For reasons beyond the scope of this thread, I’m interested in learning about the following scenarios. In each case, travel doesn’t have to be smack in the middle of the rush – a little late is okay.
(1) Someone lives in Pasadena and wishes to commute daily to UCLA with minimal driving. That is, use of public transit or carpooling or any secrets you guys know is ideal. How would one do this? What’s the trip time for your suggested solution? (E.g., there’s the Gold Line, but that only gets you to Union Station. What then?) If driving is really the best option, what’s the real-world drive time?
(2) Someone lives near UCLA and wishes to commute to Pasadena. In this case, driving is perfectly fine. What’s the drive time and the ideal route (405 N to 101/134/210 E? 10 E to 110 N?)
(3) Someone lives in Pasadena and wishes to commute daily to USC without driving. Any options? (There seem to be some USC shuttle services from Union Station. Are they viable solutions?)
(4) A couple wishes to live between Pasadena and Riverside to optimize commuting to both places. Not driving is best for the Riverside commuter (but flexible); driving is okay for the Pasadena commuter. Where should this couple live and how should they go about getting to their destinations? What are the real-world travel times?
I know there aren’t silver bullet solutions to these, but the SDMB collective surely has the optimal solutions figured out already and knows all about various public transit options (where needed by the scenarios). Your insight is appreciated!
(Also, perhaps the thread will find its way over to MPSIMS, but I’m hoping to find some hard facts about how one might “reasonably” achieve the above goals.)
Pasadena to UCLA would best be accomplished by joining a vanpool offered by UCLA. There is no one good way to go. It really varies by day and what accidents have come up. It’s not pretty. In rush hour, expect an hour. In off hours, you could get it done in 30 minutes. The worst part of the commute will be on the Westwood end.
From UCLA to Pasadena, I would take the 405 N to the 101 E, which then becomes the 134 E. It can be unpleasant at times, but it would be the best. At off hours, you could go 405 S to 10 E to 110 N.
Pasadena to USC without a car. If you can get to the Gold Line, USC offers a shuttle from Union Station to campus. Or there is the DASH bus. I hear that isn’t bad. The Gold Line can be a pretty maddening ride depending upon where you pick it up.
Pasadena to Riverside is a long commute and there is always a lot of traffic. Even in both directions. You could compromise on a city like Claremont or Corona. But I don’t envy you. That commute is terrible. You will be stuck on the 60 or 91 forever.
Commuting in LA, eegh. I live(d) on the west side but one of my good friends used to live in Eagle Rock, so I’ve spent a lot of time getting between the two places.
So as for #2 I would definitely take the 405 to the 101/134/210. I’ve done both and that one always turns out faster unless it’s very late at night or something.
As for #1, I think there’s a rapid metro bus that goes from downtown to UCLA. I’ve never taken it but my friend from Eagle Rock has. So you could take the gold line to downtown and then take the bus to UCLA.
Scenarios 1 and 2 will take far more than one hour of drive time, I’m thinking more like 1.5 hours to 2 depending on traffic. I had a co-worker at my last job in Century City who commuted to Pasadena, and on average he had 3 hours of drive time per day, and Century City is closer than UCLA. Westwood is ALWAYS a mess! My two cents. I would imagine that a bus line would take even longer than driving due to the stops, but at least you could read a book or work on your laptop or something while you commuted.
I know of several people who use the USC shuttle from Union Station, and I’ve never heard any complaints. I haven’t ridden that one personally, so I can’t offer my opinion. You can also take the Red Line from Union Station to 7th/Figueroa and then hop on the F DASH, which will take you right down Figueroa to USC. Certainly not a bad option as both the Red Line and the DASH run quite frequently during commuter hours, but I’d probably prefer the USC shuttle just to avoid having to make that extra transfer.
As for the Goldline, I’ll take BobT’s word for it that it depends on where you pick it up. I’ve ridden from Goldline from end-to-end (starting at Sierra Madre) during the morning commute on several occasions and found it to be pretty uneventful. About 30-35 minutes.
It’s unfortunate that the Riverside commuter is the one that doesn’t want to drive in this scenario, because most public transportation flows in the other direction, and the majority of the heavy traffic will be heading into Pasadena. I spent four months commuting daily by car from Azusa to Riverside and found traffic to be a breeze in both directions.
Since you say driving is an option, though, I would recommend living almost anywhere in the San Gabriel Valley for your commute, preferably in one of the foothill communities. Anywhere between Pasadena and, say, La Verne along the 210 Freeway gives you viable street options for getting to and from work when the freeway is really in bad shape. In addition, Metro is supposedly going to expand the Goldline so that it goes all way from Downtown LA to Claremont (by 2009, perhaps?), which will give you yet another option for getting to Pasadena. And as I said, the drive to Riverside from the SGV is not a big deal. It took me 45 minutes on the worst days, but usually about half an hour.