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By Kim Olenicoff, 3 March, 2010 5:10 pm

I have taken the new Flyaway bus once both from the Irvine Metrolink
station to LAX and from LAX to the Irvine Station. It was brilliant.
There was either no one or one other person on board. There is free
parking at the Irvine Station. The cost is $25, which you pay on board
with a credit or debit card. The bus is clean and new. It is nonstop
to or from your terminal. But it runs every 4 hours. So, depending
on your flight times, it may entail some down time at LAX, which is
not exactly the most fun airport I have ever visited.

In order to avoid about two hours of waiting around at LAX for the Flyaway (after
traveling 36 hours to get there), I had the half-brained idea to take
public transportation back to Irvine. And I had one quite large roller bag.
Here’s how it went:

2:01 PM – exited Tom Bradley Int’l terminal
2:10 PM – caught GREENLINE bus to MTA Green Line Station
2:22 PM – purchased ticket for $1.25
2:32 PM – boarded MTA Green Line to Norwalk
3:04 PM – exited Green Line and boarded Norwalk Bus 4 for the 2 mile
journey to the Metrolink (free)
3:16 PM – arrived Norwalk Metrolink Station and bought ticket for $7.75
3:44 PM – boarded Metrolink to Irvine Station
4:30 PM – arrived Irvine Station and was at my car at 4:32 PM.

It is no wonder no one takes public transportation to the airport!
The biggest problem in this whole equation is the Green Line. After
untold millions of dollars in building it, it goes from nowhere to
nowhere. When originally planned, it was supposed to go the extra 2
miles to LAX, but there were airport renovations going on, so it was
postponed. Speaking of posts, you can even see the posts toward LAX
where it was planned to run. And it ends in Norwalk (yes Norwalk)
about two miles from the Metrolink station, where one might be able to
connect with Amtrak and Metrolink lines to plenty of other destinations
in Southern California. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It was almost as if they
wanted to use millions of dollars of taxpayer money to say, “See, it
doesn’t work!”

In summary, the Flyaway Bus is a definite thumbs up. If more people
use it, they will run more frequent shuttles. The MTA Green Line is
on the Dumb List. It will continue to be a waste of taxpayer money
until they connect it to both LAX and to the Metrolink.