I'm a public transportation junkie. I don't really know how to explain it other than that. I enjoy taking buses and trains. There are a couple of aspects to it that I really, really enjoy.
Daily commute
My daily commute involves walking a half-block northwest, then a half-block east, catching the RTA #32 for a 40-minute ride to downtown Cleveland. I sometimes get off early and walk along the Mall, catching the light/snow/darkness on the statues there and just enjoying my city. Sometimes I get off at ground zero, Superior and Ontario and walk a short block to my employer. Unless my ride gets weird and I have to divert to a train or do some strange transfer, I usually get the full 40 minutes to read and satisfy that particular need.
In the afternoons, I reverse the route and get a further read-and-ride.
Recently, RTA raised the rates and lowered the service and I've had some difficulties in catching the right bus. In the morning, two buses come within four minutes of each other. The first one only goes to the train, leaving many riders five miles from downtown. The second one goes past the train and delivers riders downtown. As you can imagine, it is easy to end up on the first bus. Ironically, if you wait the ten minutes for the train, you'll end up downtown a full fifteen minutes earlier than waiting for the second bus.
What's frustrating though, is the lack of reading this bus/train mixture has. You only get a few pages into your book before it is time to get off and wait for the train. Standing on a freezing, blustery train platform is not conducive to reading. And once you're on the train, it's only a short ten minutes or so before you arrive. Short chunks of time don't add up to forty minutes at all.
So I've been known to be early for my bus and yet wave on the first, faster ride in favor of the second, longer ride that lets me read.
Adventures
Then there are the adventures. The "let's see if we can get there from here" type of experiences. Today, for example, I needed to run an errand (pick up two drills I had repaired) and it wasn't on my traditional bus line or even the train line. I spent a few minutes on the Google Transit web site to figure out how I was going to get to the tool shop and then how I was going to get home.
Overall, door-to-door, from my office to home, was just short of 1.75 hours. Going home and taking the car to pick it up would have resulted in arriving after they closed. Driving in Friday and picking up on the way home would have added 30 minutes to my trip home and spent 15 miles of gas (approximately .5 gallons in our Fit) plus $3.50 parking plus a wasted day on my pre-paid bus pass for a total of around $10. Taking the bus(es) to pick up it up on the way home added an hour to my trip home but no extra dollars.
And I got some exercise, too.
So I took the #1 on St. Clair from downtown to East 55th Street and then walked the 1/4 mile to the Kay-Dee tool repair shop. Then I walked down East 55th Street to a bus stop and had a delightful conversation with a fellow traveler. I misunderstood where the #2 went and ended up having to walk another 1/4 mile on Euclid Avenue to the bus stop there. I decided to leave that stop due to the unsavory characters spitting on the sidewalk and caught the #6 (aka "The HealthLine") to move along a bit further where I would wait for my #32. At Euclid and Stearns, I found that I had exchanged spitting on the sidewalk to foul-mouthed hoodlums standing in traffic daring cars to hit them. Too bad no one obliged them.
Some time later my #32 arrived and took me the rest of the way home.
All-in-all, I think if I had shortened my time at Kay-Dee Tools, I might have been home almost 40 minutes earlier. As I commented to myself earlier this evening, it was a complete success: I got my tools, I navigated my buses and made it home in good time.
Wrapping up
So that's how I look at Public Transportation: convenient, cheap, fairly reliable, flexible and a pleasant challenge. Of course, your mileage may vary!
