Riders Get First Look at Blue Line Light Rail : Transit: About 25,000 had seats on the inaugural run of the L.A.-to-Long Beach trolley. More showed up.

About 25,000 Southern Californians did the unthinkable Saturday, forsaking the comfort and privacy of their cars for an elbow-to-elbow ride on Los Angeles’ $877-million transit gamble: the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach light-rail line.

In a public relations extravaganza beneath a scorching summer sun, county transit officials lured curious motorists and nearby residents to the so-called Blue Line with offers of free tickets, music and community celebrations. More than 200 people at a time, many snapping photos and waving to those left behind, crowded into each of the $1.2-million red, white and blue-striped trolleys.

“Right here! Right here! Come on! Move all the way down, please!” one RTD official shouted as swelling crowds pushed their way onto trains in a scene befitting New York City. “They’re all full. Get in wherever you can. That’s it. Get in!”

For many, it was a party for the whole family. Passengers yelped, hooted and hollered as standing-room-only trolley cars pulled out of stations along the 19-mile route, which will grow to 22 miles by the end of next year. At the 103rd Street station, Watts community activist Sweet Alice Harris stood on her seat and exclaimed: “This is it!”

Gone was the once-familiar clickety-clack of the old Red Car trolleys that last ran along the same route 29 years ago. The sleek, Japanese-built Blue Line trolleys hummed along welded steel tracks. “It is so smooth and nice!” exclaimed Dorothy Wallace of Huntington Park.

Officials said early attendance was disappointing, perhaps because of publicity about Friday’s fire in a tunnel of the uncompleted Metro Rail subway near Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. They also said some would-be riders may have decided to forgo opening day crowds because rides on the Blue Line will be free all month.

But by midafternoon, transit officials were diverting thousands of riders in downtown Los Angeles and elsewhere to more than 100 shuttle buses because of waits of up to three hours for return trolleys to Long Beach and other destinations.

Later, northbound passengers were forced to disembark at Grand Avenue because the downtown Pico Station was overrun with passengers, and no new passengers were allowed in line. The last northbound train unloaded riders at the Pico Station at 7:15 p.m., more than an hour after the line officially closed for the evening.

“This is no way to treat people,” said Jackie Darling of Compton, who had taken the train north from Carson with her three young children, only to be temporarily stranded late Saturday afternoon at the Pico Station, the end of the line. “I don’t even know where I am. And my kids are tired and hungry.”

The Sheriff’s Department, which saturated the Blue Line with 200 deputies, estimated that crowds of 50,000 to 90,000 had converged on its 17 stations by early afternoon. “It is pretty much right on,” said Deputy Sheriff Steve Barrett. “We were expecting 100,000-plus by the end of the day.”

Others did not think the crowds were that large. Art Leahy, RTD assistant general manager for operations, said the crowds fell short of the projected 100,000, although he did not have an estimate.

Leahy and other transit officials said overflow crowds were unavoidable because the 20 trolley cars operating Saturday could accommodate a maximum 25,000 riders between 12:30 p.m. and 6 p.m., when they were open to the public. The trolleys will run today from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and are expected to accommodate 50,000 passengers. On Monday, the regular weekday schedule of 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. will begin.

“I am very pleased with the way things went,” Leahy said. He said trains ran Saturday without any major glitches while handling crowds far larger than those expected on Monday, the first day for commuters. Initially, the line is expected to carry about 5,000 passengers a day.

Authorities said the crowds were generally well-behaved and there were only minor problems. The doors jammed on one train for five minutes at the Firestone Station in South-Central Los Angeles, and deputies later broke up a fight on another train at the same station. Although the line passes through some of the county’s toughest gang neighborhoods, authorities reported no gang-related incidents.

“I think we all came through quite well,” said Capt. Frank Vadurro.

Shortly after 2 p.m., paramedics treated a woman who collapsed from heat exhaustion at the Vernon Station, and earlier in the day deputies arrested a man at the Pico Station after he screamed at crowds gathering for opening ceremonies.

John Walsh, a self-proclaimed transit activist from Hollywood, was cited for disturbing the peace and released, a deputy said.

