Frugality and the environment: A public transportation adventure
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
One of the areas I feel I could do a lot better on both in terms of money and the environment is transportation. I am pretty much glued to my car. I don’t actually drive all that much, not having a commute, but I do drive everywhere I go. I think I could save myself a chunk of money on both gas and wear and tear to my already old and well-loved vehicle. Both reducing my emissions by not driving and extending the life of my vehicle will be good for the environment.
At the beginning of the summer I was doing fairly well walking to the store and the bank and other nearby businesses, but then I accidentally crunched the bike trailer/double stroller with the car and it’s been pretty much downhill from there. Finances don’t allow for the purchase of another bike trailer this year, which has sent me back to my car.
My new house is within walking distance of a grocery store, several salons, several restaurants, a coffee shop, my bank, an ice cream place, a liquor store, and a Wal-Mart. (I don’t much like Wal-Mart but I’m conflicted between shopping there and walking or driving to Target.) As I sit in my office and type this, I can also see a bus stop that goes directly into downtown Minneapolis, and another one ¼ mile away that goes to several other useful destinations.
I have decided to give the bus and my own two feet a fair trial. I anticipate that weather, time and exhaustion will be my biggest challenges. I live in a harsh climate and as it is I already have to budget my time and energy carefully. The big thing that will keep me going is that I really dislike driving. I’m the car ahead of you that you are sure is being driven by some little old man, only to discover disbelievingly as you pass me and flip me off that I am actually a young woman. There’s no excuse for my grandpa-like driving. I just hate it. It stresses me out.
First experiment
Last week I performed my first experiment when a friend of mine was visiting from Los Angeles. She agreed that it would be fun to have a little “public transportation adventure.” Early in the morning we filled a backpack with a lunch, some water, a $20 bus card, and some sun block and headed for the bus stop with my entire family.
One bus took us directly to the Mill City Farmers Market in downtown Minneapolis. The bus trip downtown was fun. Cheyenne started chatting with an elderly man who in no time was telling us all sorts of interesting stories about his travels and his amusing Irish mother. I was almost sorry to get off the bus. He was quite an entertainer.
The Mill City Farmers Market is an all-organic market. While there isn’t quite the selection of produce as the St Paul Farmers Market, it is a really fun place to go and the stuff they have here is all really good. We had a great time. We got some produce for the week ahead, split a bottle of really good chocolate milk and a blueberry buttermilk tart and the girls got to color some free sunhats.
From there we took the light rail to Minnehaha Falls Park. This was my first ride on the Minneapolis light rail, which is only a few years old. In California we lived very close to the Gold Line and used it frequently. The Minneapolis light rail line was just as clean, comfortable and fast as the Los Angeles light rail system, although significantly more limited in scope.
Trains vs. busses
I have to admit that I feel differently taking a connecting train versus a connecting bus. I usually give up on public transportation if I have to take a connecting bus. I think it’s the fact that trains run about 10 minutes apart and busses can run as much as 80 minutes apart. Those 80 minutes in a possibly unfamiliar area gives me a feeling of being stranded. It’s silly, I know, but it’s how my brain works.
I also find that light rail stations are usually well-lit and well defined. They usually have a place to sit down while I am waiting and it is usually at least semi-enclosed. Bus stops can be anything from nice, well- defined, enclosed, well-lit, heated stops to a sign by a busy road with nothing but a small bench. As a woman and a mother the light rail stations make me feel more secure.
The train dropped us off across the street from the park. We took our backpack full of lunch and hiked down to the bottom of the falls, walking a little further to a field next to the creek for our lunch. It was just beautiful. The girls played in the creek while my friend and I chatted and my husband relaxed at a picnic table. After while we decided to start the trip home. We took the train to Nicollet Mall, a car-free street in downtown Minneapolis known for its shops and restaurants. We had to wait 45 minutes for the bus home so we stopped at a bagel shop for some coffee. The ride home was relaxing and quiet. The girls were tired so they snuggled in and we watched the scenery out the window.
Success within the limitations of system
We arrived home around 2:30 in the afternoon. There had been no meltdowns by kids or adults and we had all had a really nice time. The method of transportation didn’t in any way inhibit our fun that day. It was actually kind of freeing because I didn’t have to parallel park the car or find a parking spot in a crowded ramp.
