Weather Hurts Attendance at Commute 90067 Event

About 31 people stopped by the four tables featuring ride sharing and bicycle options for commuters to Century City in an event last week sponsored by Commute 90067.

Event organizers said the rain was responsible for low attendance at the event.

"The one rotten weather day," said Thomas Lee, concierge for the Century Park complex.

According to Linda Paradise Lyles, executive director of the Century City Transportation Management Organization, about half of her expected exhibitors didn't show, either, including AQMD, Metro and The Big Blue Bus. Lyles believes it may have been the bad weather.

However, she did say that at past events, when the weather was much nicer, attendance was much stronger.

Lyles said that the CCTMO, which is relatively new, is a non-profit organization trying to help people and companies in Century City find alternative means of getting to work besides a single person in a car. The organization is funded by some of the businesses in Century City, along with a grant from the Los Angeles Department Of Transportation (DOT).

"A lot of people don't know what we do," Lyles said.

The organization has only been around for a year, she said, and the Commute 90067 website, where users can track bicycle and walking miles and find rideshare partners, has only been fully functional since this past January.

Lee said that traffic is a major problem for the area.

"You've got 50- to 60-thousand people trying to get to work five days a week," Lee said. "The situation is only going to get worse."

Lyles said that public transportation options are difficult for workers in Century City, and the site does focus on biking to work and ridesharing.

"Most people have to connect and walk in from Santa Monica [Boulevard]," Lyles said. "It's a trek, especially if it's raining."

Rain, however, did not deter Leola Lanphier, who works as a paralegal for the Stroock legal firm in the 2049 Century Park East buildling. Lanphier lives in the Hollywood/Hancock Park area and chooses to share a car.

"I only drive on the weekends," she said. "I'm very bus supportive."

However, her assistant, Esme Castellanos, who lives in North Hollywood, said that taking using public transportation is very difficult for her.

"I wish there was a bus," she said even as Lyles pointed out that she could take the Red Line subway to downtown from North Hollywood, then the Purple Line and a bus to Century City.

Castellanos, who said it took her two hours to get to work Wednesday morning, did not seem interested in that option.

While Lyles conceded that the event's low turn-out was frustrating, she believes that people are interested in ridesharing and other transportation alternatives.

"They just don't know how," she said, pointing out that a recent event a woman told her that no one commuted from her area, just as someone else said the same thing about the same area. "I don't know who they think they're sitting next to on the freeway."

For more information about Commute 90067, click here.