Monday, September 05, 2005 Gas prices: let's not get smug, jerks
About a year and a half ago, I sold my car, and I didn't do it for the environment. I sold it to my recently ex'd boyfriend, who drove it far away from me, which is just what I'd been hoping would happen. I had no job and no apartment, and I wasn't sure where I'd go. I sold him the car for some magic beans, which in hindsight was stupid, because he still crows about what a great deal he suckered me into giving him.
So: no car for me: my own fault, kind of, although I sold it in part because I knew I wouldn't be able to afford insurance and the constant repairs it seemed to need at the time. I miss having a car, although not that calamity. I miss driving, and I miss being able to go visit my friends and family in other parts of town or other states without conning a sympathizer into giving me a ride.
I bitch about the busses in this town, but my secret is that I hardly use them. I go to work and back on a couple of lines that are straight shots up Charles and down St. Paul for as far as I need to ride them. Whenever I've tried to ride the bus anywhere else in the area, there's been an amusing fuck-up.
For example: A month or so ago, a friend who lives in Hamilton was having a party, and God love her, she was doing it on a Sunday afternoon. It took Tracy and I about two and half hours to get there. According to Google maps, from my house to my friend's neighborhood, the distance is 5.2 miles, and the driving time is roughly eleven minutes. (That seems a little inaccurate to me. I'd say it's more like 20 minutes by car in moderate traffic.) Bus challenge is rough on the weekends or at night, but we are veterans, and we used our combined years of banging our heads against the wall experience to find a line that stopped in walking distance of my house and was plausibly near my friend's place.
We managed it even though the bus route maps posted on the MTA website and available in print seem to depict jagged caterpillars divorced from any street names, landmarks, or geographic context except for those hinted at by the names of the stops (not all stops are shown--one is, I imagine, meant to intuit). We walked down to State Center and waited for the 17. Bus after bus rolled by with a "finished service" sign lit up in the destination indicator. Sometimes, the would seem to slow at the stop, taunting us.
We joked and swore, and after about an hour of waiting for a bus that was scheduled to come about every 15 minutes, even on Sundays, I called my friend and told her that if there wasn't a transit miracle pretty soon, we were going to miss the party. Not long afterwards, another "finished service" came by. We jumped up before we realized they were just messing with us, and then something strange happened: the bus stopped. We ran over. "What bus is this?"
"The 17".
"You know your sign says 'finished service'"?
The driver gave some complicated explanation that the bus technically was finished service, although it was the right bus and would be continuing on its route and willing to take on passengers, but that in the few block around that particular stop, it was correct to say it was finished...I just went and sat down. I was so glad to be on the bus at all that it almost didn't matter that it took another hour for the bus to wind through town and stop and stop and stop and get standing-room-only crowded.
Not every city is a Baltimore, in terms of transit, but a lot of places have equally city situations, and not everyone lives in a city. If you live in a rural area, for example, you are pretty screwed without a car.
So, so, so, internets: let's not get happy about the gas prices going up or pretend it's going to be some kind of backdoor way to make everyone into an enviro-friend overnight.
I know, I know, the loveable fraternity in charge of the country left thousands of people to die in pain and fear, and they let one of our great old cities get destroyed almost completely, and when someone is like "Can you believe these fucking gas prices? Can you believe I had to wait in line? It's the end of the world!" it's hard to take.
The trouble is, the horrendous negligence on the part of the crew of cronies that allowed to refineries to get ruined along with New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast is just going to keep giving and giving. Gas prices are going to hit working poor people hardest, so remember that while you're yapping about how this is going to stick it to those bastards in SUVs. No it won't.
The same people who can afford to drive Hummers and so forth are the same people a four dollar gallon of gas won't break, and the same people who aren't going to get fired from their jobs if they get stuck in a two-hour gas line and can't come in on time.
The people who are driving old shit buckets that run on faith and get horrendous mileage because that's what they have and they can't get something better are the ones who are getting it stuck to them. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 9/05/2005 10:29:00 AM
0 comments
|