Walsh has complained to RTD officials that money spent on the Blue Line would be better spent on improving the agency’s aging bus system. He has dubbed the Blue Line the “Streetcar Named Disaster.”

As temperatures soared in the 90s and lines grew up to 1,000-people deep at some stations, deputies patrolling the line encouraged the elderly and parents with small children to come back another day.

By noon, sidewalks were sizzling hot and some crowds were getting surly. Many hid from the sun under umbrellas, towels, plastic bags, purses and hats fashioned from newspapers. Some complained bitterly that they had to wait behind iron fences as air-conditioned trains stuffed with public officials and journalists glided along the steel tracks in a preview run shortly after 10 a.m..

“Again, we are in the viewers’ position,” said Salimu Autry, an elementary school teacher from South Los Angeles who waited with her three daughters several hours for a train at the 103rd Street Station in Watts. “It is the same old thing. They build it for us, but we don’t get to ride first.”

Aboard the train of dignitaries, RTD Board Member Larry Gonzalez concurred. “They ought to let them on the trains,” he told a reporter.

Instead of issuing tickets, RTD officials stamped the hands of waiting passengers with a large “M” in green ink. At the Grand Station downtown, a 9-year-old girl complained that she had waited so long that her stamp was fading away, and others grumbled, too.

“I was here at 8:47,” said Alfredo Nueva, 68. “They told me to go get breakfast because the train wasn’t coming ‘til 9:30. So I did. Now it’s lunch time and I’m going to miss my dinner.”

Officials warned it would be another hour before a train arrived, but the crowds did not budge. “I want to see something I’ve never seen before,” one woman said.

County transit officials are betting that the new trolleys will wean commuters from their gas-guzzling, freeway-clogging cars and usher in a new era of mass transit in a region known for its infatuation with the automobile. The Blue Line is the first leg of a planned 150-mile rail network that will crisscross Los Angeles County when it is completed in two decades.

“I feel like dancing,” Nick Patsaouras, president of the RTD Board of Directors, said in both English and Spanish at an opening ceremony at the Pico Station. “A lot of the skeptics said this would never happen. The skeptics were wrong. The trains are back. This is the beginning of a transit renaissance.”

Mayor Tom Bradley and county Supervisors Kenneth Hahn and Ed Edelman joined Patsaouras and a large contingent of other public officials, who delivered speeches and made congratulatory remarks at several stations during the maiden journey from Los Angeles to Long Beach Saturday morning.

“It was a hard fight, but we won,” said Hahn, regarded as the Blue Line’s father because of his role in passing a 1980 sales tax measure that paid for the project. “The Blue Line is here. Now use it.”

Clearly, many people who boarded the trains Saturday did so with the eye of a potential commuter. Robert Malone Jr., director of Roosevelt Park in Florence, said he expects to use the train instead of his car for his daily commute from Torrance. He said his wife will drop him off at the nearest station in Carson.

“For $1.10, you don’t have to worry about all that traffic,” he said.

But others were simply interested in taking part in a bit of history, or heading to the beach in Long Beach or for a day of shopping in downtown Los Angeles. Some said they just couldn’t fathom life without their car.

There were “too many people,” said Joyce Bryant, who took the train from Los Angeles to Compton. “I didn’t even know how fast we were going until I looked out the window and thought, ‘God, this is moving fast.’ Too bad they don’t go to Las Vegas.”

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall, Jesse Katz, Fay Fiore and Ron Smith contributed to this story.

How To Get To The Trolley Line From O.C. Orange County residents can ride buses to get to the new Long Beach-Los Angeles Blue Linetrolley. A. Orange County Transit District bus line No. 60, which starts at 1st Street and Newport Avenue in Tustin, continues west along 17th Street and Westminster Avenue, eventually stopping at the Long Beach traffic circle at Pacific Coast Highway and Los Coyotes Diagonal. B. There, passengers should transfer to Long Beach Municipal Transit Lines 171, 172, or 173, which will connect with the trolley line at Pacific Coast Highway and Long Beach Boulevard. Also: OCTD Line 721, an express bus that starts at the Fullerton Park and Ride, makes a stopat 6th and Flower in Los Angeles, one block north of the Blue Line Trolley stop at 7th andFlower streets. Source: Orange County Transit District officials