Busrider Diary 04262012 #4 Roosevelt bus Lady occupies her bubble.
She has it all figured out. You wonder about things such as this. Are people serious?
There are few people on the bus, so she can get away with it. But, seriously.
Busrider Diary 04262012 End of the daypass. Big Jack left zone 2 right on the button. I’m feeling fortunate that the bus is so convenient for me. It is not that way for everyone. It comes by my house, and the route goes by my work. So it works. Unless, I have to work earlier than 6:30 in the morning, or later than 6:30 at night. These are the normal complaints about ValleyRide service. I had a bad experience just this week as a matter of fact. Most of it was my fault, of course. I broke many of the rules I had set up. Lost track of time. Dawdled on the way. Didn’t consult the schedules. I got myself crossways on the #3 Vista, and ended up waiting 55 minutes for a bus. And ended up 25 minutes late for work.
BUSRIDERDIARY:16April2012
Bus 708 Six Orchard bus route.
1744
Still waiting to depart. Big Jack is driving. Yankee Josh nowhere around. The seats in these new buses are very comfortable. So little of note tonight. Monday night, raining. Glad I’m aboard. Going to try and take the bus 4 days this week. It’s my goal, at least.
Big Jack isn’t hollering the street names out. Perhaps he is dampened by the rain.
BUSRIDERDIARY: 2012 EASTER EDITION
This is not what I meant when I said I believed in mass transit. Who did kill the electric car anyway?
Reblogged from spacegod:
I’m 60 years old so fuck it.
I’m done walking.
Jon Talton is a journalist and author living in Seattle, where he is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times. I came across him via Kunstler somehow, following a link that someone put in the comments of CFNation, a blog I follow so religiously I pay for it to be delivered to Kindle. Talton spent many years in Arizona, the state that exceeds ours (Idaho) in sheer teabag nuttery, and that is some accomplishment, believe me.
The linked column is about the misplaced priorities in our society today, mainly the Defense complex spending billions of dollars on boondoggles, while mass transit suffers.
“One important effort should be retrofitting suburbia for a high-cost energy future, which is inevitable no matter how much we frack or use the dirty oil from our good friends to the north. Of course, most of American suburbia was built for the car. Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built since World War II. Place-making and civic design were lost. Massive, cheap, look-alike construction, laid down on an industrial scale, has continued and metastasized, bigger and uglier, decade by decade. All this was heavily and stealthily subsidized by taxpayers and federal policy, encouraged by a brief moment in history when gasoline was cheap and America was less populous. Jim Kunstler rightly calls it “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” Now it’s a built environment whose time has come and gone. Exurbia is done. Much of the rest of suburbia will face ever-greater stresses.
Could some of it be saved and improved? Yes.
A big element would consist of providing alternatives to driving long distances in single-occupancy car trips. This means adding transit of all modes. Each has its strengths; only one kind won’t work. So populous farther-out suburbs should have commuter rail and bus rapid transit. (BRT is often held out as a bait-and-switch to kill rail; but BRT alone is rarely enough because it almost never has completely dedicated right-of-way, so is at little less risk of facing congestion than any vehicle). Closer in ‘burbs are well served by light rail. A good bus system is the backbone. All must offer frequent, convenient service and be clean and safe. They must connect. I’m talking about much more extensive and intensive service than is found in most of America. Along with this, set up Zipcar locations so people can rent a vehicle quickly when needed. Also, add smaller circulator buses that run through subdivisions and reconnect with the transit nodes at the town center.”
-Jon Talton, Rogue Columnist. April 5, 2012
Busrider Diary 03242012 #treefortmusicfest edition.
Rode the six downtown.
Have no idea how I’m getting back. I guess I won’t.
Going to go by the RecordHut and check in. It’s only 1640, and I have missed much already.
Oh, cars suck, BTW.
Busrider Diary 03162012 Bus 9712 1745 Stormy left a mark. Saw one of the new buses, number 703 running the 5 route. We have the old busted on ours. 2112 was running this morning, it must have broken down. A lot of people on the bus tonight, and no-one is getting off. No Yankee Josh. Hmmm.
BusRiderDiary 22 March 2011 Rasia, the young Indian woman who is a regular rider on the 6 Orchard. She came here with her family, she said it took ten years to make it all happen. Now that she is here, her family wants to leave to go to a bigger city. She likes it in Boise. She gets jobs with ease, holding onto the is another matter. Her accent is heavy, heavier when she gets excited. She is studying for her GED, her younger sister goes to Borah. Even though she says she has trouble remembering what she has read and what she has studied, I think she is very smart, and has a lot going on.
She has pictures of a lot of the regulars, the bus drivers, other passengers. But she acts suspicious of you at first, and you must run a gauntlet to get into her good graces.
The new 800 series buses, paid for with stimulus money. The bus drivers HATE these rigs, which are a step up in sophistication. The 700 series buses are longer, and they mostly live on the #9 State route.
Sclerotic Mike and I had a conversation about them. He hates them. But, I get the feeling that he hates most everything. He’s a Rolling Stones fan.
Big Jack thinks they work better. They stop, are smoother, and more comfortable. I know the seats are more comfortable for us passengers, but since when do we count for anything?
We are all jobless, refugees, or charity cases, or handicapped.
Mike tells me that there are a bunch of the new buses out at the yard, ready to assume service. So looking forward to it.
