Los Angeles Metro Rail E-Line Train

Yesterday, I took the E-Line train to downtown Los Angeles, encountering on the way a whole slew of tech gremlins that threatened to put the kibosh on the trip.

To begin with, I parked my car at the Expo Bundy station lot. Payment was by credit card at a parking machine which featured an LCD screen. Since Los Angeles summers are extremely bright, and the sun was shining onto the screen, I had to guess what the machine was trying to tell me. Eventually, I made it through the process—even though, for some reason, the system did not remember the car license plate number associated with my TAP card.

Then I had to go through the turnstile. Whoops! The system didn’t recognize my TAP card, so I had to sneak a free ride on MetroRail. After spending time at the Central Library, I took a DASH bus to Union Station, close by the headquarters of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). They checked my card, told me I still had $2.00 in stored value on my card, and added an additional $20.00 at my request.

I had tried to re-charge my TAP card the day before in Santa Monica, but “the system is down,” so I was directed to a machine at the Santa Monica MetroRail station. Of course, it was down.

Whatever happened to those days when high tech held such promise? Now doing simple everyday things lead to unwelcome interactions with badly designed machines programmed by people who have no idea how to interact with a human being. Did no one ever think of checking that LCD screens are illegible in direct sunlight? Did no one think at all?