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Let's Talk About Metro-Riding Etiquette (Again)
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L.A. took a lot of bashing this week thanks to the fine survey-takers over at Travel + Leisure and one UK-import Vice Mag scribe. One thing that hotly divides Angelenos is whether we have a decent public transportation system. Love it or hate it, if you use it, it's best to use it wisely. At least use it nicely.
As a Thought Catalog piece from this week points out, much like howwe've pointed it out before, it pays to mind your manners when you're riding the rails or the bus lines of L.A.
Okay, but first, Thought Catalog has some words for the L.A. transit haters:
We have a robust transit network, with only a few blind spots that aren’t even that discouraging. If you actually want to go to Westwood for anything other than a UCLA sweatshirt or a Jerry’s Deli, you should probably just move back to wherever you came from. You are the problem, not the solution. Madison, Wisconsin misses you, and there are plenty of Targets and Jamba Juices for you there too.
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And now their rules:
- If you want to stand on the escalator, stand to the right. If you want to walk, walk to the left.
- Do not make unnecessary conversation.
- Get a monthly or weekly pass if you ride the bus.
- Learn to ignore crazy people.
Thought Catalog offers these four simple tenets of good Metro etiquette that would put us on equal footing with New Yorkers--at least when it comes to public transpo behavior.
True, it's best to not engage others in conversation or let yourself become engaged in conversation (or in the shenanigans of "crazy people") but there are still a few more aspects of Metroquette that still seem to elude most riders in L.A. And those "rules" are really just matters of courtesy and common sense that, if everyone tried to stick to, would make a bus or train trip all the more pleasurable. So we'd like to add (and reiterate) the following:
- Don't crowd the door! Let everyone get off the train or bus before you elbow your way in.
- Your bag doesn't get its own seat, unless it bought its own fare. That's what you have a lap or the floor for.
- Pay your fare. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.
- Don't leave your trash on the floor. Your mom isn't going to clean up those sunflower seed shells you've been spitting on the Red Line floor all the way from Pershing Square to Hollywood and Highland.
Happy riding, Angelenos! Alternatively, hate away with these easy steps!
Previously:
All Aboard the Etiquette Train (2005)
How's your 'Metroquette' Been? (2008)
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