Prior to this week, I was taking an express bus to campus. The bus ride itself is about 15 minutes, better than half on highways. But, in terms of walking to the bus stop, and making sure I get there early enough to catch the bus, it ends up being about half an hour. Biking the four miles takes me marginally less than half an hour, door to door, with less than half of it on bike trails. A little more hair-raising, it takes away a time I’d been using for reading, but it’s exercise. And I can do it when I bloody well want to, as opposed to on the bus’s schedule. The freedom to construct my own schedule is huge, and that alone makes the choice of many people to drive totally comprehensible to me. Let alone the hauling capacity and speed.
However, much like I recognize the nutritional superiority of eating some eggs and meat, and the frequent taste superiority of dairy, but remain vegan, I recognize that cars really rock on several levels, but I will not own my own car, and will only rarely drive.
how come? ( the car stance)
(and while we’re here, the vegan stance!)
Have you ever taken the number 2 to school? Truly a lengthy pleasure of motion sickness from all the frequent stops, yuck.
these days, i can’t imagine not having my commute time for reading.
While the reality you speak of is not to be denied, this problem is defeatable via frequency. There have been various points in my life my patterns of movement were so copiously served by public transit that no planning or waiting is involved.
Some examples include the new york subway on most occaisions, but especially Atlantic Ave. station in brooklyn heading towards manhattan, the U-bahn in Nürnberg when traversing the 2 miles from my work to my “flat”, taking the bus from my apt at Lagunitas off Grand Ave. over to Farallon in Alameda, which afforded a choice of 3 bus lines transferring to a choice of 2 bus lines, one of which was the same. In all these cases I simply walked out the door and to the stop, without any stress for missing anything, knowing another would be coming soon.
Weekdays in San Francisco, a very large number of busses have a putative every 5 minutes schedule, which gets fuzzy as they busses can bunch up, but generally shows up soon enough. And even in semi-defective situations, the feeling of being beholden to transit can be vastly reduced by improved information. For example, imagine you can glance at your cellphone and find the next bus will get to your stop in 6 minutes, before you consider leaving your house. I don’t mean the schedule, I mean the GPS-tagged bus is known to be on that current timeline.
My point is, this stinky aspect of transit can be improved to the point where it is a very small problem, and not the major deciding factor. Here’s hoping that this very achievable and realistic goal is accomplished within my lifetime.