Metro Rapid (Los Angeles County)
Metro Rapid is a bus rapid transit service in Los Angeles County, California that operates in mixed traffic environments and has fewer stops than the Metro Local service. The system is mainly operated by LACMTA. Two routes are operated by Big Blue Bus, one by Culver CityBus and one by Torrance Transit. The Rapid program attempts to speed up commuter travel time on Los Angeles' county streets, complementing the Metro Local bus network operated by the LACMTA as well as other bus routes operated by smaller agencies.
To accomplish this, the buses are equipped with special transmittal devices that cause traffic signals to favor the bus, with green lights held longer and red lights shortened. Metro Rapid buses also stop less frequently than Metro Local buses, with Rapid stops located only at major intersections and transfer points. The frequency of Metro Rapid buses is increased as well, as more buses on a line translates to less wait time at each station. All Metro Rapid buses are low-floor CNG buses for faster boarding and alighting.
Inspiration for the program partly came from the transportation network of Curitiba in Brazil, although the concept in nascent form was first broached in a restructuring study long before local officials' famous trip there.
As a result of a recent federal court consent decree ruling, almost all rapid routes have started to operate since in June 2006 from at least 5 am to 9 pm, five days a week, with a maximum of 10 minute peak headways and 20 minute midday and evening headways. Some Rapid routes operate on weekends as well.
Read more about Metro Rapid (Los Angeles County): Overview, Criticism, Fleet, Other Los Angeles Area Rapids
Famous quotes containing the words rapid and/or angeles:
“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)