Day Trips from Los Angeles by Train and Bus (No Car Needed)
by Wanderu
Los Angeles has a reputation for being impossible without a car, and for getting around town that’s mostly fair. Getting out of town is a different story. The Pacific Surfliner runs down the coast to San Diego 13 times a day. Metrolink runs seven lines across the region, and $5 buys a day of it anywhere inside LA County. Buses leave Union Station for the desert and the Central Valley. Here are 17 places worth the ride, sorted by how long they take, with what people actually paid to get there.
We wrote this page in 2018 as a list of places you could reach for under $20, and it has not aged well. Nine of the 23 destinations on it haven’t sold a single ticket in the past year, one of them has never sold one at all, and two weren’t really destinations so much as stations inside Los Angeles. The prices went the other way: San Diego was listed at $15.66 and now typically costs $39.33. So we rebuilt it around the trips that still work, and kept the fares, because the fares are the part nobody else will tell you. We’re doing the same thing to the rest of the series city by city.
The short version of what we found: the cheap day trip out of Los Angeles still exists, but it’s a 29-minute train to Orange County, not a run to Vegas.
Two prices appear below. The blue chip is live, the cheapest seat showing on that route right now; the “typical” figure is what people actually paid over the past year, everything in. One is the best seat on the train, the other is the one you’ll probably get. Metrolink, LA Metro, NCTD and ferry fares are published prices and we don’t sell any of them.
| Destination | Travel time | From |
|---|---|---|
| Fullerton, CA | 29 minutes on Amtrak | $4 AmtrakMetrolink Orange County Line |
| Anaheim, CA | 38 minutes on Amtrak | $6 Amtrak$8 BusMetrolink Orange County Line |
| Santa Ana, CA | 50 minutes on Amtrak | $6 AmtrakMetrolink Orange County Line |
| Camarillo, CA | About an hour on Amtrak, 38 minutes on the fastest train | $15 AmtrakMetrolink Ventura County Line |
| Irvine, CA | About an hour on Amtrak | $6 AmtrakMetrolink Orange County Line |
| San Juan Capistrano, CA | 1 hour 14 minutes on Amtrak | $21 AmtrakMetrolink Orange County Line |
| San Bernardino, CA | 1 hour 15 minutes by bus | $11 BusMetrolink San Bernardino Line |
| San Clemente, CA | 1 hour 27 minutes on Amtrak | $23 AmtrakMetrolink Orange County Line |
| Riverside, CA | 1 hour 30 minutes, about an hour on the fastest service | $11 Bus$17 AmtrakMetrolink 91/Perris Valley Line |
| Oxnard, CA | 1 hour 36 minutes, 49 minutes on the fastest train | $18 AmtrakMetrolink Ventura County Line |
| Ventura, CA | 1 hour 50 minutes, about an hour on the fastest train | $19 AmtrakMetrolink Ventura County Line |
| Oceanside, CA | 1 hour 57 minutes on Amtrak | $12 Amtrak$16 Bus$6.50 NCTD COASTER, from October 1, 2026$3.00 NCTD SPRINTER, from October 1, 2026 |
| Santa Barbara, CA | 2 hours 31 minutes on Amtrak, 2 hours 3 minutes by bus | $25 Amtrak$16 Bus |
| Bakersfield, CA | 2 hours 45 minutes, 1 hour 25 minutes on the fastest service | $17 Bus |
| Palm Springs, CA | 2 hours 10 minutes by bus, 2 hours 50 by train | $22 Bus$18 Amtrak |
| San Diego, CA | 2 hours 57 minutes on Amtrak, 2 hours 10 on the fastest service | $18 Amtrak$20 Bus |
| Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley, CA | About three and a half hours, train plus a connecting coach | Amtrak, train and coach on one ticket |
Where the trains and buses leave from
Almost everything on this page starts at Union Station, which is the one genuinely easy thing about leaving Los Angeles. A few details catch people out.
- Union Station (800 N Alameda St): every Amtrak train here, six of Metrolink’s seven lines, the Metro B and D subway lines and the L Line. Intercity buses board from the Patsaouras Transit Plaza on the east side, at bays 7 and 8.
