Where We’re Coming From

We came by bus, train and car -- one guy walked, but he’s always been an outlier -- and as we traveled we read, chatted or listened to the radio. But the 10 members of the editorial page staff who logged our commutes one week ago this morning share one thing: Like everyone else in L.A., we have all come up with various coping mechanisms. For those scoring at home, our average speed was 24.6 mph (that’s measured door-to-door, including the walk to the car/train/bus and then to our desks). We plan to repeat this experiment in the not-too-distant future, with those of us who drive taking public transportation and vice versa. The usual disclaimer does not apply: Try this at home -- or, as the case may be, at work.

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1) FROM BURBANK

Driven to Distraction

Departure: 8:57 a.m.

Arrival: 9:28 a.m.

Commute time: 31 minutes

Distance: 9.8 miles

Average speed: 19 mph

The Hollywood Freeway, I tell my mother from the car, sounds more glamorous than it drives. After half a decade of walking or taking the subway, I was naively looking forward to driving to work when I moved to Los Angeles. Eight miles every morning on the 101, from Barham Boulevard to Broadway, cured me of that.

Not that it’s especially long or frustrating; it’s neither. But it’s monotonous, and I find myself reverting to the car games of my youth (and not just because I am talking to my mother). Any out-of-state license plates? (Not today.) Can I make it through this backup without coming to a stop? (Again, not today. The delay, as routine as it is mystifying, is always at the Melrose/Normandie exit.) If I wave at these people, will they wave back? (OK, so I don’t play every game of my youth.)

Now that I’m older, I am the driver, of course, and I can also talk on the phone, which I do using a headset. I have yet to master some important automotive commuting rituals: put the briefcase on the back seat, take the jacket off, fold the jacket, put it on top of the briefcase.... I always leave something I need in back. Today goes smoothly, but in the garage, at the end of my commute, I’m still taking too long to retrieve my stuff. If I really want to improve my time, I tell myself as I settle behind my desk, I need to work on my transitions.

Michael Newman

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2) FROM PASADENA

An 18-Page Bus Ride

Departure:

8:45 a.m.

Arrival:

9:45 a.m.

Commute time:

60 minutes

Distance:

14 miles

Avg. speed:

14 mph

I leave home and walk three blocks to my bus stop on Lake Avenue in Pasadena, arriving at 8:52 a.m. The bus pulls up three minutes later and I board, greeting the bus driver and showing my monthly bus pass.

I take a window seat among 10 other people, pull out my book and start reading. As the bus rolls south on Lake, it stops several times as passengers get on and off. Two elderly women chat. I look up from my book at one point and admire some jacaranda trees on Oak Knoll Avenue, just before the bus turns west onto Huntington Drive.

Music leaks from the headset of a woman listening to a radio station, but the sound of the bus engine drowns out most of it. She gets off soon after the bus turns south onto Fremont Avenue. An old man boards the bus and chats in Spanish with a young woman seated nearby. I don’t understand Spanish very well, so it is easy to tune out the conversation as I continue reading.

The bus turns west onto Valley Boulevard and stops just before entering the Long Beach Freeway. The driver walks through the bus asking for tickets. At the stop near Cal State Los Angeles, several students board; one flips open her cellphone and tries to make a call. The bus travels west onto the San Bernardino Freeway and exits the freeway next to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It travels west on Arcadia Street to Spring Street, where it turns south.

At 9:42, the bus lets me off half a block from The Times. As I walk into the lobby, I notice that I am 18 pages further along in my book.

Lynn Edwards

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3) FROM ATWATER VILLAGE

Speed-Trap Strategy

Departure:

8:27 a.m.

Arrival:

8:43 a.m.

Commute time:

16 minutes

Distance:

6 miles

Avg. speed:

22.2 mph

To get from my house in Atwater Village to my office at The Times, I have a choice of routes around Dodger Stadium, none of which involves getting on a freeway. Today I sail down Riverside Drive, where I can glance across the L.A. River and see the cars stacked up on Interstate 5 like container ships at the Port of Los Angeles.

I could make even better time if I weren’t a stickler for speed limits -- or if I didn’t know that the stretch of Riverside between the Hyperion Bridge and Fletcher Drive is a notorious speed trap. The driver of the car that’s practically in my back seat apparently does not know this; he swerves around and leaves me in the dust with what I don’t think was a friendly wave. In seconds, one of L.A.’s finest is waving him over, radar gun in hand. How sweet is that?

