My first encounter with transit started when I was 10 years old in late 1975. My parents moved from Pasadena to Highland Park, but I was still going to school in Pasadena since we were going to move back in a few months. I rode the old 107 and 79 line from school every morning. The following April the 107 became 425 and the 79 became the 143 (the two lines would be merged a couple of years later and is now the 256). I started by paying the 25 cent fare on each bus, until the driver on the 108 told me I could use a thing called a transfer and not pay a second fare on 79.

Over the next several years I rode the bus everywhere. I took the 423(260) to Long Beach, the 36 (then 456, now Blue Line) from downtown LA to Long Beach, the 496 out to San Bernardino, the 860 (later 149) from Riverside to Long Beach, the 800 and 801 (now 460) back and forth to Santa Ana and so on. I would also see how many different types of busses I could ride. Of course back then the RTD fleet was a little more colorful than it is now. I also started to collect timetables. First from the Thrifty Drug Store on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena, then from the ARCO Plaza and the RTD headquarters. I always tried to go into those places when they where busy so they wouldn't have time to yell at me for taking to many timetables. I also enjoyed riding the transit in the Bay Area and wish we would have something nice in LA.

I cannot remember the exact year, but sometime around 1978, I had my first encounter with NIMBYism. We had moved to South Pasadena, I was know a regular rider on the 430 (now 176). In 1977 it was extended from Highland Park to Cypress Park to replace the route 43 shuttle. Neighbors along Division street started complaining about how busses where causing their houses to shake apart, (I do have to say these people had a legitimate complaint since apparently the subsurface of Division street had washed away since it was paved 50 years or so prior causing the whole problem). But instead of fixing the problem, the city of Los Angeles insisted that full size busses be removed from the line. So now because of a two block section of road, minibuses off the Downtown Minibus line where placed in service on the 430. They had hard seats, where extremely noisy, and where not designed for line haul use.

The big year was 1981. Of course it was the year that Ronald Reagan took office and tried to kill transit and Amtrak. I came across two organizations that where supporting transit and rail passenger service: Citizens for Rail California and MTLA (Mass Transit Los Angeles). MTLA seemed to disappear soon afterward but I became very involved in CRC (RailPAC). Of course 1981 was also the year that the San Diego Trolley opened which seemed to open the floodgates.

For the next 6 years I stayed heavily involved in transit issues in LA. Then in 1987 I moved to Spokane, WA to attend school. Spokane had a transit system that I wish LA could have been. All the busses came into one of two transit centers, you could transfer between routes and you were on your way. My next location was Charlotte, NC. Talk about a unusable system. I lived twenty minutes from work via a major street. However there was only a couple of cross-town busses. All other busses would head for Uptown (Downtown) but there was no convenient transfers between routes. So if I wanted to ride the bus to work it would take over 2 1/2 hours. I returned to Spokane and work hard to improve transit in the area including working with the county transportation commission promoting transit. I then moved to Salt Lake and was able to enjoy start up of their new light rail line.

I am now living on the Oregon Coast but most likely will be moving back to LA in the next couple of years. It stills seems hard to believe that many of the things that I advocated, but were so distance in the future, are now part of LA life (blue line, Metrolink, etc). However, as always, there is so much left to be done, and I want to be a part of it.