- The FlixBus lot (501 E Cesar E Chavez Ave): a separate stop a few minutes’ walk from the plaza, on the northwest corner at N Vignes Street. Some departures board here and not inside the station, so read your ticket rather than assuming. The old Greyhound terminal on East 7th Street closed in 2022, and Greyhound now boards at the same six Los Angeles stops FlixBus uses, which is what happens when one company buys the other.
- UCLA and USC: FlixBus also picks up near both campuses, which is often closer than downtown if you’re on the Westside.
- Metrolink fares, from October 5, 2026. The weekend and holiday SoCal Day Pass goes to $12 and the weekday version to $19, one-way tickets rise about 14%, and the LA Zone Day Pass stays $5 no matter how far you go inside LA County. Up to three children 17 and under ride free with a paying adult on weekends.
- Getting to the station: LA Metro is $1.75 a ride with free transfers for two hours, capped at $5 a day if you tap the same card each time. The cap doesn’t apply if you pay cash.
One standing piece of advice for this corridor: check the alerts the morning you go. The track between Orange County and San Diego runs along an eroding bluff and closes more often than any other stretch of passenger rail in the state. Pacific Surfliner alerts and Metrolink advisories are the two pages to look at.
About an hour or less
These five are the reason this page exists. They all run on the Pacific Surfliner and they all take less time than driving to the beach on a Saturday. Fullerton costs within a penny of what we quoted for it in 2018, and Anaheim and Riverside are within a couple of dollars, while the long-haul trips out of Los Angeles have doubled or tripled since.
Fullerton, CA
29 minutes on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to Fullerton trainsfrom $4
- Metrolink Orange County Line
The cheapest and the fastest trip on this page, which is a nice thing to be. Twenty-nine minutes from Union Station, and the typical ticket bought on Wanderu over the past year was $15.99. Nearly nine in ten came in under $20. That is almost exactly what this trip cost in 2018, when we first published a list like this one. Fullerton is the corridor’s best argument.
The 1930 Santa Fe depot is the point. It’s a working station, and the walk out the door puts you on Harbor Boulevard in downtown Fullerton, which is dense with taprooms, a few good record shops and the Fox Theatre. Metrolink’s Orange County Line stops here too, but it thins out on weekends, so the Surfliner is the flexible one.
Anaheim, CA
38 minutes on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to Anaheim trainsfrom $6
- Los Angeles to Anaheim busesfrom $8
- Metrolink Orange County Line
Ninety-eight percent of the Anaheim tickets sold on Wanderu in the past year cost under $20, the highest share of any destination Los Angeles sells in real numbers. The typical one was $17.99. The train takes 38 minutes, and costs less than parking at the theme park.
Trains arrive at ARTIC, the big glass-roofed station next to Angel Stadium and the Honda Center, so a Ducks game or an Angels game is a walk from the platform. Disneyland is a short shuttle or rideshare from there rather than a walk. If you’re not going to the park, the Anaheim Packing District is a 1919 citrus warehouse now full of food stalls, and the Center Street district has grown up around it.
Santa Ana, CA
50 minutes on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to Santa Ana trainsfrom $6
- Metrolink Orange County Line
About $19 is the typical Santa Ana ticket, and nine in ten came in under $20, on 46 tickets over the year. That’s a small sample, so treat it as a good sign rather than a guarantee. The station is the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, and the Bowers Museum and the Discovery Cube are what people come for, with downtown’s Fourth Street and the Artists Village about a mile and a half away. The OC Streetcar that will connect the station to the Harbor corridor is built and testing, but it won’t carry anyone until March 2027, so don’t plan around it yet.
Camarillo, CA
About an hour on Amtrak, 38 minutes on the fastest train
- Los Angeles to Camarillo trainsfrom $15
- Metrolink Ventura County Line
The quiet one. Nineteen tickets sold from Los Angeles over the past year, half of them under $20 and the typical one about $19. We only sell the train here. The draw is the Camarillo Premium Outlets, which is a long walk or a short rideshare from the station, and the Ventura County Line also stops here on weekends. Go for the outlets and the farm stands, not for a downtown.
Irvine, CA
About an hour on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to Irvine trainsfrom $6
- Metrolink Orange County Line
Irvine is the honest edge of the cheap band. The typical ticket was $21, just over the line. The station sits beside the Orange County Great Park, which has a tethered helium balloon that goes up 400 feet and is genuinely one of the strangest good things in Orange County. It’s $10 for adults and free for kids. The campus and the Irvine Spectrum are further out and want a bus or a rideshare.
