Bus woes

Last Friday was not a good day for the bus.

I planned to see a movie (yes of course Batman) after work with a friend. I drove to work since I didn't want to take the train home late at night. But impressively, my friend took the train, knowing he'd be taking it back late at night after the movies. He's taken the train to work before but this time he was boasting of his "zero carbon emissions" since he biked instead of driving to the Red Line station near his house. Yet when he asked how to get to my office, which is near the Grove where we'd be seeing the movie, this is what I ran up against (recreated as best I remember):

"Is there a train station near your office?"

"No, it's three miles away. The easiest way is to take the bus."

"No way."

"No it's not bad, really. I take the bus. You can get on the 16 downtown. It'll drop you off right in front of my office or the Grove."

I wasn't able to sway him so the discussion ended with me agreeing to pick him up from the Red Line station three miles from my office and then drive us three miles back to the movie theater. For anyone counting, yes that's a total of six miles that I hadn't planned on driving.

"These are your six miles," I told him. He was a good sport and accepted them.

So he didn't have a zero carbon footprint day but he could have if riding the bus was more accepted.

Which brings me to problem #2. As I was driving to pick up my friend, blocks away my coworker was stuck waiting 30 minutes for her bus to come. She arrived five minutes early but the 6:12 p.m. bus just didn't come. And this was a busy bus stop on a major street during a peak commuting time. She said she could have been home in 20 minutes, so she was making a sacrifice by taking the bus since she after her bus finally arrived she still needed to transfer to another one. Since she doesn't live too far away from work she's not saving money by taking the bus, she's doing it for the environment. But I'm sure stuff like this will make her think twice next Friday morning when she's thinking of taking the bus again.

So, if I had someone from the MTA in front of me, this is what I'd say. You need a new marketing campaign to attract professionals to want to get out of their cars and take the bus. You need a better website. Mta.net is a mess, especially for first-time visitors. It's enough to put you back in your car. And finally (and perhaps firstly), you need to make a bigger commitment to having your buses run on time. I know, you can't add more buses overnight but there must be something you can do now (more supervisors and oversight?). Taking the bus won't become more popular if it takes twice as long to get home.

Speaking of which, I'm planning on taking the train and bus to work tomorrow. Pray for me!

My 15 seconds of fame?

I have a confession. I want my blog to get noticed by Steve Hymon, the Los Angeles Times transportation writer. I'm not sure why, besides the obvious narcissism. He wrote a weekly column in the California section that was near and dear to my heart, Rode Sage (always liked that name). Then the Times kicked him to the blogosphere where he writes the Bottleneck Blog, which I can relate to more often than I care to admit. He's blogging about traffic, mass transit, gas prices ... I'm blogging about traffic, mass transit, gas prices. OK, so he's a veteran Times reporter and I'm, well, new to this whole blogging thing (but hey Steve, I am a former reporter). I feel a synergy in our missions so I just want him to know I'm out there, like I know he's out there, writing posts with the word "dude" in them. Maybe it's that casual tone that he gets to use on his blog that makes me feel like I know him and, by extension, makes me think he'd like to read my blog.

But don't you worry, I'm not sitting on my laurels waiting for him to find me at urbandieter.blogspot.com (need that repeated Steve? That was ur-ban-diet-er-dot-blog-spot-dot-com). Yesterday I commented on his post, which was about the most random and trivial of things: the loud gum chewer behind him on the train (the "dude"). "This happened to me too" I began. He had no comments yet, so being one of the first ones to comment will surely help me get his attention, right? When I filled out the form it asked for my name, e-mail address and URL. URL? Uh, not sure what that means since most people don't have URLs but what the heck, I'll just type in my little ol' blog address. And voilà, one step closer to being discovered.

I wish I were this cool

So as noted in my previous posts, I spend a lot of time in my car. And my favorite in-car activity is listening to NPR talk shows. Coming home from the gym last week I caught Talk of the Nation and the topic was about two things I care about: the green movement and the youth voice. Halfway through the show, which had as a guest Robert Redford, a teenager performed a slam poem she wrote about global warming. It was amazing! I couldn't believe she wrote that as a teen, and this coming from someone who has a lot of faith in teenagers' abilities since I work with teens in my job. She didn't rattle off boring statistics but told a story about this little girl she babysits (and being scared by the "global warming" game the girl played). I don't want to give any more away, I just highly recommend you listen. It's an example of great storytelling and of how the younger generation is growing up with the fear of global warming as part of their everyday life. But unlike the hole in the ozone layer that was the crisis of my teenage years, this problem doesn't have a simple and manageable fix. Scary stuff indeed.

