Delusions Of Adequacy

I attended an Elk Grovian special city council meeting Monday, to hear public comment on the proposal to cut my bus routes. Attendance and comments, I believe, led the council to cut only two runs instead of the four that were proposed.

Yep, the recession has finally hit me, 22 months into it. I was immune until Monday, but now I lost 1/4 of one of my options to get to work and back without having to drive my own car. My 2009 prediction of a loss of bus service has come true. What's really bad about this is that the buses are normally packed to the rafters, and now we're going to have to squeeze in all us riders into fewer buses. It's a good thing I ride my bike 1/3 of the time so I'm not competing with others to get on the bus.

Not only am I now paying more to ride (my cost doubled on Tuesday), I have fewer buses to ride. There is no need to wonder why people don't even try it. The #1 reason (across the whole USA) why people don't ride the bus is that service isn't on a time interval that can compete with the private vehicle. If you have to stand for a 1/2 hour to wait for the bus, well, fugettaboutit.

For me, the only cost I'm directly offsetting by transit is gasoline. As my car sits in the driveway I'm still paying to insure it and register it, the same as if I drove it 23,000 miles a year. Its rubber and plastic parts are still deteriorating the same as if I drove it 23,000 miles a year. The sun still beats down on the paint the same as if I drove it 23,000 miles a year. Perhaps I'm not replacing tires or changing oil as frequently, but really, there is no cost savings...not when I now pay more for a bus ticket than the cost of a gallon of gasoline to get me to and from work.

I could even argue that it costs me more to take the bus, considering it takes longer to take transit than it does to drive myself. So why do I even bother? I'm a "choice" rider. I have two legs; I can bike. I have three cars; I can drive. Both my next door neighbors work at SMUD with me; I can carpool. The Elk Grove city council, when looking to slash city costs, looks at me as a "choice" rider and wonders "why are we subsidizing this schmuck?"

I argue that this would be a false "choice," for reasons obvious to anyone who's read my monologues.

Elk Grove transit suffers from delusions of adequacy. We can never hope to make it work in our low density suburban slum. It cannot possibly do an adequate job under the framework of sprawl. The city realizes that everyone drives themselves everywhere to do everything at all times, and when you build a city like that there is no hope for alternatives to the private car. Take the bus? Spend a hour longer to get where you're going. Ride a bike? Risk permanent paralysis or death by our speeding agitated drivers. Walk? Spend three hours longer to get where you're going. Take light rail? Wait two more decades to even start your commute.