For a Brief, Shining Moment, the City Belonged to Us

Hi, this is Susan.  As usual, Michael set off walking to work this morning.  That's him waving goodbye in the photo.

It takes a little over half an hour to walk from our house to the office, so he gets his daily exercise in the process of commuting.  Today was a pretty ordinary day, of the sort we imagined when we signed on for this challenge, but yesterday was a very different story.

Wouldn't you know that the very first day of the Car-Free Challenge was a day on which we had planned to make a car trip?  I had a doctor's appointment in Oakland, and since it involved minor doses of pain-killer and sedative, Michael was going to drive me home.  That seems obvious, right?  But then I realized that the difference between me sitting in a car and sitting in a bus was very small, apart from a few minutes more travel time.  So, with Michael still along to make sure I could still tell the fare box apart from the TransLink reader in my drugged state, I quite happily took AC Transit Line 51 from Alameda to Oakland and back.  When I say "happily," I should point out my emotional state had nothing to do with the residual drugs.  I am normally much happier to be on an AC Transit bus than in a car.  Thank you, TransForm, for making us stop and think before making an unnecessary car trip!

Later that same day, we took Line 50 to Fruitvale BART, rode to 12th St., and took Line 72 to Jack London Square.  We've made that trip before, but not often, because the buses to and from Jack London Square never seem to show up when you'd like them to.  Yesterday was different, though. I don't think we had to wait even five minutes for any vehicle on the way there and back.  The transfers were so smooth that it reminded us of the enviable public transit system in Vienna Austria, which advertised its services with the apt slogan, "Die Stadt gehört Dir": "The city belongs to you."

At its best, Bay Area public transit gives us that that same sense of freedom.  Often, however, different agencies fail to coordinate with each other, and it's hard to be sure if an individual bus or train will arrive when it's supposed to.  There is a tremendous potential here for great public transit, and I hope to someday see that potential fulfilled, not just on certain lines or at certain times, but everywhere that one would expect to find world-class transit.