Is it crazy to commute between Orange County and Los Angeles every day?
The short answer to your question is YES! Granted every situation and specific circumstances may motivate you to commute to and from every day, but it's just insane. I speak from experience. I took on a senior level role at a highly respectable and successful think tank organization in Santa Monica while living in OC (Irvine). Although I loved my work and (most of the) people I worked with, I quickly realized that I absolutely hated the idea of having to wake up the next morning only to sit in the car for 90 mins to 2 hours to make it to Santa Monica. At the time (2011), I had figured out that the best plan was to leave Irvine and be on the 405 no later than 5:45 AM to ensure the best possible drive and arrival time; yet over and over again, my "plan" failed me due to many unforeseen events, accidents, etc., and only added to the frustration. And the drive home was even worse. It really didn't matter if I left at 4, 5, 6, or 7 PM- I was still going to sit in traffic for a minimum of 2-3 hours. Looking back, I realize that other issues led to my leaving that company, but at the time the commute was the main reason for that decision. It's just nuts to spend anywhere between 4-5 hours a day in traffic.
Do train engineers blow their horns at night just to be dicks and wake people up?
Train horns are not to wake people up from their sleep. It is a safety issue. It is also a federal law that trains must sound their horns as they approach a grade crossing. This is so drunks in cars, idiots with their stereos blasting, people preoccupied with texting on their iPhones, etc. do not get themselves or the train crew killed.Train horns are also used for signalling. This is becoming less prevalent since radios have become used more.If you would have ever been in a locomotive cab at track speed and had a gasoline tank truck stop dead on the tracks a quarter of a mile ahead of you with the tank straddling the tracks (happened to me), you would have blown the horn loud and long and not given a rat’s behind whether you woke up anybody within 25 miles or not.Here’s an example of why engineer’s blow their horns at crossings. Be sure your volume is turned up loud. Notice how long it takes the train to get stopped. Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt.
Train from Fremont, CA to Disneyland, LA?
I mean, train from Fremont, CA to go to Los Angeles (lol).. I wanna visit Disneyland and Universal Studios.. Also, I'm looking at trains because flights after mid-Dec are pretty expensive.. are there better options? Btw, I can even start journey from Oakland or SFO or whatever.. they're pretty close to my FREMONT..
Is downtown Los Angeles safe at night?
Where there's an actual nightlife with bars and restaurants like around the Staples Center is generally fine. The Artwalk that happens once a month is cool. The area around Pershing square is ok for the most part. Wherever the restaurants and bars are, it's ok for the most part. The cops tend to patrol the areas of interest pretty well to maintain enough safety to enjoy your time there. There are street people and homeless walking or hanging around, but that's pretty much every downtown area of every major US City. Skid Row, or any area that you see a lot of tents and shopping carts on the sidewalk are good areas to avoid. If the area feels like a ghost town because everything's closed at night, unless you're going to some party in that neighborhood, it's probably a good area to avoid. The area around the Greyhound Bus terminal would be an area that I'd avoid. As always, common sense is always your friend who should be listened to. If something feels sketchy about an area, then it's a good idea to heighten your awareness while there or possibly avoid it altogether. While much of Downtown LA has been labeled a dangerous place at night, I feel safer in much of it than just about any uptown neighborhood above the 100's in Manhattan. The Tenderloin District in San Francisco seems sketchier to me too. Same goes for much of Baltimore and Philly. Now those are places that I really feel unsafe in their general downtown areas at night.
For a first-time visitor to Los Angeles (most of the time without a car), what should I visit? Are there any walking itineraries?
As briefly mentioned in other comments, the Red Line (Vermont/Sunset) for Hollywood, Los Feliz/Silverlake and DTLA are convenient. Using DTLA as a transfer point, The Expo Line can also take you to a cool neighborhood like Culver City. It also had an extension completed last year to reach Santa Monica. Besides those and especially in the darker hours, metro doesn’t usually feel completely safe.The buses are even less recommendable; most LA residents don’t even utilize them, at least those that are approximately mid-class.Uber/Lyft is widely used, and Lyft is generally known to be cheaper with less surge prices and etc.All these spots mentioned, especially the highlighted stops, are walkable neighborhoods that shouldn’t be hard to navigate as you go. Just be a little more acute when in DTLA, as there are rougher and better parts of it. Speaking of downtown, an adjacent neighborhood Little Tokyo/Arts District is reachable via the Gold Line, though the transfer process isn’t too efficient considering how close it is distance-wise from downtown. In that case, walking (during the day) to or between those neighborhoods or even grabbing an Uber/Lyft for the short ride aren’t bad options.