On public and school transportation

[resqgeek]

Yesterday on Facebook, I posted a link to a Washington Post article about a mom experimenting with public transportation for her high school son. That link generated some great comments that got me thinking about my relationship with the public transportation system.

I have used public transportation to commute to and from my office virtually every workday for almost 12 years now. For many years, my commute involved a combination of city buses and the Metrorail trains. Currently, I'm just using city buses. While I do get a subsidy from my employer to cover the costs of using public transportation, I was already using the system before the subsidies were offered, and I would continue to do so if they were discontinued. There are a number of reasons I prefer public transportation to driving:

Exercise - The public buses don't stop in front of my house (in fact, they don't even run on my street), so I have to walk to the end of the street to the nearest bus stop. This fits with my goal of trying to increase my activity level by taking advantage of opportunities to get exercise that arise during my normal day. (I have found that I cannot exercise just for exercise sake, but that's a topic for another post, another day.)

Stress - Driving in this area, especially during the peak traffic periods, is VERY stressful. Before I switched to public transportation, when I was driving to work every day, I was becoming a dangerous driver. I suffered from road rage and had become a dangerously aggressive driver. Now, I can read the newspaper or a book, and someone else has to worry about the traffic. My blood pressure is lower, and when I do have to drive, I'm less aggressive and have a more relaxed attitude.

Money - With the subsidy, my commute is essentially free. But even without the subsidy, the bus is less expensive than driving. Parking at my office would cost me $100/month. Add in the cost of fuel and maintenance for the car I would need to drive, and driving would be significantly more expensive than the $50-$60/month it would cost me to ride the bus everyday.

Intangibles - It doesn't have a big impact, but using the bus every day is my small contribution to improving my community. I'm helping, in my small way, to reduce the traffic volume on our streets, and at the same time, I helping to conserve fuel and reduce pollution. By myself, none of these change things very much, but there is a certain satisfaction from knowing that I'm doing something.

As for our daughters, their elementary school is only a block up the street, and they've walked to and from school since the very beginning. While we walked with them when they were younger, they've been walking by themselves for more than a year now. However, if you go up to the school at the beginning or end of the school day, you will find cars lining both sides of the street, with parents dropping off or picking up their children. Many of these people live within easy walking distance (some live closer than we do!). Most of them leave their engines idling while they wait (and then complain about when fuel prices go up). I find it very irritating. Not only are they wasting fuel and contributing to our traffic and pollution issues, but they are also training their children to be inactive and lazy, rather than active and healthy. I just don't get it.

Comments

[katekintail.livejournal.com]

A very thoughtful post, this.

I commend you for your use of public transportation for so many years. That is amazing, and I am envious of your ability to use it! I AM lazy and DON'T use it in my daily life. Which makes me a horrible person in comparison.

My commute to work is pretty much a strait shot down Braddock. It takes me 15 minutes without traffic and 20 minutes with. I'm never stressed or worried because it's a simple commute and not that busy. No beltway, just a few traffic lights & PLENTY of alternate routes if I need to swing by the store or Blockbuster on my way to/from work. I'm sure if I had to go anywhere NEAR (let alone ON) the beltway I'd feel much different. I feel extremely lucky to have such a quick, simple commute.

There's no bus stop near my house. The closest stop is about a mile and a half away. And the closest stop to where I work is about a mile away (maybe slightly less like 0.8 of a mile). But that's still walking about 4.5-5 miles a day. That's too much for me. I cannot IMAGINE the time that would eat up out of my already packed, scheduled-to-the-second days. I'd be hot and sweaty upon reaching work and the walking route is not the best near my work (I'd have safe sidewalks at night at home though) due to lack of sidewalks, steep hills, and ditches on both sides of the road. It's just not realistic for me. 5 miles of walking (which will take hours at my pace), a little of which is through bad areas, and a longer commute vs. a 15-20 minute drive? It's just not worth it. Even if my work subsidized it, which they'd NEVER do, it wouldn't be a good trade off. And parking is free where I work.

