Burb’s Eye View: She knows how to tap into public transportation

A little over a year ago, Fay Playsted sat in the room at the Joslyn Adult Center, listening to someone from the L.A. Metro transit service talk about all the benefits of taking the bus or train. It made sense to her; she’d used the service for years commuting from Burbank to downtown L.A.

Before long, the Metro would open the world to her friends, and she’d be the navigator to show it to them.

“I wasn’t thinking about me becoming the person that plans these trips,” Playsted said this week. “I was thinking people would have questions and I might have some answers. I wasn’t thinking I’d be the person who has all the answers.”

This Thursday, Playsted and about a dozen friends from the Joslyn Center will take a bus and a train to Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which offers programs to men and women who are former gang members. It will be the 14th such trip the group has taken since October 2013, when Playsted introduced her friends to Union Station and the freedom a Tap card and a map can offer to seniors.

That day, they began their tutorial on how to access East Los Angeles, Pasadena, the Citadel and destinations beyond by using a combination of bus and rail.

Playsted makes it clear to her fellow travelers that this is not another bus tour organized through a senior center. This is a life lesson in how to explore Southern California while having someone else get you there.

“What this gives to you is a lot of freedom and independence that a lot of us take for granted in our working years,” Playsted said.

The group is one of several chapters of On the Move Riders Clubs sponsored by L.A. Metro. They give Playsted guidance and a chance to network with other riders from other areas of Los Angeles. This allows her to plan routes and trips to places they might not otherwise visit.

During a trip to several downtown concert halls, the group had lunch in the cafeteria at the Colburn School for the performing arts. There, they sat next to students and learned about different types of music programs.

“For seniors who don’t get out a lot, it really opens up the world,” said Shirley Hoffman, a member of the group since its inception. “It’s very interesting going through different neighborhoods of our city, seeing the type of people that use public transportation and talking to individuals sitting next to us.”

Lilly Ortiz, program coordinator for Metro who led the talk last year at the Joslyn Center that spurred the Burbank group to form, said Burbank’s On the Move chapter is unusually close-knit.

“Most other clubs do not have the same core of travelers. Instead, there may be a bit of a revolving door of travelers,” Ortiz said. “No one format is better. They both seek to empower older adults with the knowledge and experience necessary to feel confident when traveling on public transportation.”

Playsted’s trips always include an affordable lunch. A researcher by trade, she never takes the word of a single person for a restaurant recommendation. Instead she interviews as many people as she can about their experiences and reads online reviews, and then she scouts the location in person.

The trips have become so popular that Playsted is forming a second group to accommodate them. For anyone joining the curriculum is the same: They will first learn how to obtain and use a Tap card to pay for transportation, then they’ll practice traversing the maze of maps and grids that is the greater Los Angeles transit system.

The first hurdle new members have to get over is the fear of getting lost. With a navigator like Playsted with them, that’s really not an issue.

“It’s like the first day of going to school or first day going to a job … it seems on those days everything goes wrong because you don’t know anything yet,” she said.

At the Burbank On the Move group, Playsted is helping people realize there’s a bigger world out there and it’s only a bus ride away.

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BRYAN MAHONEY writes about Burbank neighbors and the place they call home. He can be reached at 818NewGuy@gmail.com and on Twitter at @818NewGuy.