LA without car?

[slidey]

Has anyone ever been to LA and not had a car? I’ll have about 5 days there before an onward flight and would prefer to not have a car, but I shall be with someone whos never been to LA so will want to go to Santa Monica/Hollywood/Beverley Hills etc. I’m not really sure its viable considering how relatively bad public transport is there.

[Thegasman]

Use Uber/Lyft etc. A car is a nightmare in LA as parking is extortionate/restricted in popular areas. All the 3 areas you mention are relatively close so will be much cheaper outsourcing the driving than paying massively inflated car rental charges & stressing about parking.

I’ve started West Coast holidays in LA 5 times in last few years & only collect hire car the day I leave.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[Peter K]

‘Do You Know the Way to San Jose’ by Dionne Warwick….”LA is a great big freeway”. Basically that seems to be true. I was glad I had a car when I visited. Yes parking is expensive but it was worth it for us. You certainly can’t get around without some sort of vehicular transport, whether hire car or taxi.

[davefl]

There is a pretty decent subway system these days.

I left the car at the motel where parking was free and used it from Santa Monica into LA downtown/hollywood etc. and back for the day. Took about 40 mins into downtown but it would have been just as bad if not worse in the traffic.

[merlin90]

The metro that runs from Santa Monica to Downtown is quite good (although you’ll often find some interesting characters sharing the carriage with you) but if you’re going to want to check out places like Beverly Hills, Venice, West Hollywood etc. then you’ll be better off with a car. Uber/Lyft is fine; wait times can be a little long these days but you can also usually pay a few dollars extra for priority pick-up. Parking isn’t always cheap but it isn’t usually a problem, in my experience, finding somewhere to park. If you can find a rental car for a reasonable price I’d probably recommend it and then you’ll have all the flexibility you need to get around.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[MattB]

We’ve just booked 5 nights in LA as part of a longer trip and have had the exact same dilemna. I’ve used most of our Hilton points to book the Beverly Hills Waldorf Astoria and decided to rely on uber/lyft as parking and valet everytine we wanted to go somewhere seemed ridiculous. Probably will spend a day at santa Monica, another at Universal and I’d rather have a drink and enjoy myself than have the hassle of driving.

The hotel apparently has a Rolls that will pick you up within 3 miles so may take advantage of that when possible!

One point to note, if you are arriving into LAX the cost of uber direct from the airport can be 3x times the cost of getting dropped off there due to only allowing ‘uber black’ pickups whatever they are.

[stankpa]

We’ve just come back from LA and decided not to rent a car. We only had three days, one in Hollywood, one in Santa Monica and one in Universal Studios.
We based ourselves in Hollywood and took underground to the studios, Griffith Parkand and central LA. It was a very quick and easy way to travel but there were a lot of homeless people around. We then took taxi to Santa Monica. It was easy to find Uber and most places had Wi-Fi which enabled us to connect to internet instead of using roaming.

[merlin90]

MattB wrote:

We’ve just booked 5 nights in LA as part of a longer trip and have had the exact same dilemna. I’ve used most of our Hilton points to book the Beverly Hills Waldorf Astoria and decided to rely on uber/lyft as parking and valet everytine we wanted to go somewhere seemed ridiculous. Probably will spend a day at santa Monica, another at Universal and I’d rather have a drink and enjoy myself than have the hassle of driving.

The hotel apparently has a Rolls that will pick you up within 3 miles so may take advantage of that when possible!

One point to note, if you are arriving into LAX the cost of uber direct from the airport can be 3x times the cost of getting dropped off there due to only allowing ‘uber black’ pickups whatever they are.

This is a good point. Uber Black and Uber Lux are just nicer cars, possibly with a higher class of driver (however that’s measured). At LAX you can only be picked up at the terminal by Uber Black/Lux, Lyft’s equivalents, private-hire vehicles, or someone you know in their own car. Otherwise you have to take the shuttle to the LAXit parking lot a few minutes away, from where you can pick up a regular Uber/Lyft/taxi. There are no such restrictions when it comes to being dropped off; regular Ubers are fine.

Up until I think late 2019 any vehicle could pick up curbside at LAX and it was a complete mess. The traffic in the horseshoe that is the road that links the terminals still isn’t great but I think having regular Ubers/Lyfts/cabs sit elsewhere has helped, even if it’s more annoying for passengers in some respects.

Also, don’t forget that once you’ve signed up to Lyft you can earn Hilton or Delta points on your trips.

[Wanderlust]

We did LA without a car for 3/4 days in early 2015 and we were mostly fine without a car only issue I recall was the lack of free Wi-Fi in places we visited so ended up incurring charges on mobile phones which wasn’t ideal, but I assume that has improved in the intervening years.

I would also not recommend staying in West Hollywood if you’re not having a car, it was a really nice area and we really liked the boutique hotel we stayed in but it seemed far (and therefore quite expensive in a taxi) to get to the touristy bits.

[EDB99]

Wouldn’t do L.A. without a car. In a few neighborhoods, you may be okay with (e.g., Downtown, Hollywood). But for most areas, you aren’t. Parking–especially parking in the garages of luxury hotels–can be expensive, sure. But so is Uber giving the distances involved. (Besides, you can use a public parking garage as opposed to the hotel’s valet parking.)

