Spare My Ass

Lots of ranting lately... 'tis the season... Spring cleaning, bitching and moaning.

Today's rant: Spare the Air. Spare my ass, please. I am so sick of Spare the Air messages telling me to ditch my car and "think about how I get to work without driving" when it gets a wee bit smoggy.

Why is it the citizens who are always asked to totally rearrange their lives when the air quality starts to decline, but ultra-polluting businesses and soot-spewing trucks can merrily go about their smog-making ways?

Not only that, but for a lot of people in the Bay Area, public transit is not a realistic option. Consider the person who lives in, say, Alameda and works all over Marin County as a photographer, for example.

There is NO Bart line that services that area, no ferry direct from the East Bay to Marin County, and the number of buses and transfers it would take to accomplish such a feat is something best reserved for a marathon leg of The Amazing Race, not for someone trying to make a living.

Forget me - how about someone who lives in Fremont but works in Palo Alto? This is a typical Bay Area commute. Just for fun, I looked this up on 511.org.

It looks like the fastest way to service this commute would take over two hours, three buses, one light rail ride and cost $7.25 - ONE WAY. The list of buses & transfers is very long and very confusing.

A person would board the first bus at 7:50 AM and not arrive in Palo Alto until just before 10 AM. And that's if all the buses are on time and no connections are missed.

That - my friends - is bullshit.

There is no Bart train that crosses the Bay other than under the Bay Bridge. There is no ferry that goes anywhere south of Pier 48 in SF. And there appears to be no Transbay bus from the southern East Bay area to the Peninsula.

The commute mentioned above takes the rider south from Fremont to Milpitas then west through Alviso (the crotch of the Bay) then north to Palo Alto. Fucking bananas.

Caltrain only goes north & south from Gilroy to SF along Hwy 101, then you get to enjoy VTA or SamTrans buses for anything beyond the freeway. It does not connect with Bart on the south end. Bart only goes as far south as Fremont.

Once you're in SF, Bart works for the downtown crowd, but if you need to go west, good luck using Muni. Sometimes it works - sometimes it runs people over and kills them. If you're lucky, you might only be robbed or physically assaulted. Other than that, it's totally safe & reliable.

The ferries run only in the northern part of the Bay and they all connect into/out of SF - no direct service from the East Bay to Marin or anywhere else.

The next time you want me to spare the air, you can kiss my ass. Though when I'm not working, I try to use transit as much as I can. For example, today I had a doctor's appointment in downtown SF. No way would I prefer to drive - the traffic is redonkulous and there's no parking.

I happily drove to my local Bart station and Hey, would you look at that? NOT ONE OPEN SPACE IN THE ENTIRE PARKING GARAGE. At 1:30 PM, that sucker was packed so tight there was barely enough room to turn around to get the hell out.

I would have loved to have taken Bart into the city, reading my book while listening to the unintelligible announcements made by the train "operator," saving myself the time, gas and hassle of driving and trying to find parking. But, thanks to the ever-poor planning by the Bart kids, there's never enough parking in that garage. Total joke. And they wonder why more people don't use it.

We could get a lot more people to regularly use public transit - and enjoy it - if it went where we needed it to go and it didn't cost a freaking arm & a leg. If you transit kids can get your shit together and link it all up and get the costs down, we can abolish the Spare the Air campaign forever. Make it usable and people will use it.

I Heart the Ferry

This is why I love the ferry...

The other morning I woke up tired, feeling like I was fighting yet another office germ, so I wasn't out of bed until 7:30. That isn't too late, generally, but I *really* didn't want to take Bart. It's just so dreary compared to sailing across the bay on a gorgeous, Indian summer morning.

I decided to do what I could to get out of the house as quickly as possible in hopes of catching the last ferry to SF. The last ferry leaves at 8:30, sharp. It's about 15 minutes away, give or take a few depending on traffic.

A few times I thought there was no way I was going to make it and resigned myself to another boring train ride, but at 8:20, I grabbed my stuff along with my comb and ran out of the house with my wet hair flying behind me, deciding I'd try like hell to catch the boat.

My neighbor walked over just as I was backing out of the driveway, trying to ask me to babysit his dog sometime. I could only holler out the window that I was late and I'd have to talk to him later.

That cost me 15 seconds I didn't have. Can't you see my hair is wet, I look frantic, and I'm backing out of my driveway a lot faster than I usually do? Go polish your truck - I'm LATE!

Then there was all sorts of traffic on the way towards the dock - busy streets leading out to the main drag, then the main road was totally gridlocked.

It never used to be like this - suddenly we have traffic here. I kept watching the minutes tick down, realizing I'd likely get to the ferry right as it was leaving and would have to turn around and drive my ass to that skeevy bart station.

I kept on, barreling down the last street toward the parking lot. As I turned the corner, I saw that the boat was still there - it was 8:30 on the nose. I threw the car into the first spot I saw, grabbed my shit and took off running.

About halfway from my car to the dock, I saw the guy closing the gate - dammit, dammit, dammit! I kept running hoping he might see me in time - it was too far to yell. Damn traffic, damn neighbor, damn oversleeping!

At the curb by the gate, a maritime officer was sitting in his truck. As I ran toward the curb behind his truck, he started honking his horn. I was watching the gate, and once that car horn blew, the guy at the gate swung it back open!

I ran past the truck smiling and mouthed a very grateful "thank you" to the guy in the truck who smiled and waved. How friendly and civilized! I was still running at a full clip when I hit the gate and the guy at the gate said, "It's fine! no need to run - you made it!"

Once on the boat, I went to the upstairs deck where it seemed quieter, where I could chill out and enjoy my book. The lower deck is the social area, which is nice, but I thought I'd chill out on the upper deck.

I was settling into my seat when the first mate looked right at me through the window from the bridge, and while smiling, gave me a slight wag of the finger as he looked down at his watch and then back at me. I gave him the same smiling, silent "thank you" and he laughed.

Anyone who's ever taken Bart can tell you, there's no train "operator" on the planet who would hold the train a half second longer, even if they see you sprinting toward an open door. Sure, the train's gotta be on time, but seriously - a half second - that's all it would take - but they'll never, ever give it to you.

Thank you ferry!