There was a guy sitting next to me last night telling me about his gout. And then after I told him that he should eat better he kept upping the stakes and then right before I got off the bus he was telling me he had cancer and was about to die.
I was mostly just convinced he was going to try and follow me home.
on the littering and poor topic: i wonder if it's a matter of ownership. the poor don't take pride or feel ownership in the city. while the white collar folks do, you don't see them littering their pretty neighbourhoods. but the poor don't have much say, and so don't feel like they care.
as for the coffee thing, i think that's alright. i like it when organic matter is dumped into urban settings, or especially the poor soil that's surrounded by concrete. hopefully it'll help them live. i sometimes throw my orange peels and rotten fruits into the garden. my housemate hasn't noticed.
My only experiences with taking the bus (besides the school bus that I rode for 12 years) are from childhood. My dad is blind, so when we did things without my mom (or eventually my step-mom) we either walked or rode the bus.
For nearly 20 years my dad took the bus to work... to his white collar job. I often wondered about this as a child. I wondered how he dealt with finding a seat, or making sure he got on the right bus. I agree with you that the public transit system could be so much better, but I want it to include access for the blind as well.
Austin has a pretty major school for the blind, and I used to take the bus route most convenient to their campus, and so I've seen a whole lot of blind folks riding the bus. They aren't quite as common as crazy people, but pretty close. I'd say Austin does ok with that sort of access.
I take the bus almost every day, and I've seen signs up about the fare increase.
I think that this city does owe it to every citizen to provide decent public transportation. We've build a place that is almost impossible to navigate without a car, but cars are killing us all.
Sure, I hate litter and stinky people. Part of the reason that its okay for folks like this to ride the bus is because of car culture. "The bus is full of crazies, we drive cars" If everyone rides, acting out is discouraged.
I'm in favor of them quadrupling the fares, and then taking some of that money and offering more discount cards to people who will jump through the hoops to get them. A lazy ride to work is worth $2.
It's interesting to realize that the entire purpose of the fare is to keep people off the bus, since fares account for only 3% of CapMetro's revenue. I've read that in 1989 CapMetro tried making the bus free, but it was flooded with undesirable people.
Oh, I see where I got confused. If you check out this budget, it seems that passenger fares are about 3% and "third-party" fares (like UT or major employers paying for bus passes) is 7%. So that's where the 3% vs 10% discrepancy comes from.
Still, that seems kind of odd, because it means that the bus wouldn't be profitable from fares alone until it charged roughly 10 times what it is charging now, which makes it $5 per ride, or $10 if you want a day pass. That's still less than a taxi, but not a whole lot. I was under the impression that the bus was a little bit more efficient than that.
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I was mostly just convinced he was going to try and follow me home.
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i wonder if it's a matter of ownership. the poor don't take pride or feel ownership in the city. while the white collar folks do, you don't see them littering their pretty neighbourhoods. but the poor don't have much say, and so don't feel like they care.
as for the coffee thing, i think that's alright. i like it when organic matter is dumped into urban settings, or especially the poor soil that's surrounded by concrete. hopefully it'll help them live. i sometimes throw my orange peels and rotten fruits into the garden. my housemate hasn't noticed.
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For nearly 20 years my dad took the bus to work... to his white collar job. I often wondered about this as a child. I wondered how he dealt with finding a seat, or making sure he got on the right bus. I agree with you that the public transit system could be so much better, but I want it to include access for the blind as well.
Reply
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I think that this city does owe it to every citizen to provide decent public transportation. We've build a place that is almost impossible to navigate without a car, but cars are killing us all.
Sure, I hate litter and stinky people. Part of the reason that its okay for folks like this to ride the bus is because of car culture. "The bus is full of crazies, we drive cars" If everyone rides, acting out is discouraged.
I'm in favor of them quadrupling the fares, and then taking some of that money and offering more discount cards to people who will jump through the hoops to get them. A lazy ride to work is worth $2.
Reply
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