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ChineseOntario Airport For The Car-Free
[tags]metrolink, ontario international airport, lax, express jet, los angeles[/tags]
ExpressJet flies out of Ontario Airport, and offers lower-fares and non-stop flights.
When it comes to airports in the Los Angeles region LAX isn’t the only game in town, but for the car-free the other options can seem unreachable. Ontario International Airport, the second largest airport in the L.A. area, is located in San Bernardino County and is about 43 miles from Downtown Los Angeles (LAX is about 18 miles from Downtown). Why attempt such a trek when LAX is so much closer and served by the fast and friendly FlyAway? In my case, on a recent trip to America’s heartland, it came down to money!
ExpressJet, a low-cost airline that flies out of Ontario (and not LAX), offered non-stop flights (duration: 2hrs 30min) to Oklahoma City for about $125 less than flights (with layovers) from LAX. The money and the chance to not have to spend 4-5 hours en route was enough to convince me that flying out of Ontario was something I needed to do. Now I just had to figure out how to get there…
My first stop when planning a new transit journey is none other than the Metro Trip Planner. The trusty tool came up with a single route for me… a two-hour, tw0-bus journey from 7th/Olive in Downtown L.A. to an intersection a short walk from the airport in Ontario. Total cost: $3.35. The price was certainly right, but the prospect of a tw0-hour bus trip split evenly on a Foothill Transit Silver Streak and an Omnitrans Bus didn’t sit well with me. Plus, buses traditionally have a bit of a reliability problem, and I didn’t want to risk missing my flight or finding myself stranded in the middle of the Inland Empire. I decided to look for other options.
I loaded up Google Earth and took a look at the area surrounding Ontario International. My eyes lit up with I saw a Metrolink Station with the name East Ontario which seemed to be a short walk from the airport. Could it be that there’s been non-stop train service to Ontario Airport all along? How brilliant! As I excitedly looked up the schedules for the Riverside Line I began to have the sinking feeling that this was too good to be true. Further research revealed that although the East Ontario Station was indeed right next to the airport, it was on the other side of the terminals. To reach the terminal I would have to go around the airport a distance of approximately 4 miles. What a bummer. Perhaps the airport had a shuttle for those who arrived by Metrolink? Of course not.
The Riverside Line has a very limited schedule compared to other Metrolink lines, and as I scanned Google Earth I noticed that the San Bernardino Line also served the area. The Upland Station is about 6 miles away from the airport, and the trains serve the station much more frequently than the East Ontario Station on the Riverside Line. The ride from Union Station to Upland would clock in at just shy of an hour at $7.50, but what about the last 6 miles? I decided that I would “transfer” to a taxi. I gave Yellow Cab in Upland a call and made a reservation for a pickup from the Upland Station five minutes after the train’s scheduled arrival. My trip was planned, now it just had to be completed.
A coffee shop adorns the Upland Metrolink Station.
On the day of my flight I hauled my suitcase onto the Red Line at 7th Street Metro Center and rode to Union Station. I transferred to the Metrolink which left right on schedule and got a kick out of the ride as I watched us pass cars idling down the 10 freeway. An hour later I was in sweltering but charming Upland. This is where my trip encountered its first snag. After 10 minutes my taxi had still not arrived. I called Yellow Cab and they said robotically that my cab was on its way. It was another 10 minutes until the cab finally arrived. From there it was smooth sailing once again. My cabbie was at once confused and impressed. He was not aware that Upland had a Metrolink Station (which is why he was late) and he had never heard of anyone taking the train to fly out of Ontario, but he clearly thought it was a great idea. He mentioned that he’d just taken a passenger from Upland to Long Beach, a $230 fare, and wondered if the woman knew she could have saved $220 by taking the train. Within 10 minutes and $20 (I left the cabbie a healthy tip for the conversation) I was at Ontario International. Total trip time was about 1hr 40min. Total cost was $27.50. Inside Ontario proved itself to be the anti-LAX, it was clean, fast, and uncrowded. From check-in to the gate was no more than a 10-minute ordeal.
