I took Metro to the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Here’s what it was like

I know little about fast cars, or cars in general really.

But I have a soft spot for trains: Light rail. Heavy rail. Subway. Miniature — you name it.

There’s something mesmerizing about the motion. The things going by. The anticipation of what’s to come. I should have outgrown this fascination by now, but the 10-year-old in me climbing the old relics at Travel Town, in Griffith Park, can be a powerful force when it comes to locomotion by rail.

So when a colleague asked if I might be interested in riding Metro to the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach this weekend, just to soak in the adventure, it didn’t take much persuading.

Pasadena to Long Beach: L Line (formerly the Gold Line), B (Red) Line, A (Blue) Line. I’ve done the route before. But this was for the beloved street race, Long Beach’s biggest annual event — featuring an exponentially faster kind of motion.

There’s a reason why race organizers have dubbed the Grand Prix “Southern California’s 200-mph beach party.”

Not that I’m a connoisseur of auto racing.

Before this week, in fact, I needed a Google refresher on the difference between the IndyCar Series and Formula One. Put a photo of a top IndyCar driver and an Uber driver in front of my eyes, and I would likely not know the difference.

But — to use some journalistic lingo on you — the “nut graf” here is that the organizers of this year’s race strongly encouraged racegoers to take the train and other forms of public transit to get to the Grand Prix.

After all, with more than 180,000 people combined expected to converge on downtown Long Beach for the event this weekend, parking and traffic snarls would be inevitable if they all drove in.

Choo-chooing it via #Metro to the #longbeach #lbgrandprix today. Slightly slower clip than an #IndyCar but less traffic and less parking hassle. #racing #goldline. Anybody else taking the train? pic.twitter.com/A0NKfxPihY

— Ryan Carter (@ryinie) April 15, 2023

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Jim Michaelian, president and CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, quickly corrected me when I asked him about the “nudge” to get more people to take public transit to the event — not just rail but also buses and the like.

“Nudging?!” he exclaimed to me at a pre-race luncheon. “I wouldn’t use the term ‘nudging.’ Look. We only have a little over 2,000 parking spaces in this whole area. We’ve got 188,000 people. I don’t think we’re nudging them. In fact, we’re strongly encouraging them.”

OK, then. No arguments from me.

I am strongly opposed, after all, to sitting in traffic jams and paying $30 to park, but am a staunch supporter of walking. And since I was up for combining a nice train ride with absorbing the personally uncharted sights and sounds of the Grand Prix, I followed Michaelian’s advice. When Saturday, April 15, arrived, I hopped on a train.

By 8:30 a.m. on Day 2 of the Grand Prix, the L Line was humming by the old bungalows of Highland Park, then passing by the people already basking in the newfound sunshine at L.A. State Historic Park. Then, Chinatown. The Downtown L.A. skyscrapers quickly emerged during the final approach to the historic Union Station.

That downtown landscape — not to mention Union Station, in all its mid-century glory — never gets old. And seeing it from the train, in all its slowness, makes it seem even cooler.

But what I wasn’t seeing were any fellow Grand Prix-goers. Yeah, it was still early. But surely some folks must have taken up Michaelian’s challenge to go carless, right?

Wrong.

During a, ahem, pit stop at the Union Station Starbucks, I noticed a man with a GoPro camera and a backpack. I was hopeful this would be my first encounter with a Grand Prix visitor on rail. So I asked.

“I wish,” the fellow traveler said. “Santa Barbara.”

Maybe the next train.

I scurried to the B Line (the subway), which connects to the above-ground A Line light rail to Long Beach.

But ridership was sparse.

On the A line, I saw some riders just trying to get to work. But, in what will come as no surprise to anyone in our region, I saw homelessness and empty cars. I saw signs of a population in serious need of mental health help. I saw some of the newly formed teams of Metro Ambassadors, a group of 300 unarmed, trained people who help connect and direct travelers and are an extra set of eyes for issues that pop up.

By 10 a.m., the A Line was passing through Watts, with Simon Rodia’s landmark rebar Towers visible through the trees and buildings. All of a sudden, passing on the right, a burst of yellow in a superbloom amid the corrugated, graffitied fences. Then, to the left, a circus tent in Artesia.

Finally, by around 10:30 a.m., roughly two hours after the journey began, I arrived in Long Beach.

By now, of course, I got the irony of my Saturday journey: Here I was, on this relatively slow train ride, L.A.’s geographical, historical and social tapestry crawling by, all on the way to an event that represents the epitome of four-wheeled speed.

