Metro Rapid is a huge success because it delivers on the promise to significantly reduce travel time, said Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan. The new stations on Ventura Boulevard are the perfect complement to this system. Line 750 operates 22 buses on a 16-mile route along Ventura Boulevard between Warner Center and the Universal City station, one of three new Metro Red Line stations along the subway s 6.3 mile North Hollywood extension which also opened in June, 2000. Functioning like a rubber tire railway, the Metro Rapid System was designed to make up much of that lost time. In fact, Metro Rapid is cutting bus travel time across the San Fernando Valley and the L.A. Basin by as much as 25 percent.
Several system features contribute to the shorter trip times.
Each red and white Metro Rapid bus is equipped with a transponder which can turn a red signal green up to 10 seconds earlier and extend green signals up to 10 seconds longer to allow a Metro Rapid bus to continue through many intersections without stopping. Metro Rapid buses board passengers at stations spaced approximately 0.8 miles apart. Local service buses, on the other hand, stop approximately every 0.2 miles. One of the goals of Metro Rapid, however, is to take advantage of the time savings that traffic conditions sometime afford while keeping buses evenly spaced to avoid bunching and prevent long passenger wait times. The purpose of the interval-based schedule is to move buses from one end of the route to the other as quickly as possible and yet maintain the distance between buses to prevent bunching, said Rex Gephart, Metro Rapid project manager.