One to two hours
San Juan Capistrano, CA
1 hour 14 minutes on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to San Juan Capistrano trainsfrom $21
- Metrolink Orange County Line
The best station-to-thing walk in Southern California. The depot is two blocks from Mission San Juan Capistrano, whose Serra Chapel is the oldest building in California still in use, and it’s the mission the swallows are supposed to come back to every March. Los Rios Street, said to be the oldest residential street in the state, starts directly across from the platform. Amtrak is the only way we sell it, typically about $24 across 15 sales.
San Bernardino, CA
1 hour 15 minutes by bus
- Los Angeles to San Bernardino busesfrom $11
- Metrolink San Bernardino Line
A hub more than a destination, and useful for it. The typical bus ticket ran about $21 and roughly a third came in under $20, on about 30 sales. The transit center puts you on Metrolink, Omnitrans and the Arrow train. That last one is the actual reason to come: nine miles to Redlands, opened in 2022, and at the end of it downtown Redlands, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine and a row of Victorian houses. Brightline West will terminate at Rancho Cucamonga on this same Metrolink line, but that slipped to late 2029, so it misses the Olympics and it misses your weekend.
San Clemente, CA
1 hour 27 minutes on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to San Clemente trainsfrom $23
- Metrolink Orange County Line
The train runs along the sand here, close enough that the surf has taken the track out more than once. Typical ticket about $28 on 18 sales. The Surfliner stops at San Clemente Pier, which is exactly where it sounds like, and Metrolink adds weekend service to the same platform. Check the alerts before you commit to this one: the stretch closed for several days in September 2026 after high surf from Hurricane Marie damaged the slope, and it has closed twice before that since 2024.
Riverside, CA
1 hour 30 minutes, about an hour on the fastest service
- Los Angeles to Riverside busesfrom $11
- Los Angeles to Riverside trainsfrom $17
- Metrolink 91/Perris Valley Line
The Mission Inn is the reason to go: a full city block of 1900s hotel with catacombs and a rotunda, five blocks from the downtown terminal. Typical ticket about $19, half of them under $20, split about evenly between bus and train across 39 sales.
One trap worth knowing. Metrolink’s Riverside Line doesn’t run at all on weekends or holidays. The 91/Perris Valley Line does, but only four trains a day, two each way, and they keep a commuter’s hours: into Los Angeles in the morning, back out in the evening. That’s the wrong direction for a day trip. Take the bus.
Oxnard, CA
1 hour 36 minutes, 49 minutes on the fastest train
- Los Angeles to Oxnard trainsfrom $18
- Metrolink Ventura County Line
Oxnard is the only place on this page with a national park off the end of it. The boats to Channel Islands leave from Channel Islands Harbor, though that’s a whole day of its own rather than something you bolt on. Come for the harbor itself and December gets you the Parade of Lights, which turns 60 in 2026. Both the Surfliner and the Ventura County Line stop at Oxnard Transit Center, and the fastest trains take under 50 minutes. Typical ticket $26 across 33 sales.
Ventura, CA
1 hour 50 minutes, about an hour on the fastest train
- Los Angeles to Ventura trainsfrom $19
- Metrolink Ventura County Line
The pier here was shut for eighteen months and took $3.3 million of storm repairs before it reopened in June 2024. It runs 1,620 feet out over the water and you can walk the whole thing. Main Street’s thrift and antique shops are the other reason people come, and the station is a walk from both. Amtrak’s the only way we sell it, typically $29 across 31 sales.
Oceanside, CA
1 hour 57 minutes on Amtrak
- Los Angeles to Oceanside trainsfrom $12
- Los Angeles to Oceanside busesfrom $16
- NCTD COASTER, from October 1, 2026$6.50
- NCTD SPRINTER, from October 1, 2026$3.00
Typical ticket $31, on 106 sales, more than Ventura and San Clemente put together. You step off at the transit center and the pier is a short walk one way, the California Surf Museum two blocks the other.
Oceanside is also the transfer that unlocks the rest of North County. Carlsbad hasn’t been a Surfliner stop since October 2018, so the way there is NCTD’s COASTER from Oceanside down to Carlsbad Village, and the SPRINTER runs inland to Escondido. Those are the fares from October 1, 2026.
Two to three hours
Past two hours the fares stop being cheap and start being ordinary. These four are on the page because they are the trips people actually book, and because three of them are genuinely better without a car than with one.
