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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Thursday asked some original thinkers, such as science fiction author Ray Bradbury, to look ahead and tell the agency how it might use technology to solve regional transit problems. The answer was strictly back to the future.

MTA board member Jose Legaspi urged speakers at the beginning of a symposium on technology and innovation at the MTA headquarters building to get in “the spirit” of the event by “knocking us on the head” and “letting us know . . . what is going to work.”

The 80-year-old Bradbury, his shaggy white hair spilling over his collar, was only too happy to oblige.

The author of “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Martian Chronicles” has lived in Los Angeles for most of his life without driving, so he is a student of its transit system.

One of Bradbury’s targets was the sumptuous MTA headquarters building, which cost nearly $500 million to build. Looking around the well-appointed MTA boardroom, Bradbury said, “It’s ridiculous, this building.”

“You could build a transit system for the cost of putting this place up,” he added.

The author suggested that MTA rent the building out and hold its meetings in Clifton’s Cafeteria, a downtown restaurant where he has been eating since the Depression era.

One of the things missing in the MTA’s rail and bus system, Bradbury said, is fun.

He spoke affectionately of the old Pacific Electric Railway, which ran its famed Red Car trolleys over a 1,000-mile grid with 2,700 runs a day, only to be dismantled by 1961.

In those days, Bradbury said, when you went to the beach, “you didn’t take a car. . . . You didn’t need it.”

“You got out of the big trolley car--no parking problems, eh? You walked down to the beach, had a wonderful day. You came back all sunburned, covered with sand, to bump against the pretty girls going home, eh? That was social. That was theater. We lost it all.”

Forty years ago, Bradbury said, he testified in favor of building a monorail system in Los Angeles. He said he got thrown out of the meeting. Instead of monorail, which he still favors, Los Angeles got buses. They get bogged down in traffic, he said.

“There was no rapid transit. There was no improvement,” the author said. “In fact, there was a failure of imagination and a failure of transportation.”

Bradbury’s comments were the highlight of a day during which speakers discussed everything from electronic ticketing to telecommuting.

The MTA is putting together a master plan to guide billions of dollars in transportation investments over the next 25 years and is inviting public comment.

Much of the testimony dealt with the need to develop a transportation system that will connect the widely diverse geographic and ethnic communities in the Los Angeles area.

Joel Kotkin, an author who works with Pepperdine University’s Davenport Institute for Public Policy, said Los Angeles faces the chronic problem of having a transit system that often fails to get people, particularly tourists, to attractions they want to visit.

Los Angeles, he said, remains a “terrible place to visit because if you don’t rent a car you really can’t do anything,” despite the investment of billions of dollars in a subway.

Just try to use public transit to get from some of the area’s most interesting places, from the flower and jewelry marts downtown, to the beaches, Santa Monica, Studio City and Pasadena, he said.

Los Angeles, he said, has some destination gems.

“Its like a necklace that hasn’t been put together yet. And that is what the role of transit should be.”

Transit officials accepted the criticism in the spirit of the forum.

“It is very difficult to come up with one solution,” said James de la Loza, MTA’s chief of countywide planning and development. “You really have to put together a grid of transportation that gives people options other than using their own vehicle.”

Outside the meeting, conferees, including MTA Chairwoman Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, test drove another transportation option--electric-powered scooters.