Newsflash: LA Times like cars

Tuesday, November 23, 2004, at 10:09AM

By Eric Richardson

I read "Lunch in L.A.? Car Beats Train as Meal Ticket" in today's LA Times and thought pretty much the same things Will Campbell did. He posted his thoughts on blogging.la, while I contented myself to just sort of scoff and move on.

But here I am, commenting...

• The author of the article has ticket machine problems. I've never had any troubles of that kind, but maybe I've just been lucky (and I largely use tokens instead of trying to mess with bills or quarters).

• Metro's trip planner tells me that if you caught Metro bus 444 outside the Times at 12:32, you'd be at Union Station at 12:37. I understand wanting to limit your report to the trains, but for a one mile trip like Civic Center to Union Station you need to really think about how a smart person would go about something like this. And a lot of times that option is the bus, unless you're able to find routes that very cleanly work for the existing rail options.

I could go on, but I won't. This morning I got on my 38 bus at 6th and Spring. It took 10 minutes for the bus to come, and then 20 minutes later I was getting off at USC. Try to drive there and park in that time. Maybe you can do it in around that time (but not much quicker), but it's going to cost you a lot more money.