Metro 577X bus: missing in action

I just received an interesting phone call from a gentleman named Larry Goodhue, of Long Beach. He had been waiting in front of the V.A. Medical Center in Long Beach for the 577X bus -- long enough to get sufficiently steamed to call me.

Goodhue said the 10:41 a.m. southbound bus failed to show, then the 11:16 a.m. bus. So he phoned Metro. "The answer they gave me is that it's late," Goodhue said. "I said, 'I know it's late'."

A few minutes later I called him back. The 11:47 bus showed up just a few minutes late and Goodhue was on it. I made a note to myself that one-for-three is pretty good in many activities. Like baseball.

The 577X travels between the Long Beach transit mall and the El Monte transit center. Attentive readers may recall a story last week in The Times about how Metro buses are only on time 63% of the time -- much worse than other large transit systems.

Goodhue said he knew how to remedy that: pass a law requiring Metro board members to commute by bus at least two weekdays and two weekend days each month. Sounds good to the Road Sage.

I wanted to post this. I'll call Metro and get their response and post it this afternoon.

-- Steve Hymon

Comments

[Dana Gabbard]

This bus runs almost entirely on freeways from El Monte to Long Beach, with only a few stops. It is one of the X buses Metro has (the other is the 450X that at least runs on the Harbor busway and mostly avoids traffic delays). The Transit Advocates (http://socata.net) did a ride on the 450X and 577X last year. 450X did okay, but the 577X had almost no passengers. Because it was mid-evening when we reached Long Beach and rode the 577X (and it was a fairly new line) we did a Friday afternoon re-evaluation of the line this year, with multiple groups riding several peak hour trips then meating up for dinner on Pine St. near the Long Beach Transit Mall. No one ever saw it have more than 6 passengers and it did have problems sticking to the schedule due to traffic.

The scary thing is at one point as part of its all but now moribund Metro Connections program there was talk of running a number of these so called "point to point" lines all over the region. Thankfully budget woes seem to have made these disappear from further consideration. The trend over the past dozen years has been taking buses off freeways--because our freeways tend to be backed up, etc.