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Santa Maria California Apartment Rental
One of the USA’s big tourist areas, California has a mixed reputation for public transit.
Transport in California
These days, personal transportation in this region can mean a Segway or a surfboard. However, fittingly for a state where public transport mainly appears to involve use of a car, Route 66, the Mother Road, has its western end in Santa Monica, and the Pacific Coast Highway (State Route 1) runs the length of the state.
California is well-known as a state where everyone has a car. It can be smog-bound, congested and slow-going at times. It also has a history of producing paeans to transport: several of The Beach Boys’ songs were about cars (ones I personally remember hearing are Fun, Fun, Fun, L’il Deuce Coupe, Our Car Club, Still Cruisin’, This Car of Mine) and it is still the home of the famous California Highway Patrol—CHiPs—also the name of a successful 70s television series starring Erik Estrada, Robert Pine and Larry Wilcox in its most famous incarnation.
Bus and Light Rail Transport in the Greater Los Angeles Area
There are, however, some concessions to those without cars in this state. In the tourist areas close to Los Angeles, many bus tour companies operate to ferry visitors around the sights, take them to and from the various theme parks and ensure they are both met from and in time for their flights at either end of their holiday. It is in fact recommended that new arrivals from Europe should catch the shuttle bus to their hotel, where possible, and sleep off any jetlag before attempting to wrestle with the complexities of driving an unfamiliar automatic car, possibly on the wrong side the road.