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

[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.