By Peyton Farquhar / Prattle On, Boyo / Originally published Aug. 10, 2012
Photo by Peyton Farquhar
When I was a broke-ass student, my primary mode of transport was either the bus or my bike. Pedaling a bike wasn’t a bad thing because I’ve been on two wheels since I was four. But I remember all too well that boarding the bus made me feel even more impoverished, almost as if the very thought of taking public transport was an enormous badge of shame.
Back then, I didn’t realize that being an American meant having been brainwashed from a very early age by the corporate plantation owners that only poor folk take the bus. Nay, all I could see was the end of a school term in a long series of sleep-deprived semesters and dead-end, minimum wage paying jobs that comprised the time I spent getting an education. But I was OK with it because I believed my indigence was temporary.
At long last, after finally having obtained a college degree, several years and thousands of dollars in student loan debt later, I thought I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. As it turns out, however, that light was attached to an oncoming freight train headed straight for me. The awesome job a college education touted never seemed to materialize, but it wasn’t because I hadn’t looked. Then, as now, the economy was hostile to those entering the work force with a freshly minted degree. The U.S. was wrapping up the week-long first war in the Iraqi Gulf, and, the same set of assclowns that manufactured nine-eleven were in office under George Bush the First.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
My thoughts on SD Public Transportation:
I live in OB and work in Point Loma. Using Google Maps, I checked to see how long it would take to walk to the office: 45 minutes.
Then I checked to see how long it would take if I took the bus to the office: 43 minutes.
Those are my thoughts.
I would probably take the walk myself just to gauge walk time and/or just ride my bike to the office were I you.
Part of growing up is coming to a state were you don’t care what others think of your lifestyle choices. Riding public transportation is fine when it works in terms of time and money. My son is loven’ using the BART.
As for gas prices, it is a good attitude to smile as you ride the bus or your bike. I tend to smile when I see the high prices too….cause I view each station and the high posted price as a Romney campaign sign.
Rule of thumb, wherever you go using MTS allow at least two hours and never, absolutely never, expect the bus to connect with the next bus you need to transfer to. It just does not ever happen (probably why they did away with transfers). Our public transit is horrendous and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
For all the so called improvements of any system over here, west coast public transport will never be as efficient as any public transport back east, in my opinion. I’m thinking specifically of Southeastern Pennsylvania Tranportation Authority (“SEPTA”). This is an agency comprising half a dozen counties in the state. It encompasses not just bus, but also rail & trolley. It is standard operating procedure to be able to take a bus to the train depot, and then ride the train all the way up to Boston, which is a distance of approximately 500 miles, in the course of an afternoon. Try doing that in the State of California and it will take you days. Just goes to demonstrate that as enormous as California is, it still has millions of miles to go be even one-tenth as viable as SEPTA is with regard to public transport. Further, sadly, even with the high speed rail initiative, I don’t envision an efficient tranportation system simply because it is apparent that all the money allotted seems to be going into the bank accounts of the bureaucracy that pledged to make HSR a viable alternative to personal vehicle ownership.