I rode 23 miles to work on an e-bike and saw the transportation promised land

Now in my fifth decade of moving around Los Angeles, I’ve accepted an immutable truth about living here: There is no shortcut to LAX.

Since mid-2018, the Los Angeles Times’ newsroom has been in a building just south of the airport in El Segundo. Flying isn’t a regular part of my life, but working at The Times is, so if anyone knows a quicker way to travel from east of downtown L.A. (I live in Alhambra) to Los Angeles International Airport in rush-hour traffic, it should be me.

My solution had been just to deal with it: Sit in traffic or on transit — often a mix of both — and hope you can get there in less than two hours.

That was until I bought an electric bike and just this week started using it to ride the 46-mile round trip between home and work.

By Paul Thornton