I know, however, that I might feel differently if it was a weekday or I had somewhere to be or if the kids outnumbered me. That day I picked the destinations based on their proximity to public transportation rather than attempting to use public transportation to get to a predetermined destination. Still, I needed my first outing to be a successful one, and it was.
I suppose the fact that I chose my destination based on its proximity to public transportation isn’t cheating as much as it seemed to me at first. There are lots of fun and interesting places I could get to by public transportation and choosing them once in a while over the places I’d have to drive to is a start in the right direction. Almost half of my driving is done on the weekends in pursuit of a good time. We could probably have a lot of fun just picking a weekend now and then and having another public transportation adventure.
(image by JoePhoto via flickr)
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Stella,
You bring up a lot of interesting points in your article.
I totally agree with you that it seems a lot easier to take the train than the bus. For me, that’s true whether there are connections or not, but connections only make it worse.
When I was in Pittsburgh, to get from my house to work 5 miles away took over an hour due to weird routing and the fact that you had to go downtown and connect to get basically anywhere else in town.
Sometimes I’d end up standing on the street for 45 minutes to an hour and that definitely makes a person feel less safe. I remember one night after work standing on the street in the snow crying my eyes out as bus after bus passed me—what a frustrating feeling!
Of course I’m not saying that a subway station is a glorious place to be at midnight, but it’s not bad. There’s usually someone around anyway, and you have some protection from the elements.
The point about choosing destinations based on where public transport goes is also a really good one. If you have the freedom to do that, then great. But if you really need to get to point B from point A, you might be stuck with a circuitous or connection-heavy route. But places folks go to have a good time—theaters, amusement parks, shopping centers, fun parts of town—can definitely benefit by having public transport routes nearby.
One last thing—can you tell I have a lot to say on this subject? :)—has to do with the vicious cycle that many public transportation systems are stuck in. The system doesn’t serve the needs of people as well as it should, so fewer people us it, so the budgets are cut, and service is cut back, so even fewer people use it. Something I’ve seen happen in Pittsburgh, ironically, is that the better-off neighborhoods where people have cars but don’t necessarily want to use them are served better than less-affluent areas where people really *need* access to a bus.
It’s crazy, and to me it underscores the need for communities to grow their public transportation infrastructures rather than cut them back. If public transportation is safe, comfortable, and convenient, people will use it, especially in the era of $4/gallon gasoline.
Anyhow, all that being said, I’m really glad your experiment was a success, and I’m also excited to see you looking at some of your ideas and habits and deciding to challenge them with experiments and actions. Thanks!
Megan,
The busses in Pittsburgh sound a lot like the busses in Minneapolis. To get from my house to my work, which is 5 miles away in a suburb of St. Paul, it would take about 90 minutes by bus. I’d have to go downtown and then take another bus to the community center/city hall where I work. I wouldn’t even bother for the small amount of money I make. I feel really bad for people who have to use the bus to travel anywhere that isn’t in the city.
I know that choosing destinations based on available transportation isn’t always possible, but I wanted to bring it up because I think it’s good to think about these sorts of things from many angles. For example, one of the deciding factors in most of my housing decisions has been walkability to stores and restaurants. I probably wouldn’t choose my job based on proximity to public transportation, but for something like a doctors office or a grocery store it would be one of many factors I might evaluate. Until now I wouldn’t have even been conscious of that as a consideration.
I totally agree with you that public transportation is caught in a vicious cycle. I’d like to see the Twin Cities completely reevaluate its public transportation system. As much as I really prefer the trains to the busses they spent a ton of money on that lightrail system and it only goes from downtown Minneapolis to the airport/Mall of America. Step two has been in production for a long time and will go from DT Minneapolis to DT St Paul. That doesn’t seem to me like it covers all that many commuters. It’s been years and years and years just getting those two lines.
One of the things I think would be interesting to see would be a bus system that runs like the train system, frequently and with similar station-like stops. It seems like there would be less overhead in constructing something like that, since we wouldn’t have to lay track and worry about appropriating land for the tracks, which I would think would be a significant expense if you were attempting something large-scale. Then, when ridership increased and revenue increased you could start throwing money at trains. As it is building $700 million dollar trains to take you to the airport from downtown seems inefficient. But then, I really haven’t studied this or anything. This is all totally off the top of my head.
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