Plus, I love being able to take off on lunch breaks if need be. The nearest shopping (University Mall) is about as far as the bus station from work. As I only have half an hour for lunch, it would take the entire time just to walk there, and I would be late if I factored in buying food/anything and then walking back. But I like being able to go down Ox in the middle of the day or on my way home and check my PO Box. I like being able to run errands at stores closer to work than to my house if I need to. All of which I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't have the car, just because I don't work somewhere like downtown Alexandria or DC where there are shops right around the corner or down the street. It's just harder out here in the suburbs. Plus, there are some days when I have to leave work at 5:30 and get across town well before 6 to set up a meeting room. There's no bus route that will let me do that directly. I'd miss out on a lot I love to do.

I know what you mean about exercise, though. It was a new year's goal of mine to park at the back of parking lots whenever I go shopping/go anywhere so I get the extra few steps to the store and back (safety permitting; I don't do this at night because I'm a woman with common sense).

I try to use my car as efficiently as possible, though. I never go out just to go out. I combine trips & map out shortest routes. I save up errands until I have enough of a reason to go out to all the places nearby at once. And when we lived in Chapel Hill, we used the bus to get EVERYWHERE, even on the days when we had the car because my dad had biked to work.

As for school, I walked to school (about a mile) every day throughout elementary school. And I am SO against idle cars though. I don't even like drive-throughs at the bank or fast food places. What an absolute waste of resources & contributor to pollution. Unless your child can't walk because of physical reasons, there's no excuse for living close to a school and still driving children there. Let alone driving them and waiting with your car on in order to pick them up! That's absolutely inexcusable.

I don't get that either. If you CAN walk or use public transportation, why wouldn't you? I wish so much that I could! I commend you for using public transportation. You are seriously awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[wyldanthem.livejournal.com]

My first year in DC I used metro every day -- I walked three blocks to Eastern Market, rode Metro into King Street Station, and hopped on a bus to take me the toward the waterfront and into work. I loved it! As you point out, I got to read, relax, and prepare myself for the day ahead.

When I moved across the Potomac into Alexandria, I traded in my Metro pass for a parking garage pass. For many of the same reasons Kate points out, Metro didn't make as much sense from the new apartment, and because my parking was free, I started driving to work.

It meant giving up my relaxation in the morning -- no more reading before work, no more thinking about the day's meetings or to-do list before facing my coworkers, and no more time to decompress AFTER work on the commute home. But it did mean I could sleep in later, get home sooner, and eat dinner at a reasonable hour. And we still took full advantage of Metro on weekends and various other outings during the week.

I now live in an area where public transportation is something of a joke. We don't have near the traffic population here in Lancaster, but the roads *are* overcrowded and road rage abounds. Sometimes on my daily hour-long round-trip crawling-highway commute, I find myself day dreaming about Metro. It's such an amazing option to have, I can't imagine not taking advantage of it when possible.

[melydia.livejournal.com]

When I think of Lancaster I think of Amish, so your description of traffic jams and road rage gives me a really funny mental picture. ;)

[wyldanthem.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! Well when ya put it *that* way... lol

[melydia.livejournal.com]

When I was still working at Fort Belvoir, I figured out that public transportation would triple my commute time (which was already 45-60 minutes each way). After your post I worked out how much it would be if for my new job. I would have to get up at least 45 minutes earlier (which in the past has caused me to get sick within a matter of days - I seem to be at my limit for wake-up times), walk a mile to the bus stop (which would mean bringing a change of shoes and putting on my pantyhose at the office because walking that far in heels is hard on my ankles), and would cost me $2.40 each way (which is more than I spend on gas in a week, including weekends). So is it worth it? I don't know. I detest buses and I suspect being around that many people twice a day would stress me out far more than driving does. I don't even carpool because I use my commute as me-time.

Of course, driving doesn't stress me out. I'm on 66/50/29 every day but it doesn't bug me. Listening to audiobooks helps tremendously. Before then I was a rather impatient driver, but now that I have a book I'm enjoying, I'm in less of a hurry. If it's a good book, I actually look forward to my commute.

I was driven to school in the mornings (we were on the way to my dad's job, and I think they were more worried about us not getting to school on time) but I walked home in the afternoons. I wish I could walk to work. I lived two miles from campus in graduate school and walked everywhere. It took me about 40-45 minutes each way to walk, but the way it woke me up in the morning and cleared my head in the evening was wonderful. I miss it.