Disgruntled Commuters

Over the next few weeks I'll be riding the bus to work instead of my preferred bicycle on Franklin Blvd. I'm going to miss it, while trying to recover from crotch surgery. That's something any bicyclist can't simply get performed on a Monday and jump back on the saddle on a Friday. It's going to take some time.

I expect that my e-Tran bus service from Elk Grove to Sacramento will be packed up beyond reason over these few weeks for three reasons:

1) When the "recession" ended in 2009, that same year Elk Grove couldn't stop funding its precious freeway over crossings, and when tax revenues tightened, the city council instead elected to curtail two of my bus routes. Remember -- funding public transit is a "subsidy" while funding freeway expansion is a "Republican mandate." We conveniently ignore the tax dollars used to subsidize, er, encourage-free-market-enterprise like Target's warehouse on wheels, but cry havoc when we fund transit routes for all those slack-jawed yokels sucking off the public teat riding buses. E-Tran bus #52 now runs less often while ridership has increased.

2) The cost of gasoline is approaching "painful" levels. An economy-busting, job-killing $3.65 a gallon. When it broached $4 bucks back in 2008, Elk Grovian commuter bus services were stretched, filled with a whole lot of new faces, and interestingly, a whole lot of disgruntled commuters. An awful lot of people didn't like the "public" part of public transportation but they didn't like $4.25 gas, either. Now that gasoline is a wee-bit more costly than it was a few months ago I'm gonna see crammed buses full of disgruntled riders again. Wa-hey.

3) I'm riding the bus, leading to more congestion on the bus. I am traffic; I am congestion. If I could ride my bike there'd be one more seat available, or more importantly, one more "hole" such that the afternoon Elk Grove bound bus will not have to strand one less passenger because the bus is so damn packed.

I'm really going to be yoked if the weather over the next six weeks is sunny, warm, and inviting, with no rain and wind. Just like I would prefer to ride my bicycle when there's a fatality on the freeway (so I'm not stuck in traffic), I would prefer to be riding my bicycle when the weather is good. These are perfectly normal human responses, and I won't be made to feel guilty due to my "insensitivity" towards drivers losing their lives on the roadway. There's nothing wrong with hoping they lose their lives on days I'm not behind the wheel; when I'm not near them; during holidays and weekends when I'm not commuting. They are going to kill themselves and others regardless, the way we [collectively] drive.

I will be bus-bound for a while.