First-Class Coach : Century City Shuttle Will Transport Lawyers in Style

Life in the fast lane will have a new meaning for Century City lawyers and others who travel to and from downtown in an upscale shuttle bus scheduled to start service next month.

Aimed at a clientele ready to pay $7.50 a trip, the 18-passenger vehicles are equipped with TVs, VCRs, soft mauve seats, cellular telephones and fax machines for exchanging documents with the home office while en route.

A cabin attendant will dispense coffee and bagels in the morning, soft drinks during the day and wine after 5 p.m. Plans call for the buses to leave every 90 minutes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

For lawyers, who charge their clients hourly fees of $150 or so, time on the bus could be a real bonus, said Susan G. Schaefer, president of the Century City Bar Assn.

“What lawyers sell is their time, so if half an hour or an hour of time can be spent working rather than dodging other cars, then that’s time well-spent,” she said.

Idea Originated in the Shower

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who said he originated the idea of a Century City shuttle in his shower, hailed the new service as an example of what Los Angeles can do about traffic in the years before the Metro Rail subway is in place.

“You’re not going to have subway or light rail (trolley) service to the Westside for a decade and a half or more,” he said.

“Instead of applying East Coast solutions to West Coast problems, like believing that a subway is the only way to solve our problems, you need a subway and you need things like the shuttle too,” Yaroslavsky said. “You can’t put all our eggs in one basket.”

Although a Bar Assn. survey of Century City lawyers concluded that there would be a demand for the luxury shuttle, some attorneys were dubious about the new service even if it would save them $9.75 or more an hour in parking fees.

Joel M. Grossman, an attorney with a Century City firm, said he already uses his car phone to rack up billable hours en route downtown and that his fluid schedule would make it impractical to rely on any form of public transportation that leaves less frequently than every 10 minutes.

Waiting for the Bus

“It definitely would be nice and less tense, but my guess is that most lawyers, like me, would be concerned about the downtime waiting for the next bus,” he said.

But Ralph W. Smith Jr., president of APT Transportation, said he is convinced that the time has come for Century City professionals to get out of their BMWs and into his custom Ford Econoline 350s.

He was granted the licenses to serve the route based on the survey results and his enthusiasm to launch the service, transportation officials said.

Not just attorneys, but also paralegals and accountants will find high-priced public transportation attractive, Smith said.

He said he has three of the high-windowed, $60,000 vehicles ready to go, with two more expected by month’s end and another five on order.

“It’s the trend of the future,” he said. What with the morning rush hour dragging on past 9 a.m. and the evening rush starting by 4 p.m., “You can hardly go anywhere now,” he said. “This is going to take a lot of cars out of circulation.”

Indeed, Ken Cude of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation said his agency hopes to see similar efforts elsewhere in the city.

“We would wholeheartedly encourage private-sector participation like this,” he said. “It’s a pretty impressive vehicle . . . but it’s up to him now to keep them maintained and in that condition.”

Although Smith applied for a federal grant to help him get the program started, he said he is going ahead without it since there has been no response from Washington.

Jim McLaughlin, a senior transportation engineer for the city, said the lack of government subsidies will make the APT Express that much more interesting as an experiment in private-sector public transportation.

Potential Elsewhere

“It’s an ambitious endeavor in terms of the overall demand based on the proposed fare,” said McLaughlin. “I think there’s a demand. Whether the cost is a deterrent or not, we’ll have to wait and see. If it works in this corridor, then it might work in other corridors too. It certainly has the potential.”

The lack of government funding may actually help the service, McLaughlin said, since subsidized programs are often delayed by bureaucratic nit-picking.

Starting in 1974 with one driver, himself, and one van, Smith built APT up to a 200-fleet company including ambulances, medical transportation vans and a handicapped-passenger service.

APT stands for A Progressive Transportation Co., a name that Smith picked in order to have it ranked among the first in the Yellow Pages.

Ironically, Smith said, he has not bought any Yellow Pages advertising since he chose the name.