Yesterday, The Source and Blue Line passengers were both surprised to discover that planned weekend service disruptions had spilled over into the work week. The Blue Line had been closed over the weekend between the Washington station and Metro Center in order for track work to be done to tie the Expo Line into the Blue Line. The two light rail lines will share a stretch of track in downtown Los Angeles.

After I posted my (generally positive) observations of Metro’s handling of the weekend disruption at the 7th Street Metro Center station, I asked readers to share their thoughts on the service disruption. Not everyone who wrote was happy with the way a bus bridge between Washington and Metro Center was executed. Here’s one excerpt, dealing with the Monday morning disruption:

How was the blue line breakdown communicated to the public?
The line for the bus was huge.  I ended up taking a bus up to Olympic and walking several miles to my office. I would have driven in today if I had know about the lack of service to downtown la.

Here’s an excerpt from another email discussing the bus bridge on Friday night:

Okay, first of all, Friday night 11/13, my fiance was dropped off at Washington St Station after she boarded at the 7th St Station to get home to Long Beach after a nice evening in LA with friends. The train simply dropped everyone off and drove away as Not In Service flashed and they were told to wait for a bus that took more than 40 minutes to show up. I ended up driving to the Washington St station at 11PM to pick her up as it was not a safe area for a woman to be dropped off alone after 11PM.

And here’s an email discussing the bus bridge on Saturday morning:

I rode on Saturday morning.  From what I saw the effort was there, but some resources could have been better allocated.  There was plenty of assistance for passengers at each end – Washington and 7th/Metro – but there was little to no assistance at Grand and San Pedro.

A couple of thoughts about the Blue Line situation…

The weekend closure was pretty well-publicized in advance — we posted it on the Source and there were several media reports at the end of last week. That said, it seems that reviews of reviews of the weekend bus bridge were certainly mixed.

The problem on Monday morning was not planned and the result of a construction mishap on the Expo Line. That forced Metro’s operations crew to recreate the bus bridge during the heart of the morning rush hour and obviously there were problems. Another issue was that for a variety of reasons we were slow to get the information posted on the Source.

It goes without saying that everyone involved would like a better experience should this again happen and we appreciate the feedback. As an aside, you may be interested in reading a recent post about Metro’s bus operations center and how they often have to deal with service disruptions, both planned and otherwise.