After stopping for just one red light, I’m crossing over the river -- again -- and under the 5 as it joins with the 101, a quintessential L.A. landscape of freeways crisscrossing high in the sky. Then it’s back over the river on the Broadway Bridge to my second red light and the first of two potential traffic jams, Chinatown. Today, no trucks are double-parked to unload fresh chickens, and I avoid the backup at the Broadway/Spring Street split by cutting left on Alpine Street to New High Street. One last red light, and I pull up to the garage and my final roadblock: Where in this overloaded purse is my entrance card key? Mary Engel

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4) FROM LAGUNA BEACH

Bad News Is No News

Departure:

7:44 a.m.

Arrival:

9:24 a.m.

Commute time:

100 minutes

Distance:

56.4 miles

Avg. speed:

33.5 mph

My excuse: I do this but once or twice a week, in a gas-frugal 1989 Camry. So my drive from Laguna Beach to downtown L.A. doesn’t increase my country’s dependence on foreign oil so much as my fatigue level.

After leaving home, I am almost immediately caught creeping behind a rubbernecker on Bluebird Canyon Drive who wants to check out the big landslide. The treat of the morning is the ocean view as I drive north on Pacific Coast Highway through Crystal Cove, but traffic in the area is heavier than usual, made worse by a balding type in a dark-blue Mercedes-Benz who cuts me off and then starts punching numbers into his cellphone. He’s too busy chatting to realize he’s going 10 miles under the speed limit in the passing lane. I might as well switch to daily stress mode, so I turn on KNX’s frantic jumble of news, mortgage ads and “extended traffic reports” that seldom extend to the jam I’m in.

So it goes this morning. My path on the 405 is clear, but there’s a miles-long jam on the southbound side -- while the traffic report sings on about the Valley but says nothing about this slowdown. Strangely, I’m caught in a tie-up on the usually not-bad 605, also unmentioned by radio. Many minutes later, it proves to be caused by a stalled car. KNX is warning about a bad drive up the 5 beyond the 605, but that proves oddly unproblematic; I cruise along at 40 mph or so. I then hop on the 101 and take it to 1st Street.

I am driving through Little Tokyo when I first hear a mention on the radio of the jam on the 605. Finally I reach the garage, and when I get out of the car, my right leg is cramped.

Karin Klein

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5) FROM WOODLAND HILLS

The Easy Train

Departure:

6:45 a.m.

Arrival:

8:02 a.m.

Commute time:

77 minutes

Distance:

40 miles

Avg. speed:

41.2 mph

I take Metrolink to work. The drive from my house in Woodland Hills to the Chatsworth Metrolink station on Lassen Street, where there’s free parking, is about seven miles.

I catch the 7:04 a.m. train, choosing a window seat in the last car. During the 33-mile trip, I read the newspaper, barely aware of the passing scenery. Forty-six minutes later, I disembark downtown at Union Station, then walk out front to catch a bus to the office (bus fare is included with my $170 monthly Metrolink pass, of which my employer pays $60). I take Metro Bus 33, which stops on Spring Street half a block from The Times’ lobby. I get to my desk about an hour after I board the train and 73 minutes after I left home. Julie Green

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6) FROM MARINA DEL REY

Skimming the Surface

Departure:

9:09 a.m.

Arrival:

9:56 a.m.

Commute time:

47 minutes

Distance:

14.4 miles

Avg. speed:

18.5 mph

As soon as I turn the ignition key, I am annoyed at another driver -- my evening alter ego, the one who 13 hours earlier decided he was too tired to stop for gas, despite the yellow warning light’s ominous glow. Piece of work, that guy. It takes four minutes to pump gas across the street. To avoid the 405, I cut across Culver City, on Washington Boulevard, on my trek from Marina del Rey to the 10. The first time I felt like a bona fide Angeleno was the first time I used the term “surface street.”

I like taking Washington for five miles, even if it does mean hitting red lights -- 15 today. The lights seem synchronized to discourage me from commuting through the sovereign Culver City. But the traffic always flows, and I cling to the consolation that things are far, far worse on the 405. Any commute is bearable if you focus on the fact that it could be a lot worse but for your guile.

The 10 is jammed today. It’s hard to believe that, as a kid growing up in Mexico, I viewed this same road as the epitome of all that was modern and civilized about the U.S., on weekend visits to El Paso, where “el freeway” is the main drag. The 10 starts flowing just beyond the 110 exit, as if tempting me to frolic in the desert. But I dutifully bear left to get downtown, just as I did yesterday and will tomorrow. Andres Martinez

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7) FROM RANCHO PALOS VERDES

A Rattling Good Ride

Departure:

5:50 a.m.

