MTA’s Green Line Is Ridden and Derided

Like many commuters, Aileen Chaj takes the Green Line out of necessity rather than convenience.

Her trip on the light-rail line -- which runs down the middle of the Century Freeway -- takes only about 20 minutes each way. But that is only one leg of a grinding 1 1/2-hour commute each way that involves catching a bus near her home in South Los Angeles that takes her to the Green Line station. After getting off the train, the 22-year-old waits at a bus stop for up to half an hour before catching another bus to get to her job as a cashier in Manhattan Beach.

“You have to be very patient,” Chaj said.

That has become the mantra for Green Line riders. But the perseverance appears to be paying off.

Long derided as the white elephant of the MTA’s light-rail system -- “the train that goes from nowhere to nowhere” -- the Green Line is showing signs of life as it enters its 10th year of operation.

The line is now boarded an average of 28,000 times each weekday, double the ridership when it opened in 1995.

Ridership is still below original expectations and is dwarfed by the more popular Red and Blue lines. But the Green Line is now outperforming the recently opened Gold Line, which connects Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles and has 14,000 boardings a day.

The Green Line remains an oddity, connecting two outlying communities and missing downtown by miles. Some transit experts still question its long-term prospects. But MTA officials express optimism that the line is slowly coming into its own.

The line was conceived in the 1980s as a way to connect the then-booming aerospace industry around Los Angeles International Airport with the bedroom communities southeast of Los Angeles, where many of the 100,000 commuting workers lived. It was also supposed to provide a passenger link to the airport.

But because of budget problems and objections from the FAA, the link to LAX was never built and the Green Line ends a few miles south of the airport in Redondo Beach. By the time the rail line opened, the aerospace industry was in serious decline.

It didn’t help that the Green Line sits in the middle of a busy freeway, separated from street commerce and awkward for pedestrians to reach.

“The Green Line is not terribly well located if you’re trying to attract demand,” said Jim Moore, chairman of the industrial engineering department at USC. “A transit system should be configured around the way we live.”

Despite the obstacles, however, the Green Line has found an unexpected niche. Though few riders can complete an entire trip solely on the line, it has become a crucial leg for commutes.

The Imperial/Wilmington station is the busiest Green Line station, enabling thousands of people to transfer to and from the Blue Line, which runs from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles.

Many commuters also drive to the Norwalk station from Orange County, filling up the parking lot there regularly.

Many people who live in central Los Angeles hop aboard the Green Line to get to the beach cities where they work as airplane food preparers and store clerks, officials say.

One regular rider is George Wu, 44, manager of printer software development at Xerox in El Segundo.

Three times a week, he lines up with a mix of professional men carrying leather portfolios, students wearing headphones and backpacks and people on their way to jobs at LAX.

“Traveling down the 105 [Freeway] is always very bad,” Wu said. Instead, he drives about 30 minutes from his home in Hacienda Heights to the Norwalk Green Line station.

He then boards the Green Line, reading to pass the time on the 35-minute trip to Nash and El Segundo. From there, he walks the two blocks to his office.Wu said he doesn’t save any time by riding the train, but he prefers breaking up his trip because he sometimes feels drowsy after work.

On the Green Line, he said, “If I’m tired, I can take a nap.”

“We’ve seen ridership double in the last few years and we expect it to grow,” Jim de la Loza, the MTA’s executive officer for regional planning, said of the Green Line.

With its 28,000 weekday boardings, the Green Line ranks third among the MTA’s rail lines in ridership. In May, the Blue Line averaged 69,000 weekday boardings. The Red Line subway between downtown Los Angeles and North Hollywood averaged 107,000.

Despite the gains, critics say the Green Line is still a failure of planning. Moore, the USC professor, called the latest ridership figures “really anemic.”

Moore and others believe the county’s employment and residential geography is too dispersed and too volatile to lay down permanent rail tracks.

“The Green Line connects the location where nobody lives to the location where nobody works,” he said.

Indeed, the MTA’s own brochure on “destinations” shows that the other light-rail lines have far more attractions. The brochure lists 61 destinations located near Red Line stops, 37 near the Gold Line and 16 near the Blue Line. The Green Line has but two.

“The Green Line shows you what can go wrong with rail,” said Manuel Criollo of the Bus Riders Union, which lobbies for improved bus service. “It’s a very inflexible mode of transportation.”

MTA officials say they are still trying to improve use of the Green Line. In the next three years, they plan to feed more MTA Rapid buses to Green Line stations. They also support an LAX modernization plan that would bring a people-mover to a Green Line station. The people-mover would take passengers to a central check-in area and then on to the terminals.

Some groups are pushing for extension of the Green Line. The South Bay Cities Council of Governments wants the line to reach the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach, where several bus lines cluster.

But there is uncertainty about how to extend the line with its current configuration.

Cities on the route are hoping that developers will seize on property in close proximity to Green Line stations, the way they have along the Gold and Red lines.

In El Segundo, many of the properties that were vacant when the MTA was building the Green Line have remained empty in the decade since, said Jim Hansen, the city’s director of community, economic and development services. “When I’m out and about, there are not huge numbers of people getting on or getting off the Green Line in El Segundo,” he said.

Part of the problem, Hansen said, is getting around the city once people leave the train. City Hall employees still have to travel a mile to work from the closest station at Mariposa Avenue.

Those who want to eat at the popular strip of restaurants on Rosecrans Avenue near Sepulveda Boulevard have to walk about a third of a mile from the Douglas station.

“It’s asking a lot,” Hansen said.

Aileen Chaj faces another 1 1/2-hour bus and train ride to get home at the end of her cashier’s shift at Target in Manhattan Beach. The commute wears her out.

She stands all day at her register, stands some more at the bus and rail stops, and often has to stand once again when she boards.

“When I get home, I just want to sit down,” Chaj said. “I don’t go out no more.”