Santa Barbara, CA
2 hours 31 minutes on Amtrak, 2 hours 3 minutes by bus
This is the one where the bus wins on both counts, which almost never happens. The typical Santa Barbara train ticket was $34. FlixBus, the cheapest of the bus options, typically ran about $26 and got there about half an hour faster, and it is the only Santa Barbara service with any tickets under $20 at all. The train is still the better ride, because the track runs along the water for most of the way and the road doesn’t. It earns its place among the prettiest rides Amtrak runs.
Either way you arrive two blocks from the bottom of State Street, which is the most walkable arrival on this entire page. The city adopted its State Street master plan in 2026, keeping the promenade car-free, and nineteen new businesses opened or were announced downtown in the first half of 2026. Stearns Wharf is a five-minute walk from the platform and the Funk Zone is right behind the station.
Bakersfield, CA
2 hours 45 minutes, 1 hour 25 minutes on the fastest service
- Los Angeles to Bakersfield busesfrom $17
Bakersfield is the second-busiest destination on this list and the best example of why the operator matters more than the mode. Amtrak’s Gold Runner Thruway coach, which used to be called the San Joaquins before the November 2025 rename, runs it for a typical $20, and nearly four in ten of its tickets came in under $20. FlixBus and Greyhound run the same city for a typical $36 to $39 and sold nothing under $20 all year. Same road, same city, almost double the price.
The Thruway coach is also the connection into the Gold Runner trains up the Central Valley, so Bakersfield is a transfer as much as a destination. If you do stop, the Kern County Museum’s Pioneer Village and the Bakersfield Sound honky-tonks are what the town is actually known for.
Palm Springs, CA
2 hours 10 minutes by bus, 2 hours 50 by train
Take the bus, and know that you’re paying for it. Palm Springs is the highest-volume near-$20 destination from Los Angeles, with a typical fare right at $20 and four in ten tickets under it. Almost all of that is the train, and the train is a trap. The bus is typically $36.
Here is what the train is. Amtrak’s Palm Springs station is an unstaffed platform shelter about eight miles north of downtown, with no ticket office, no restrooms and no waiting room. Three trains a week stop there, the Sunset Limited and the Texas Eagle, and Amtrak warns that sandstorms can suspend even those without notice. It is not a day trip. The buses run several times a day, take a bit over two hours, and drop you in town. That is what the extra sixteen dollars buys.
Once you’re there the Aerial Tramway climbs nearly 6,000 feet in ten minutes, to a top station at 8,516 feet that runs about 40 degrees colder than the desert floor, the mid-century architecture tours run year-round, and downtown is flat and walkable. Real rail service to the Coachella Valley is planned, but the environmental review isn’t finished and the estimates run about a decade out.
San Diego, CA
2 hours 57 minutes on Amtrak, 2 hours 10 on the fastest service
- Los Angeles to San Diego trainsfrom $18
- Los Angeles to San Diego busesfrom $20
The biggest corridor out of Los Angeles by a wide margin, and the clearest illustration of what changed since 2018. We used to list this trip at $15.66. The typical ticket over the past year was $39.33, and not one San Diego ticket in that year came in under $20 once the full price was paid. Cheap seats exist on this route. They are not what the trip usually costs.
What it is now is frequent. The Pacific Surfliner went back to 13 daily round trips between Los Angeles and San Diego in January 2026, funded by a $27.1 million federal grant, which Amtrak calls a milestone in restoring pre-pandemic service. People book returns as late as 10pm, so this is a comfortable day trip rather than a rush. Santa Fe Depot puts you a few blocks from the Gaslamp Quarter, the waterfront and the ferry to Coronado, and the Navy SEAL Museum opened next to the USS Midway in October 2025.
Two planning notes. Booking early does not help on this route: the typical train fare was within a dollar of $39 whether people booked the same day or a month out, which is how Amtrak’s fare buckets tend to behave on short corridors. And if you end up staying, we have a whole list of what’s cheap in the other direction.
Worth the long day
Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley, CA
About three and a half hours, train plus a connecting coach
- Amtrak, train and coach on one ticket
A Danish village in a wine valley, reachable on one ticket if you know how to buy it. Take the Surfliner to Santa Barbara, then Amtrak’s Thruway coach for about an hour to a stop on Mission Drive in the middle of Solvang. The coach runs three times each way daily and the connection is guaranteed, which matters, but you can’t buy a seat on it by itself. It has to be booked as one train-and-coach ticket.
