Last Spring, I wrote a commentary about my personal experiences with transit in Los Angeles. An assignment for a class, it was something of a companion to the reporting I’d done for my master’s project, the work that became “R We There Yet.” I was proud of the final piece that emerged, as I was of my master’s project. It reflected my experiences riding L.A.’s buses and trains (which actually have quite a clever numbering system) to school and through the city – the novelty of which might reflect the privilege I had to be able to choose to ride.

The piece was originally slated to appear in Neon Tommy last summer, but I asked that it be pulled before publication. An editor at a national magazine was considering publishing a version of my master’s project and I didn’t want to disrupt that possibility [I should have pitched the main piece to the increasingly impressive Tommyanyhow]. That editor dithered for months and both pieces lost their freshness. Once I finally self-published my master’s project, I’ve been hesitant to accompany it with this commentary. In retrospect, it seems a bit fawning toward Metro. Though I was reflecting on my personal experience with the system, it’s easy to see how this reflection could color one’s perception of my reporting on transportation.

I remain a little uncertain about my decision to post it here. I’d still like to write about transit and transportation, the institutions that manage it, and the people who utilize and who are dependent upon it. At the same time, though, I’ve for so long wanted to share this experience, my experience as an individual moving through Los Angeles, that I’m giving into temptation and sharing this here, whatever the consequences of that decision might be.

What do you think about my decision to publish this piece? Should I have kept it as a classroom assignment, even though it was an assignment meant for publication? Should I be proud of it? Does it belong here?

Here’s the piece:

Continue reading “In Transit”