To listen, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92584973 and click on Listen Now. It starts at 12:30 into the broadcast.

Dear Bus Driver: Thank you

Maybe I'm a sucker, but if a stranger says good evening to me, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

"Good evening." That's what my bus driver said today when I got off the bus. That was a first. Most bus drivers don't speak to you at all, and then there are the ones who aren't very nice or drive so aggressive it's scary. She was the nicest bus driver I've come across, by far. She was even nice to the people causing her trouble.

This was the 316 fast bus, which skips some stops that the 16 makes. We stopped at a red light and some people tried to get off the bus at a 16 stop. "This isn't a stop," she said. "You can't get off here. You need to read the signs when you get on." Then she let them off or they pushed the door open anyway, and she still ended her lecture with "thank you."

She elicited thank yous from almost everyone who got off the bus. Some had a specific reason to be courteous, like the guy who has asked what stop was closest to the 16 stop he usually gets off at, but others hadn't said a word to her but still said thank you when they got off the bus. All I can figure is that it was an unspoken acknowledgment for making their bus ride a pleasant experience, for infusing the bus with a "lets all get along" vibe. Well, she had me at hello (actually she said good afternoon when I got on the bus). So when I got off downtown with only a few passengers remaining on the bus, I felt bold and yelled "thank you" from the rear exit.

I e-mailed MTA customer service tonight to let them know how pleasant and respectful she was. I didn't get her name but I told them the route and time so hopefully they can look up who was driving. She deserves some recognition because Metro needs more drivers like that. It would be great to have that kind of experience all the time because it really did put me in a better mood.

Who's in charge of this nut house?

The danger (or benefit, depending on how you look at it) of people knowing I have an environmental blog is that whenever I tell a story I get asked, "Are you going to blog about it?", which just reminds me that I should and if I don't, it's because I'm being lazy. So, to clear my conscious, here's a story about today's commute, with the theme: who's in charge of this nut house?

Things started off great. I left work early with a four-day holiday weekend ahead of me. After waiting seven minutes or so, the bus approaches, and it's the fast 316. I pull out my day pass, stand near the curb and "hail" the bus in the way I've seen others do it -- not raising my arm like I'm hailing a taxi, but subtly pointing my arm out toward the ground. Well, apparently I should have been more obvious. The bus zoomed right on by. I understand when buses don't stop because they literally don't have room for one more passenger, but I saw standing room. There was room for me. I text a friend in anger. Then after five minutes or so, the slow 16 comes by and picks me up. This bus is full too and it's the usual rush hour dance -- I hold the strap and sway to the rhythm of the road, then more space opens up farther back and I move, only to be in the way of a woman exiting the bus. Then I'm in the way again and keep moving back. It lightens up after Western and I finally sit.

But the first half of my commute was just the appetizer. Things got more fun when I got downtown. At the 7th Street Metro Station, I turned the corner to go down the stairs to the Blue Line platform and saw a mass of people on my platform. What are they all doing here? Now that's a photo for people who think no one takes the train. Before I felt the need to ask a stranger what was going on, they announce that a train is coming. Oh god, I thought, there's going to be a riot. They made another announcement, this time saying that three trains were coming within minutes of each other and not everyone was going to fit on the first train. I don't have much faith in people (individual people yes, but in a group they turn tribal), and sure enough, tons of people squeezed onto the first train like sardines, leaving those of us still on the platform to haughtily laugh at their shortsightedness.

The next train came a few minutes later and I got on. I spent most of the ride standing in the corner behind a guy with a bike with nowhere to grip. Inevitably, at a big lurch he fell back into me and I put my hand on his back to stop him (thankfully he wasn't sweaty or smelly, which is quite common on the train). He apologized but I said it was OK because I saw it as me helping him not fall over. We all have to work together here, people. Which leads me to the most interesting part of the ride. At the Florence stop a guy jumped on as soon as the doors opened and blocked the people who wanted to get off. Bike Guy yelled at him but he acted like nothing was wrong. So there I was squished against the wall, with Bike Guy in front of me and now Rude Guy pushing up against us as a dozen people squeezed past to get off the train. Oh hey, did I mention taking public transportation is just swell. Everyone should do it!

I can laugh about this because I was in a good mood. But if this had been a normal Thursday, I might have given Rude Guy a piece of my mind. OK, I'm totally not that person. I probably would have been crying on the inside by the time I got home, then washed away the pain with some chocolate. What I did do was tell my friend, to which she replied, "Are you going to blog about it?"