Once you’re there, Santa Ynez Valley Transit runs two local routes around Solvang, Buellton, Santa Ynez and Los Olivos, Monday to Saturday. Only four tickets to Solvang sold on Wanderu all year, so we can’t tell you a typical fare with a straight face. Call it the outer edge of what a day trip means.
More of it is on the Metro map than you’d think
The first three don’t need an intercity ticket at all. They’re $1.75 on the same Metro card you’d use to reach Union Station, which makes them the cheapest things on this page by a wide margin. The fourth is on the list because people assume it’s one of them.
- Long Beach is the end of the A Line, about an hour from downtown. The Aquarium of the Pacific, the Queen Mary and the East Village arts district are all walkable from the Downtown Long Beach stop, and the AquaLink water taxi is $5 round trip. The new F&M Bank Amphitheater opened on the old port pier in June 2026 with no general parking at the venue at all; the nearest lot runs $55 prepaid. A $1.75 train ride has rarely looked better.
- Pasadena is on the A Line too. The Norton Simon Museum, the Gamble House, the Rose Bowl and Old Pasadena are all open and operating normally. What is not open is the canyon country above town. Closures from the January 2025 Eaton fire run through December 31, 2027, covering Eaton Canyon and its waterfall, the Sam Merrill and Echo Mountain trails, Henninger Flats and Inspiration Point. Check the county’s closure list before you plan a hike up there.
- Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne and Pomona became one-seat Metro rides in September 2025, when the A Line extension opened. That’s the biggest change to car-free travel in LA County in years, and none of the lists we checked has caught up to it. Pomona has the LA County Fair and a downtown arts colony. La Verne and San Dimas are small, walkable and pleasantly surprised to see you.
- Claremont, for the colleges and the village, is Metrolink’s San Bernardino Line, not the A Line. The extension past Pomona isn’t expected until around 2031, and the leg beyond it to Montclair lost its local funding in 2025.
Places on other lists you can’t reach without a car
Every other day-trip list for Los Angeles includes these. We counted the transport advice in the three top-ranking day-trip guides we could read: 35 mentions of driving, one mention of Amtrak, zero of Metrolink. Here’s what they leave out.
- Joshua Tree National Park. Buses reach the town of Joshua Tree and the other gateway towns. Nothing goes into the park. The RoadRunner shuttle that used to run inside it was cancelled in 2019 because too few people rode it, and the Park Service’s own directions page says public transportation is limited.
- Big Bear Lake. Technically reachable, practically not. Mountain Transit runs a $10 bus from the San Bernardino Transit Center, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only, with nothing on weekends. Take the 10:15am up and the 1:20pm back and you get one hour and 27 minutes on the mountain. It’s an overnight or it’s a car.
- The Antelope Valley poppies. Metrolink’s Antelope Valley Line reaches Lancaster, and the poppy reserve is 15 miles west of it with no bus service of any kind. This one catches people out every March.
- Temecula wine country. One or two buses a day from Los Angeles, dropping in Old Town, and the wineries are well outside walking distance from there. A schedule that thin means one missed bus ends the trip. Four tickets sold through us all year, which tells you something.
- Catalina Island is the one that goes the other way. You can absolutely get there without a car, because it’s an island: the A Line to Downtown Long Beach, then the Catalina Express. It just isn’t cheap. An adult round trip runs $89 plus a $10 island fee, so $99 before you’ve bought lunch.
- Ojai, Death Valley, Sequoia and Paso Robles all appear on competing lists and none has a workable bus or train from Los Angeles. Paso Robles has an Amtrak stop, but the timings make it an overnight rather than a day.
How to pay less (what 7,700 tickets say)
We looked at every Los Angeles departure booked on Wanderu between September 2025 and September 2026, about 7,700 tickets. Four things held up.
- Cheap means close, and it means Amtrak. Of the 250 destinations Los Angeles sells to, only 13 with meaningful volume had a single ticket under $20 all year, and only five of those had most of their tickets under $20. Every one of those five is a short Pacific Surfliner hop into Orange County or Ventura County, or an Inland Empire bus. Budget $20 to $35 for most of this page.
