It’s a well-known fact, bordering on a cliché, that Los Angeles is a car city. Our overloaded freeways teem with traffic every morning and afternoon (as well as at random times in between, almost always when you’re late for something important); our Metro system is famously in total disrepair; and the oft-invoked Hollywood dream of a top-down convertible sailing down the Pacific Coast Highway against a blazing neon-pink sunset doesn’t account for the city’s clanking orange buses.

All the same, the time I’ve spent commuting by bus since I wrecked my car last month has shown me another side of LA. I was familiar enough with the city’s bus routes already: When I first made my move to Southern California after graduating from college in 2015, I was a humiliatingly typical New York City kid wh

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