So was it worth it? Indeed. It certainly would not have taken as long to get to LAX (30-45 minutes on the FlyAway), but the time saved would be lost due to the fact that there were no non-stop flights from LAX, effectively adding 2-3 hours of travel time to my trip. Even with the cost of the Metrolink and the cab, I still saved just under $100 by flying out of Ontario. Plus, with the exception of the long wait for the cab, the trip was as easy as it gets – a pleasant train ride followed by a quick cab ride. A ride on a SuperShuttle shared-ride van would cost $60. Cost of driving (per the AAA formula at 56.2 cents per mile) would be $22.97, plus you’d have to own a car, drive, and pay for parking.
If you have easy access to the Metrolink San Bernardino Line and a flight from Ontario is an option, I recommend you do a cost comparison because you could very well save a lot of time and money by making this transit trek instead of flying out of LAX.
Discussion
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I’ve been contemplating taking the OKC flight home for Christmas this year (I’m from Tulsa), and I’m glad you posted this. Now I know I can get to ontario without looking for a ride. Thanks!
I’m gonna plug my beloved local airport in Long Beach.
It’s really easily accessed via public transit. The 111 LB Transit bus goes straight there from downtown Long Beach (right at the end of the Blue Line).
It’s not a very frequent bus (it runs every 30 – 60 minutes). But the trip is tolerably fast and very direct.
The fare is only 90 cents! I usually pay a dollar and leave the 10 cents as a gift to the transit system/next rider.
Thanks Raphael… I’ll have to include Long Beach in my travel searches. Does the bus stop at the terminals?
The terminal! Yes, it’s right there. When you get there, you may laugh at the question.
Long Beach is probably the tiniest airport you’ll have ever seen, unless you travel a lot in developing countries.
I used to think Oakland had a small airport, but OAK dwarfs LGB.
I think that makes it far less of an ordeal to navigate.
The downside of LGB is that there aren’t many flights out of there. But Jet Blue serves all the places I go to regularly, so it suits me well.
The airport in Syracuse, New York is about 5-6 times bigger than Long Beach, and has fewer people.
You can also get to Long Beach Airport by getting off the Blue Line at Willow, take a second bus route (forget the number) and then transfer to the 111 further along its route. I’ve done that once. It’s probably slightly quicker than going all the way to downtown Long Beach if you’re coming from LA.
Since Ontario is also run by LA World Airports, how about bugging them to start another Flyaway Bus from Union Station to Ontario Airport direct! That would rock and cost about 90% less than your Metrolink/Cab journey.
Just spent an hour trying to figure out how to get to Ontario via the train, and finally abandoned the idea. (The Metro trip planner told me there were NO options between downtown and Ontario airport! Metrolink would have had me waiting 90 minutes for the return train, and there is also an Amtrak station nearby, but apparently there is only ONE train per day, and it only goes east. Go figure.)
SuperShuttle is $60 for one and $69 for two from downtown, so it’s a great deal if more than one person is traveling.
Very frustrating that this is the best they could do to provide public transit information for the airport:
http://www.lawa.org/ont/publictran.cfm
But in my searching I realized I could just take Amtrak to my destination (New Mexico), and bypass the airports altogether.
Yeah Gregg… The Metrolink to Ontario seems to be an option only if all the stars are aligned in your favor (as they generally were for me) due to the limited hours of Metrolink.
The old SCRTD used to operate direct bus service from Downtown L.A. to Ontario Airport (and Riverside). I rode it once, back in the 80′s. It went via the El Monte Busway and took about 2 hrs. because the route diverted all over the place !
Thanks.. my wife planned our trip to the east coast out of Ontario so we could take the metro there (from North Hollywood). She had heard of the Ontario station but now me thinks we’ll try out your route. Cheers!