- Trains hold their price. Buses drop if you book ahead. This is the most useful thing in the data. The typical San Francisco train fare was $56.00 whether people booked the same day or a month ahead, to the cent, and San Diego held within a dollar of $39. Buses did the opposite: San Francisco fell from about $94 same-day to $59 booked a month out, Las Vegas from $60 to $47. So book buses early and book trains whenever you feel like it.
- There is no cheap month. We checked the two biggest corridors month by month. San Diego sat at $39 for six straight months and then drifted up, which is a fare rising and not a season turning. Las Vegas moved about $6 across the whole year, close enough to noise at these volumes that we wouldn’t plan around it. Go when you want to go.
- The famous trips are mostly not day trips. San Diego, Las Vegas, San Francisco and San Jose are four of the five biggest destinations out of Los Angeles, and together they’re a third of everything we sell from the city. Las Vegas is 5 hours 15 minutes each way. San Francisco is nearly ten. San Diego is the only one of those four you can do in a day, and it’s the most expensive thing on this page. The one that breaks the pattern is Bakersfield, which outsells San Jose and is a real day trip.
For the version of this that works from any city, read our guide to finding the cheapest tickets.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best day trips from Los Angeles without a car?
Fullerton (29 minutes on Amtrak, typically $15.99), Anaheim (38 minutes, typically $17.99), Santa Ana (50 minutes, about $19), Camarillo and Irvine (about an hour each), San Juan Capistrano (1 hour 14 minutes, for the mission two blocks from the platform), Santa Barbara (about 2 hours by bus, 2 hours 31 minutes by train) and San Diego (2 hours 57 minutes on the Pacific Surfliner). All of them run from Union Station, and on every one of them people book an evening return.
What cities are an hour away from Los Angeles by train?
Fullerton is 29 minutes, Anaheim 38 minutes, Santa Ana 50 minutes, and Camarillo and Irvine are both about an hour, with the fastest Camarillo train doing it in 38 minutes. All five are Amtrak Pacific Surfliner stops out of Los Angeles Union Station, and all five are on Metrolink lines too, though Metrolink runs far fewer trains on weekends.
How much does the train from Los Angeles to San Diego cost?
The typical San Diego ticket bought on Wanderu between September 2025 and September 2026 was $39.33 across all operators, and the Pacific Surfliner specifically was $39.00. No San Diego ticket that year came in under $20 once the full price was paid. The fare barely moves with how far ahead you book: the typical figure was within a dollar of $39 whether the ticket was bought the same day or a month out. Buses run the same corridor from about $37, and some of them are quicker than the train.
Can you get to Joshua Tree or Big Bear from LA without a car?
Not as a day trip. Buses reach the town of Joshua Tree but there is no shuttle into the national park, and the in-park RoadRunner service was cancelled in 2019. Big Bear is technically reachable: Mountain Transit runs a $10 bus from the San Bernardino Transit Center, but only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the only same-day round trip leaves you about an hour and a half on the mountain. Both are overnight trips or car trips.
Is the bus or the train cheaper from Los Angeles?
The train, for everything under an hour: Fullerton, Anaheim and Santa Ana are all Amtrak and all typically under $20. The bus, for Santa Barbara, where it’s both cheaper and about half an hour faster than the train, and for Palm Springs, where the train station is an unstaffed shelter eight miles out of town. For Bakersfield the answer is a specific bus: Amtrak Gold Runner Thruway coaches run it for a typical $20 against $36 to $39 on FlixBus and Greyhound.
Do I need to book Los Angeles trains in advance?
For Amtrak, no. Pacific Surfliner fares to San Diego and Santa Barbara held flat in our booking data no matter how far ahead people bought, and more tickets are booked within a day of travel than in any other window. For buses it’s the opposite: the typical Las Vegas coach fare fell from $60 booked same-day to about $47 booked a month out, and San Francisco buses fell by more than a third. Book buses early, book trains whenever.
The “from” prices on this page refresh from Wanderu’s route data: each is the cheapest fare recently available on that route, the same figure its route page shows. What you pay depends on when you book. “Typical” fares and shares are Wanderu bookings from Los Angeles, September 2025 to September 2026, per ticket, the full price paid. Metrolink, LA Metro, NCTD and Catalina Express fares are published prices as of September 2026, with the October 2026 increases noted where they apply, and Wanderu doesn’t sell any of them.
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