm. I was a bit scared by this for a moment, thinking there’d be some crazy situation like this being the case in normal hours (hey – equally crazy things exist elsewhere on the public transport system here), but then I found a timetable and verified that the normal schedule (starting on Monday) looks really great. There’s a link here, and you get get the pdf in the usual place by going to the MTA website.
There are a number of celebrations going on this weekend at various stations, and you can find a list of them here. (Be a bit cautious about the Pardee Plaza one at USC though, I thought I may have seen something saying it was cancelled for Saturday. Double check elsewhere.)
Anyway, I’ll be going along to test it all out tomorrow! Maybe I’ll be the first to bring a folding bike on board!
If you go, I hope you enjoy it all!
-cvj
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