On an average day, it takes me about 15 minutes to get from Burbank to Brand Boulevard, and about 20 minutes to get home. If traffic is heavy, it may take a half-hour. Excepting when I lived six blocks from the newspaper where I worked, this is the best commute I’ve ever had.
But, due to the curiosity and masochism that comes with being a journalist, I wanted to see how easy it would be to take public transit.
Both Burbank and Glendale have bus systems, and both cities have made a concerted effort to attract riders. In addition, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority has literally hundreds of bus and subways lines. It’s a dead certainty that some combination of the three will take me where I need to go.
So I started my research. Transit schedules and bus maps cluttered my desk at work, mixed in with the letters, story pitches, freelancer invoices and empty coffee cups that form the detritus of my daily life.
Bus schedules are nearly impossible for the uninitiated, and I went cross-eyed trying to figure it all out. After a bit, I determined two ways to get from my home in Burbank to the world headquarters of the Burbank Leader and Glendale News-Press: One solely utilizes the Glendale Beeline, while the other uses an MTA bus.
There is a way to get between Glendale and Burbank using Metrolink. However, as it costs more than three times as much as any other method — $8.25 for a round-trip — I did not seriously consider it. Additionally, as the Burbank bus does not go into Glendale, I could not use it as part of the experiment.
The Glendale Beeline — Bikes, Buses and Blisters
Cost: $1 one way; $2 round trip
Travel time: 62 minutes
Total mileage via public transit: 3.5 miles
Mileage by foot/bike: 2.7
