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

[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