An Observation

Today, before class, a classmate and I were doing some light chatting. I asked her where she lived, and she was explaining to me where she lived. She said she lived 15 minutes away from school.

I asked her, "How do you get to school?"

She responds, "By driving, of course. I can't walk to school."

For most people, the bus is not an option one would come up with when one needs to get from point A to point B. Not until I was forced to heavily rely on the bus system did I ever think about it either. When I lived at home until high school, I was lucky that I had my dad to drive me around with a driver's license.

I just found it interesting today, how the bus is the answer to all my transportation needs, and how it is the norm now for me, when it isn't for others. I could have never imagined myself taking the bus daily, and spending so much of my time on them when I was in high school.

And just to release some energy even though it doesn't go with this post, I hate the public transit system. It just isn't fair that we must be stuck on the bus for so long, often times 2-3 hours to get from one place to another. I wish our system was better, because I would most likely stick to public transportation even if I were able to have the privilege to drive if only our system was better. I used to live 5 miles away from school, and it took me an hour to get to school by bus. That is ridiculous. No one should have this added stress.

So, on February 28th, our bus system changed it's times and schedules, and, I'm not surprised, more reductions. Disappointing. Instead of curbing our gas addiction, we make it worse and promote more cars on the streets instead of making public transportation better, so that people can actually take advantage of it. If only they did this, we wouldn't see such a class difference inside the bus. Less CO2 emissions. Less traffic. The answer to the problem is not reducing the frequency of the bus, but increasing it, so that it is actually convenient to use, and the people who can't afford cars or can't drive won't be screwed. How sweet that would be. How is it that many countries are getting this right, and we can't?