Why, people often ask one another rhetorically, don't more people use public transit to get to and from their jobs, appointments, school? It's relatively affordable, convenient, low-carbon-impact compared to private automobiles, and, well -- it's the right thing to do, dang it. We can reduce our contributions to global warming and leave a little planet for the next generation.
Never one to avoid a rhetorical question, I set out today to answer it. Instead of my twice-weekly commute to Live Green, Live Smart's Wayzata offices near The Sustainable House in Minnetonka, I decided to take the bus from my home 25 miles away, in the heart of the city. For two dollars and seventy five cents I rode the bus for ninety minutes.
This was also the first day of class at the University of Minnesota, and a few weeks into the closing of the north/south Interstate 35W route after the collapse of the bridge across the Mississippi in Minnneapolis: by car, the commute has taken me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. Riding the bus, I did some work and made some phone calls; driving, I cuss out the other drivers and the DOT and the laws of gravity.
It's a choose-your-poison situation. On the trip back into town I only needed to get to an appointment fifteen miles from my starting point: a little less than an hour, half an hour had I known about the express bus; but I didn't have to pay to park and I learned a lot about who takes the bus to work in the suburban car washes and fast food restaurants.
In major and coastal cities with well-established rapid transit it's often simpler to use the El or the Metro or LRT or Subway than to attempt to navigate and park your own vehicle. In midwestern and western cities, including the metropolitan area we live in, the car and the paved highway (and even the freeway) became common at the same time. During the post-war years we let public transportation get away from us, the streetcars were (at last allegedly) bought up and gutted by automobile companies, and we headed for the suburbs in such large numbers that the car, the clover-leaf exchange, and the two-car garage became standards of working middle class life.
But when I started driving a 99 dollar used Corvair, gasoline was 25 cents a gallon. Mileage was barely in the double digits,yet with five bucks I could get to work and back most of the week and parking was free. Today, the SUVs in the way of my compact get mileage comparable to the smaller 6-cylinder cars of 1970, run a little cleaner, cost more than my first house and still warm up the planet while trashing the countryside - places I knew as a child and young driver have disappeared under asphalt and I whiz by them (unless the grid is locked during a rush hour that grows longer and longer).
Our children are losing many of the environmental and economic advantages we took for granted. Eventually they may face a question not of affordability of fuel, but of availability. For a brief while in the 1970s we found ourselves waiting at empty or rationed pumps for fuel the then-new OPEC cartel withheld from the market. Gas got as high as a buck a gallon, and Congress lowered the speed on Interstate highways to 55 to conserve gas. But then the oil flowed freely again, and we were not only back to our guzzling and burning and speed, we increased it as though there were no tomorrow.
Now, looking into the eyes of my grown daughters who tell me we should have been more prudent, I feel guilty. Looking into the eyes of my grandson, whose favorite mode of travel is on a friendly hip, I feel anxious. I want him to have those acres of meadow and woodland and ferny dells that I enjoyed - the places that made me care about the growing things on the planet, in the first place. And I want him to be able to head out on a highway to see the wonderful places I have seen on this continent - the Ohio River valley, and the Smoky Mountains, the Laurentian Shield and the Glacial Ridge, the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and the semi-arid dunes of Nebraska.
I know that taking the bus a couple of times a week will not, by itself, assure Baby of his righful hereditiments - but it's something, and I can do this, and I will add it to the list of 'what Grandma did during the climate crisis" stories for the day when he starts asking.