Sooo many areas you can’t meaningfully do without a car (be it a rental or Uber/Lyft): Griffith Observatory; Universal Studios; Bel Air; Mullholand Drive; Getty Center; Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades & Malibu; West Hollywood; Anaheim/Disneyland; … And that’s an incomplete list.

Uber/Lyft can get extremely expensive if you do something like Mulholland Drive and want to stop at the various interesting lookouts and recreation areas.

If you really want to avoid driving yourself as much as possible, mayte take a rental for a fraction of the time. Do the metro-accessible stuff such as Downtown and Santa Monica Pier on the days without the rental and the other stuff when you have the rental.

[EDB99]

tl; dr L.A. is an endless sprawl, distances are huge. It does NOT have a public transport system on par with London, Tokyo, NYC, or SFO, either. It’s not even close. Get a car.

[Chas]

We (family of 4 with two teens) went to LA for 4 nights in 2019 at the beginning of a 3 week road trip, and only picked up our hire car as we left LA. I would actively encourage you to do LA without a car, rather than just saying it was possible. We used Uber / Lyft for everything apart from an organised semi-private half day (minibus) tour we went on around Downtown, Hollywood, Beverley Hills etc (also thoroughly recommended), and it was absolutely perfect for us – not only did it avoid the hassle and cost of parking / valet and driving, it allowed me to have a drink whenever I fancied it. And it was also probably cheaper too.

I’m surprised about the comment above re Uber / Lyft not being available everywhere in LA, as everywhere we went (Downtown, Santa Monica, Warner Bros Studios. Dodgers stadium etc) we never had to wait long (OK – it was a bit of a wait after the Dodgers games, but I expected a lot worse!). The biggest surprise to me was how cheap Uber / Lyft was – so much cheaper than the UK. Maybe it’s changed post-pandemic, but as an example a c50-60 min trip from Santa Monica to the Andaz Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard late afternoon only cost us $15. I’d have paid more in parking…

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[davefl]

Chas wrote:

I’m surprised about the comment above re Uber / Lyft not being available everywhere in LA, as everywhere we went (Downtown, Santa Monica, Warner Bros Studios. Dodgers stadium etc) we never had to wait long (OK – it was a bit of a wait after the Dodgers games, but I expected a lot worse!). The biggest surprise to me was how cheap Uber / Lyft was – so much cheaper than the UK. Maybe it’s changed post-pandemic, but as an example a c50-60 min trip from Santa Monica to the Andaz Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard late afternoon only cost us $15. I’d have paid more in parking…

US prices of just about everything have rocketed the last couple of years. Uber/lyft have significantly increased their prices. That run estimates at $23 now, so 50% more than you paid

[Chas]

davefl wrote:

Chas wrote:

I’m surprised about the comment above re Uber / Lyft not being available everywhere in LA, as everywhere we went (Downtown, Santa Monica, Warner Bros Studios. Dodgers stadium etc) we never had to wait long (OK – it was a bit of a wait after the Dodgers games, but I expected a lot worse!). The biggest surprise to me was how cheap Uber / Lyft was – so much cheaper than the UK. Maybe it’s changed post-pandemic, but as an example a c50-60 min trip from Santa Monica to the Andaz Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard late afternoon only cost us $15. I’d have paid more in parking…

US prices of just about everything have rocketed the last couple of years. Uber/lyft have significantly increased their prices. That run estimates at $23 now, so 50% more than you paid

But it’s still pretty cheap for that length of journey!

[TGLoyalty]

Don’t forget the price of hire cars has rocketed too since 2019

$23 is very good for that sort of time/distance.

[yorkshireRich]

I visited LA 5 years ago, and we didn’t have a car. If you”re dead set against hiring a car, then I’ll just want to reassure you that you will be fine.
Obviously as people eluded to on here, prices have changed since then but we used an array of public transport from local busses to the metro etc.
Granted, one of the busses one time appeared to take a long time from marina del ray to a station that looked like it was out of GTA San Andreas. We then took the metro to downtown and spoke to lots of hockey fans. It’s not for everyone but all part of the experience for me.

Also, I’m talking a few years ago, but you get a few lyft, Uber journeys etc practically for free if you can get some voucher codes. Think lyft may have been relatively new back then, and we were practically been paid to use them.

[Will in SJC]

Don’t bother with the car. Driving in LA (and the Bay Area to an extent) isn’t fun- traffic and even without traffic you have to contend with crazy driving. I am still amazed at some of the crazy driving I see on my daily commute in the Bay Area despite living her for four years. The driving is a lot worse in SoCal.

You will be fine with Uber/Lyft and metro. Lyft has recently been cheaper than Uber.

As mentioned above at LAX, Uber and Lyft now collect from the LAXit parking lot. Don’t bother using the shuttle unless you have a load of luggage- just walk over to the LAXit lot. At most it is going to be a five minute walk from TBIT (and all covered). L

[njb]

Get a car!

Would you live in NYC without a car – yes
LA – no!

I was so worried about the traffic in LA that I nearly didnt but loved having a car – opened horizons to so many different places for us.
FYI – we stayed in century city in August. Drove to Griffith Observatory/West Hollywood/Farmers market/ Melrose / Santa Monica beach.
Hotel had car service which we used for B Hills locations.

Roads are straight and SAT NAV worked fine.

I have driven a lot abroad. Learnt to drive in Italy – on snow – so maybe nothing scares me after that!