Have They Invented Mass Transit yet?

Dauntless

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May 28, 2010
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Just a quick break in today's nightmare. It seems as I was getting out of my car this morning I dropped the keys. The door closed, i was locked out. I think maybe 7 miles from home. Last week it would have been murderous, not that it's cooled off much this week. But there's a mall less than a mile away, I've taken the bus before, it'll drop me less than a mile from my house.

As I'm walking over there this guy decides he wants to run the light and he looks away, holding up his coffee cup. The idea is I'm supposed to figure out he'll just run me over and I gotta scramble out of the crosswalk. Catches him by surprise when I punch his door window as he goes post. be barely looked, he just punched it and lit up his tires tearing out of there. Poor thing will spend the next few weeks panicking that someone got his license number after he ran down the pedestrian. Hit and run is a felony in California. I just hope he dropped his coffee in his lap.

All that for nothing, turns out the bus from the mall to my house doesn't run anymore. Turns out the only other bus along that major highway, which only came every 90 minutes, no longer runs either. So I had a choice of going one way to wait up to a half hour for the first bus to go just 3 miles before walking close to a mile to the second and waiting up to a half hour and getting dropped a mile from my house; or walking over a mile to a road the mall bus used to go down and catching the other bus that goes down it. That one would drop me at the same stop as the mall bus would, so seems like the way to go. Dang, seemed to be going so well when I was crossing the road on the block of the stop and I saw the bus maybe a quarter mile away. Except it was a mirage in the heat, no bus turned up at the stop. The sign said there'd be up to a 90 minute wait, depending on how far away it was.

Well, dang, I'll just be standing around in the sun anyway, I could walk the rest of the way home in less than 90 minutes. It's an increasingly downhill slope for close to 5 miles. Of course by the time I reach the next stop I'm wanting to ask the woman waiting how long she's been there, maybe I can get out of this walk. Except her eyes, the mumbling. I'm not sure she knows how long she's been waiting, right? Then as I get near her she jumps up and runs off into the bushes. Yeah, maybe I'll keep walking. So I've covered some two miles and the real downhill is about to start. Here comes this nice looking girl from a store to the stop, basically she doesn't look like she's been in the heat, but I do. She's looking at me trying to act like nothing is wrong, I'm looking down the road trying to WILL that bus to show up at this stop. Yeah, that worked. Down a steep hill is at least better than up a steep hill, right? On foot, not all that much better.

Ah, I made it, the last main road where I'd get off the bus. I'm closer to home than the stop I'd use as I cross it. Here's the bus turning left there with me. Ah well, I saved $2.00, right? Plus a minute extra walking from that stop.

Okay. I'm sitting here cooling off and soaking up some water. As much as I want to change my shirt I'm just going to have to do this all over again. WHY would they discontinue the bus to the mall? Given the lack of people at the stops coming home I guess I understand the extended wait. But now I wonder: If I walk a mile in the wrong direction I can discover if the first bus of the other route is still running, or if the wait is 90 minutes now. Then I can take it and find out if the OTHER bus is also 90 minutes, or running at all. Or I can go wait 90 minutes for this bus close to home, feeling impatient and wanting to walk up that hill. If that bus broke down or something I doubt they'd send another. (Sigh.) Oh, by the way, remember that my keys are in plain sight on the seat. Across the street a few years ago my car was broken into, the club snapped off my steering wheel, the ignition key popped, all in the time it took me to walk away then realize I'd left something in the car and turned back, so they fled before getting the car started. I guess they'd followed me there. Never did get the key fixed right again. Dang, that was my previous Mustang. Now this one is 700 feet away with the keys in it. I better get going.

So this whole electric bike thing started as a way to have something in my car if I needed it. Well, it would have been locked in this time. I considered the Curries inadequate for my uses, I had to drag them up that 3 mile hill or go around on longer routes they were unsuitable for. This with my extender pack plugged into it so it could SLOWLY make the longer trip. But more comfortable to ride means it's not going to fit into my little Mustang, I don't have anything to get me back there.

I think I need an overpowered electric skateboard. When the battery goes dead I can kick it along. Just so it gets me up that hill first. Or maybe we could establish a way for people to take buses in Orange County. . . .
 
Damn that sounds brutal. Our transit service here in Greater Vancouver isn't great if you're outside the city, but we do at least have the ability to easily navigate it. Each bus stop has a 5 digit number on it that you can SMS to 3333 and it will text you back with the next few bus arrival times. The system is also fully integrated into Google Maps so I can literally get step by step directions by just asking my phone for "Transit directions to home". Sometimes I do have a long wait for a bus, but it's been many years since I needed to wonder when one would arrive.

