Unmarked FlyAway Buses

The recognizable LAWA FlyAway logo.

I’d like to preface this gripe by saying how much I love the LAWA FlyAway service that brings travelers from Union Station and Van Nuys to the chaos that is LAX.

Honestly. It has revolutionized the way I get to the airport.

Before the Union Station>LAX FlyAway service was introduced I had a number of choices when it came to finding a way to LAX and none of them were pleasant. If I wanted to stay true to my transit principles, and save some money, I could take the public transportation route, which I did a couple of times. It involved taking the Red Line from Hollywood/Western to the 7th Street Metro Center, transfering to the Blue Line and riding it to Imperial/Wilmington, transfering once again to the Green Line and riding it to Avation Station, and then finally transfering to the LAX Shuttle G and taking that to the terminal. Phew. The entire process took about and hour and thirty-five minutes and cost $3 for the day pass. Another option, one I often relied upon, was using Super Shuttle service (shared-ride vans) which ran me about $25 (one way) and the trip time would vary depending on how many others the driver had to pick up and how bad traffic was. A yellow taxi from Hollywood to LAX would usually run about $60 including tip. The final option of course was to call upon friends to take me out to the airport, a method I often used, but there’s something very unfriend-like about asking to be taken to or picked up from LAX. But what other option did I have?

Then came March of this year and everything changed. Suddenly I had an option that, in the parlance of teh internets, pwned all of my previous methods of getting to the airport. Now I could hop on the Red Line to Union Station, make one simple transfer to the FlyAway and be at LAX in no time and on the cheap. Sweet.

All of this leads me to tell you about a new problem that has surfaced in the past two times I’ve used the FlyAway service. And that problem, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, is that of unmarked FlyAway buses being used and confusing the hell out of me at the airport when I want to come back home.

The FlyAway buses have, as long as I’ve been aware of their existence, been very well branded. The buses are painted in baby blue and feature some nicely designed typography wrapping around the bus labeling it the Flyaway. These buses and the logotype featured on the buses have been in all the marketing and promotional materials relating to the FlyAway. The buses are unmistakable, and that’s a good thing, because if you’ve ever been to LAX you know there’s a ton of vehicles circling around that place, and many of them could be considered a “bus”.

This is how the FlyAway is supposed to look:

Nice, huh?

Well this is the FlyAway bus that picked me up at LAX this past weekend:

The only thing that told me it was a FlyAway bus was a small placard behind the windshield. Because of this I missed the first bus, it pulled up but I failed to notice the placard and just assumed it was another coach bus, after all, I am in the section for “FlyAway, Buses, and Long-Distance Vans”.

A Disneyland bus came, and there was no question where it was headed:

Obviously Disney is not going to leave their riders with any doubt as to which bus is meant for them. I wish LAWA would do the same for its riders. The service is great, and I’m sure the lack of branded buses is due to the increasing popularity of the service, but something more than a small placard is needed while the new buses (hopefully) get painted. I was forced to wait another 30 minutes at LAX because I didn’t realize the first bus was a FlyAway, and thank goodness I noticed the placard on the next bus or I could have been waiting all night for that baby blue beauty. C’mon LAWA, don’t let your service slip as awareness of it grows. Spend the money, get the buses painted, and realize that the more people who see that blue FlyAway passing them in the HOV lane as they sit in traffic preparing to pay $15 a day to park, the more riders you’ll get. And for those of you planning on riding the FlyAway in the near future, realize that they might not look the way you expect, and keep an eye on the front windshield of any large bus that passes by you.