17 April 2014 5:32p
We all know the chicken-and-egg argument: unless public transit improves its service, nobody will ride it except the desperate; yet, the system won't be improved unless ridership increases enough to pay for it. This all points to an obvious solution that would send republicans (the Repugnant Party, I prefer to call it) around the bend, I'm sure:
All transit systems must be subsidized until ridership increases sufficiently for it to become self-sustaining. People like to say that they don't want to ride the bus because it's inconvenient, and perhaps they don't want to conform to a schedule. Well, you know what, folks? What pathetic system we do have is going down the f*cking tubes because nobody will ride! Well, get a clue, folks, because before long, private cars will be so exorbitant to run due to the price of fuel that we'll all need to use transit. Be the first, goddamn it! Get to the front of this curve!
AND I MEAN IT. No, the naysayers contend, We, as "'mer'cans," like to be individuals and nonconformist to the point where nobody even wants to share transportation with anyone else (much to our collective detriment). And Americans love love love their automobiles!
I did not notice any loss of individuality among the Spanish, Catalan, German, Belgian, New Yorkers, or Bostonians who all use their public transit systems as they are intended to be used. Oh, but the naysayers complain, New York already has a great transit system, as do most European countries.
Well, the United States of America is behaving more like the Disparate Spoiled-Rotten Children of America by poo-pooing public transit. Doesn't anyone remember that one of the steps in growing into adulthood is learning how to share? Or has that lesson stopped being taught because we're all such (selfish, egotistical) "individuals" now?
Granted, there are times when I use private transportation. Mostly, this is due to the lack of public options, which I would much prefer to use, if given the choice. But in Sunny San Diego, the choices are pathetically limited, with the possible exception of neighborhoods in which ridership is either high already, or there is easy money to be made from people who are willing to pay for and ride transit. Nobody considers that people ride transit because they realize that it's actually more convenient to avoid parking a 1-2 ton machine at one's destination, only to have to park it again when one gets home.
On a recent trip to Barcelona, I enjoyed learning the basics of the city's transit system (buses and subways) to make getting around easier and faster than walking everywhere. No car to worry about, I was free to explore the city to my heart's content.
When I first moved to San Diego in 2008, I rode transit exclusively because I was not driving yet after an automobile accident (I'll write about this another time, probably). I remember specifically taking the bus from my neighborhood to Kearny Mesa Transit Center, on Claremont Mesa Boulevard, and looking for attractive destinations of buses that were passing through. I saw a bus whose destination was "Pacific Beach," and I decided, Hey, that sounds like a cool destination to check out; it's a beach, how bad can it be? I'd remembered taking the subway from New York City to the beach, so this might be something as spectacularly similar! Turns out I ended up taking the 27 bus to Pacific Beach almost every day for almost a year, to walk on the "boardwalk" (is it a California thing to call something a "boardwalk" when it's really asphalt?) and look out onto the ocean in contemplation.
I've since been to Point Loma (past the airport on the 992 bus), Ocean Beach (on the 923), and Old Town (on the trolley's Green Line). I've even been out to Santee at the end of the Green Line with two children with me in the evening, when it was dark by the time we got home. Dangerous? Nah, not to me, or to my then-ten-year-old daughter, who has since become a confident transit utilizer herself.
I've heard the other complaint about transit: "It takes too long." Well, yes, it does take longer, but as long as one is willing to live at a slower pace, which I think we all ought to do anyway, transit is just fine. People have become so impatient these days that to wait five minutes for a late bus that will take an extra twenty minutes to get there feels like too much of a sacrifice to make to get anywhere. Well, those same shortsighted naysayers reply, why live life at a slower pace? Life will pass you by if you don't hurry...
Activities, my interests, and people keep my life interesting (if you haven't noticed), so I don't feel like life is passing me by at all. In fact, I believe I'm able to enjoy my life to a greater extent than folks who spend their lives rushing from one thing to another until they rush themselves into an early grave. Me, I'd rather live my life, and not have it determined by something as ephemeral as impatience. Patience is, after all, a virtue, whether one believes in a god (which I don't, obviously) or not. And the frustration of being stuck in traffic? Well, at times when I am stuck in traffic, I figure that's the price of living in a city that doesn't know how to organize itself. Unless I'm running out for groceries (because they'll melt or thaw excessively, though I've had fish packed in ice before leaving PB once to get back to Mira Mesa via two buses), I compute the time spent into an object's acquisition cost, just as I figure into the cost of groceries the cost of the gas I'm burning when I drive (and I do drive when I go to the grocery store, although I'm making such trips less frequently now that I belong to a CSA and receive fresh produce delivered to my door - I'll write about this another time, as well).
Life is what we make of it. I'm using my time on this earth as I see fit, spending time with my daughter, my lover, my immediate and extended family, my friends, and playmates. If I get to my destinations by bus or train, that's all the better, in my book. The time it takes, well, that's time spent reading or watching the scenery.
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