That said, I don't think I've ever been somewhere as car obsessed as Southern California.
 
I have ridden the LBT/OCTA buses for many years. Great unless you have to ride more than one bus, which adds about an hour for each extra bus.
Service continues to be cut while at the same time the price goes up. :x
 
I noticed numbers at the stops, maybe I could have done texted for it. That'll help when I'm trying to hop a few buses before the train to get to LAX, etc. Asking Google maps is a download? When I was a kid you could take the buses down Harbor or Euclid or Brookhurst or Beach, depending on which Beach you wanted. But you can't get to Beach Blvd. by bus anymore in North County, not sure Brookhurst still runs.

Trying to explain cars in SoCal: So I have relatives in Texas that I'd say are pretty close, though some are brothers and sisters who I grew up with in SoCal. But the cousins and such have much the same situation of having trouble getting around. There things are so spread out, but a 2 hour trip is over 100 miles, while it's over 20 miles here some part of the day. They're more TRUCK obsessed in Texas. Meanwhile, what commuter trains we have don't cover a lot of ground, I don't know if there's a way to get to the Convention Center just yet, etc. Those buses to my train for LAX can take over 3 hours on a bad day to get less than 20 miles, what with their being 2 and it being normal at leastone gets skipped and adds an extra half hour. It's hard to get anywhere with a car, harder to get there without one except at least you don't have to park when you get there.

But the return trip went well. When I first stood up after posting, well, it's been less than two years since a big accident that left me temporarily crippled. I've been walking more than that 7 miles every day getting ready, but not all at once, maybe a mile or two, still not trying a regular bicycle yet because my back still issues the occasional threat. So I'm sure you finished that sentence about what happened when I first stood up. I walked it off easy enough, but by the time I'd reached the bottom of the hill a mile from home I was realizing I wasn't walking all the way back to the car just yet. But the bus came quick, turns out it's an alternate route that gets near that mall so I was a mile or so from my car.

Which was creating a frenzy because they wanted to work on something on the side of the building and it was in the way. The people inside knew it was my car but I didn't think to tell them what happened being a bit mad at the time, so they're freaking out that I'd been kidnapped or something. (A lot of weirdos hang out in the reservoir next to the building.) The guy said they were literally discussing if they should call the police just yet or wait a little longer since they really didn't know why I'd disappeared.

Ah well, the people I saw on the bus remind me of why I'm so 'Never say die' when I'm hurt. Fat, struggling to walk, you want to tell them if they lost 20-30 pounds whatever this infirmity they're claiming would be under a lot less stress, but they always insist they're just too helpless. Yeah, sure, I could have had the hip replacement and acted the same way. No thanks. Maybe I'll pull out one of my regular pedal bikes in the next few weeks and ride it if it kills me. That's the only way you ever really recover.

In the past I've carried in my wallet a flat key copy, when they were available, that can at least open the door. I don't know why I haven't tried to get one for this car. At least it was a big relief I actually survived the 7 mile walk in 2 hours or less and could even go back, even if my back and hip are full of broken glass right now. Oh, wait, I sat down to write this. . . .
 
These-- your hit-and-run, and the crappy transit service in your area-- are just a couple of the externalities of letting people drive their own cars, as if it isn't an unacceptable burden to others who had no part in their decision to drive.

Driving a personal car inside the city limits should be no more acceptable than landscaping with dynamite, or fumigating your house with cyanide. Which is to say, even though it's technically effective, it's not a reasonable imposition to make upon the community. One day, we'll all understand this. But not today.
 
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As dustNbone said, the secret these days for public transport is to use the electronic timetables/ route watch/ bus tracking software..whatever is used in your area.
Down here, public transport..(bus, train, ferry, Metro, ) ..is a serious alternative with more being built and added every year. Its not popular with other car using commuters, but dedicated bus transit lanes and such really help move "masses" across the city. Car commuting is a slow , stop go, expensive (Tolls, parking, etc) dumb option.
But PT is not a solution that will work for all areas.
As a bonus, if you are 60+ yr old, you can go anywhere you want , ride all day, 200km + distance, for $2.50 max daily charge.
So, ..get the PT App, and also backup with UBER. For emergencies !
 
When I was young, I could not afford Auto Club. "locked key inside" is a frequent call for them, and is included in every policy.

I want public transport to improve and work well everywhere. And yet, after everything I have been through, I sacrifice other things to ensure I have a credit card so I can call an Uber/Lyft, or auto Club. I was in a dire situation once, and couldn't wait for auto club, so I broke the cheapest window on my car ($80 in 1981). Ever since I carry a spare door key in my wallet.
 
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