Arrival:

7:04 a.m.

Commute time:

74 minutes

Distance:

27 miles

Avg. speed:

22 mph

A 10-minute SUV drive to the Torrance street corner where the 448 bus arrives 10 minutes late. The bus, operated by the city, is usually on time, with better buses than the Metropolitan Transit Authority operates. We make up some of the time along Pacific Coast Highway to the 110. I chat with a friend for half the ride, read the newspaper for the other half.

The bus is one of the older ones. The good: They have front and back doors rather than just the front, a bit more leg room and overhead grab rails the full length of the bus for standees, though everyone had seats this morning. The bad: The older buses rattle, are hot in summer, cold in winter and usually leak in the rainy season. Both new and old have seats for about 40 people.

Off the bus at Temple and Spring, and a one-block walk to the office. One-way cost is $2.65; 20 LADOT tickets -- good indefinitely -- cost only $46; a monthly pass is $86 and includes free rides on the DASH buses that roam around downtown L.A.

John Needham

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8) FROM HANCOCK PARK

Into Town on Autopilot

Departure:

8:21 a.m.

Arrival:

8:42 a.m.

Commute time:

21 minutes

Distance:

5.4 miles

Avg. speed:

15.4 mph

After 18 years, this brief trip from the east side of Larchmont Village, just west of Koreatown, is on full autopilot. Leave the little stucco bungalow and its littler stucco garage at the usual time. Two blocks to Van Ness, where there’s a traffic light on Beverly. East on Beverly, then a straight shot to the office.

It’s a short drive through many nations. The Guatemalteca Bakery. Korean BBQ, where the Filipino buffet once thrived. The bar promising satellite and a large-screen TV for Mexican soccer. The enduring question: Why does Casa Carnitas, with its colorful mural of a peasant lass cooking a pig in a big pot, actually specialize in fish?

The only thing I really notice is the intersection where a motorist on even deeper autopilot sideswiped me a couple of months ago. But she had insurance! And she stopped to exchange info!

Over the bridge onto 1st Street, with its best-in-the-city view of downtown. It’s a sight available only to motorists because there is no sidewalk on either side. A few more blocks past the Civic Center and into the garage. Judy Dugan

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9) FROM LAUREL CANYON

Trucks and Tourists

Departure:

8:36 a.m.

Arrival:

9:15 a.m.

Commute time:

39 minutes

Distance:

10.2 miles

Avg. speed:

15.7 mph

Eight minutes after leaving my house, I have gone 200 yards. It’s garbage day, meaning pandemonium on my narrow canyon road. Two trucks are trying to pass at the bottom of my hill, but somebody’s bins are in the way. That gets cleared up, but the truck in front of me doesn’t seem to want to pull into the flow of jammed traffic trying to get to Laurel Canyon Boulevard. “Dude, if you don’t grow a backbone and move we’re going to be here all ... “ OK, he moved.

KFWB traffic report at 8:41 says there’s trouble on the 60, wherever that is. Big mess on the 405, tough luck. No mention of the Hollywood Freeway, so I’m taking it. Tourist on Hollywood Boulevard can’t seem to decide if he wants to pull over and park. “Dude, would you make up your mind and just ... “ Oh. He parked.

I head down the onramp onto the 101 and it’s ... a parking lot. Thanks, KFWB. I get off at Western Avenue and take surface streets. Every so often I get a glimpse of the freeway, where they’re crawling along while I’m sailing at about 40 mph through mostly green lights. Suckers. Bit of a jam-up downtown, but otherwise no problems. Pretty typical commute.

Dan Turner

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10) FROM SEATTLE

A Short Walk Spoiled

Departure:

6:45 a.m.

Arrival:

6:45 a.m.

Commute time:

Under a minute

Distance:

60 feet

Avg. speed:

1.38 mph

My commute is up two flights of stairs in my house and then about 30 feet horizontally. Traffic is light, due to no children or houseguests and my wife having left early for work.

But my commute is not always this easy. In Los Angeles, I live in Bunker Hill Towers. Getting to The Times requires descending 15 floors in an elevator and then walking for about 10 minutes, or driving for between two and three minutes, depending on the traffic. And, of course, although I couldn’t imagine that I would ever drive this pathetic distance, longtime Angelenos insisted that I would, most of the time, and they were right.

Michael Kinsley