A Bus-rider's Manifesto... or Rantings from a Moderate

Riding the bus in the morning is pretty relaxing for me. Once I get on and swipe my card, my responsibility for navigating myself through the world suddenly diminishes for about 20 minutes. It’s almost like entering a time warp where life is suddenly put on hold. Since the last time I got off the bus, I was responsible for: walking home without getting hit by a car or running into other pedestrians; getting the mail; making my own dinner; doing some exercises; keeping myself somewhat busy and entertained; going to bed at a decent hour; falling asleep; waking up when my alarm goes off; taking a shower; making and eating breakfast; making myself look presentable; being sure the door is locked when I leave home; walking to the bus without getting hit by a car or running into other pedestrians; and getting on the correct bus. Of course, we don’t always notice that we are constantly responsible for these mundane tasks, and suggesting that many of these things are worth taking note of is utterly ridiculous (at least for normally functioning people); but the truth of the matter is that, for most of our lives, when it comes to the actions that we take, the responsibility-buck stops with us as individuals (how’s that for a conservative political statement!).

Yet, when I step onto the correct bus and swipe my fare card, I begin to partake in 20 minutes of absolutely no responsibility for my whereabouts. Until I again have to take responsibility for myself by pulling the stop cord at the right time, I am completely at the whim of the bus driver. The driver could veer totally off course and end up driving across the U.S./Canadian border, and I would have no control over the matter. I become completely dependent on another person. As scary as this sounds (and it is scary when you step onto a bus and put your trust in the driver for the first time), it is strangely liberating to willingly give up control over that portion of my life. We tend to think that we have attained the epitome of freedom when we first strike out on our own, or when we get in the car and take responsibility for getting ourselves somewhere, but maybe it is just an illusion. Maybe being reliant on others, something not so highly thought of in our culture, is the real ticket to freedom (there’s the liberal in me!).

I don’t think many other people have come to this epiphany, however. I have come to this conclusion because of the noticeably miniscule numbers of transit riders in Bethlehem and around the country. The numbers in Bethlehem are around 2% (an estimate that is very much rounded up), while ridership around the nation is somewhere between 3% and 4%. Amazingly, these are actually stark increases from a few years ago after gas prices spiked. Ridership, however, is still so low that many people who are anti-public transit have pointed out that most transit systems (in fact, according to some, all but San Francisco’s BART) are less energy efficient and emit more pollution per person than private automobiles do. The sad truth is that they are correct in most cases.

But it’s hard to blame the pro-transit lobby for this. What most people don’t realize is the unbelievable (believe it!) amount of money that the government spends each year to encourage automobile use. The latest estimates – which include subsidies to oil companies and car manufacturers, tax deductions to car owners, construction of new roads in newly expanded suburban areas, tax breaks for buyers of newly-constructed homes (which are only able to be built in new, outlying suburban areas), costs of environmental destruction, and lost savings by intentionally pricing foreign alternatives (such as the amazingly cheep and clean Brazilian sugar cane ethanol) out of the market – put annual government subsidization of automobile infrastructure at almost $500 Billion! If you think the Recovery Act was wasteful and unnecessary, you may want to begin thinking seriously about how your car is also part of America’s bottomless borrowing pit. I’ll say it again: $500 Billion per year! And the worst part of all of this is that even with all of this money flowing into our transportation infrastructure every year, we are still a couple of trillion dollars behind on our infrastructure up-keep. That is how inefficient our 1.3 car per capita system is!

As opposed to the $500 billion car fund, how much does transit get? Let’s just put it this way: even with our new pro-transit administration, stimulus funding only allocates about $9 billion (of the almost $800 billion) toward public transportation projects. You might say, “Well, of course! Why should we provide any more funding for a system that only serves about 3% of us?” This becomes a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Does transit struggle because of lack of funding, or is funding withheld because of low transit ridership? The answer, right now, is both, and until we break the cycle and start funding it (and stop unfairly pitting in against a favored automobile industry), it will never become efficient and convenient enough for people to want to ride. And I feel sad about that, because I want others to experience the same liberating dependency that I feel every time I sit in those cramped, bucket seats. I want my bus to be packed and overflowing. Mostly, I just want transit to be given a fair shot and to give people more of a choice in transportation (there’s that conservative in me again!).

Tell me what you think. Should we allow transit to compete?