I could have driven there in 45 minutes.

Fans, though, offered some hope and perspective for future fellow-riders.

Garrett Salmi and Carmen Perkins drove to the event from Diamond Bar. But they’d consider taking the train some time.

“Yeah, we take the train to like Dodger games,” Salmi said. “We’ve done that before.”

So would racing fan Mike Serrano.

He lives in San Diego — and loves riding Amtrak.

“I think maybe another time we would have done that,” Serrano said. “but we had a bunch of stuff with us.”

Ultimately, as fans told me, taking public transit, especially a longer distance, involves some trade-offs. I myself had to check out a little earlier to get home, leaving before the live Saturday night concert go underway.

All this is not to say, of course, that I didn’t satisfy my need for speed.

For one thing, I didn’t have to worry about parking — or for paying for it. I simply disembarked the train on Long Beach Boulevard, crossed Ocean Boulevard and walked in to the Grand Prix concourse.

As wonderful as the low-going trip to the Grand Prix was, it was also amazing to see things go so relentlessly fast, and in the context of a truly urban setting, where city streets — crammed with high-rising hotels and giant apartment complexes — transformed into a raceway with ocean views.

That’s what attracts everybody there: A big race in the middle of an L.A.-area city.

“I think that makes it unique,” said Almendra Hernandez, who was with Serrano and 12-year-old Max Hernandez from San Diego on Saturday.

A couple of days before the race, I was at the track, and I talked to a guy who was equally struck by the urban nature of the race.

“This is one of the best IndyCar events that we have,” he said. “The location of the event. It’s so close to big buildings. And the course itself, it’s really historical. It has a lot of character. So for a driver to make a proper lap here, you’re always on the limit. And it’s really fast.”

I wasn’t entirely joking about not knowing a racing pro from an Uber driver, by the way.

Because it turns out, that man — I had to ask his name — was Alex Palou. Also known as the 2021 NTT IndyCar Series champion.

He schooled me on the delights of the Long Beach raceway and why it stands out.

“Normally, street courses are super slow and they are not so fun to drive. But this is freaking fast,” Palou said. “For the drivers, it’s super cool. I think for the fans, seeing the cars so close and being so fast around the streets of Long Beach is pretty cool.”

On Saturday, during the qualifying rounds and pre-races, I went to his pit stop and watched his team as they readied his No. 10 car during a stop.

Adrenaline pumped. Engines revved. Power tools hummed. It was a symphony.

I found myself rooting for the guy as his car’s engine roared and his pit crews did their thing. There was a kind of dramatic spectacle to it all: Palou — tucked into his race car, with his helmet on, looking straight ahead — seemed as if he could be a starfighter from the “Star Wars” universe.

As I watched, I couldn’t have been farther from the Metro or Union Station.

But after a few hours of noise and speed, home beckoned — partly because I needed to catch the train early enough.

As I sat there, waiting for the A line train to arrive and rumble me back home, it all seemed so slow.

The train arrived, its doors open and I hopped on. And I saw a group about to disembark for their destination — the Grand Prix.

I’d finally found some folks taking public transportation — the train — to the event. For a $5.50 round trip. No gas used. No parking costs.

“It’s genius,” said Jeff Smith. “But to be honest, I don’t even think people realize they can do it.”

On the long ride home, meanwhile, I saw the normal, everyday ridership that takes the light rail train. But I also noticed people with blue hats — emblazoned, in white, with the letters “LA” — hopping on with each stop:

Dodgers fans.

To beat the traffic — and the infamous hassle of parking at Chavez Ravine — taking the train to the Dodger Stadium Express Shuttle at Union Station was a convenient option to get to the game on Saturday afternoon.

And even in a time of concern about public safety on the train, it’s still worth it, my fellow riders said.

Back at Union Station, I asked Metro Ambassador Delvon Gray if he’d come across many Grand Prix travelers.

Not really.

Gray, like the transit sage he is becoming on the new job, suggested that people in the area just had a ton of entertainment choices. The harder-core racing fans probably drove (makes sense, because they like four wheels). And many transit riders probably chose the game over the Grand Prix, he said.

“I’m just glad people are riding again,” he said, noting the hit public transit took during the thick of the pandemic and the recent signs of what Metro says is increased ridership.

This was one of my first rides in the endemic era. It was eye-opening. It was fun. It was sobering. It was slow — and fast.

Maybe someday, more folks will take the trip all the way down to Long Beach for the Grand Prix.

It just might not come as fast as an IndyCar — but it can be just as thrilling.

Source: Orange County Register