More "Great Big Freeway" L.A. commuters bike, ride

By Mary Milliken

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - There is a lot of grumbling these days from long-time riders of the Los Angeles subway system about packed cars and fewer places to sit.

Thanks to the high price of gasoline -- just shy of $4 a gallon (3.8 l) for regular -- more commuters in this car-crazy city are taking the detour to the relatively cheap subway, train and bus lines and to the free bike lanes.

Everyone knows L.A. is a great big freeway, thanks to Dionne Warwick's 1968 song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose." But under the web of concrete overpasses there is a public transport network waiting to be discovered by most of the 10 million people living in Los Angeles County, the most populous in the nation.

"We have the most congested freeways in the United States," said Marc Littman, spokesman for L.A.'s Metropolitan Transportation Authority or MTA. "The average commuter wastes 72 hours per year stuck in traffic and $1,000 in the cost of fuel. So people have reached a tipping point."

Ridership on the city's subway system is up 5 percent from a year ago and, with no gas price relief in sight, the MTA expects the upward trend to continue. A one-way ticket is just

$1.25.

Kris Zymans said the cost of gas and parking downtown pushed her to ditch her car for mass transit.

"The place where I work gives incentives to ride the rail, so it just stands to reason that it saves me money," Zymans said."

Nick Mendoza takes the subway because there are just "too many damn people on the road." But now he complains about there being too many people on the subway.

'BUILT FOR CARS'

Thursday was "Bike to Work Day" in Los Angeles County, a day before U.S. National Bike to Work Day. Some cyclists braved the dense traffic, like David Colo, who admitted to "cheating a little bit" on his electric bike.

"I started biking to work a month and a half ago and the real reason was gas prices," said Colo, who works in the film industry in Burbank. "I just didn't want to pay it."

Michelle Mowery, the senior bicycle coordinator for the City of Los Angeles, has been working 14 years to make the city more bike-friendly, but admits that progress has been slow.

"We have been built for cars and planned around cars and now it is really clear that bikes and transit are part of the equation," said Mowery, 48, after completing her 25-mile (40-km) ride from Long Beach to L.A. City Hall.

Dozens of bikers rode down the famous Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood to Downtown, including City Hall employee Ed Magos, who does the trip once a week and says the most dangerous part is people opening their car doors on him.