Bus Rider

I have lived and worked in the Houston area for the greater part of my life. Over the years I have gone through periods when I rode the bus to work and back. Ages ago the benefits of riding the bus were pretty simple; it was relaxing, reduced wear and tear on my car and I didn't have to remember where I parked (which in any major city can be a pain). Never once in all my years of riding the bus did I consider saving money to be a benefit though.

Houston has always been a city dominated by cars. In the latest data I could find only five percent of Houston drivers use some sort of shared transportation to work, and that includes carpooling. We've got the seventh worst traffic in the country. Call me a tinfoil-hatter, but I've always suspected our shitty traffic is somehow related to oil company greed. Most of the major oil companies in the USA are headquartered here in Houston and these companies certainly didn't lift a finger in the 1980s of 1990s to help Houston improve it's transportation. The city's solution to traffic has always been more lanes, and that's not a strategy that is working.

One would think that if 95% of the city is driving to work every day then there would be a shortage of parking spaces, making them expensive. This isn't the case at all. In 2002, the last time I worked inside the downtown area, I could find all day parking just two blocks from my office for about two bucks a day, not in a parking garage either, on the ground. At that time driving to and from work, with parking, cost me about four bucks a day in my Honda Civic, gas included (at about a buck a gallon). Riding the bus round trip cost me $7.20 a day with the 20% discount on bus passes I got from work, $9.00 full fare.

My sister, who lived in LA at the time, was flabbergasted that driving and parking was cheaper than taking the bus in Houston. The opposite is true in LA where parking costs the earth and the bus is next to nothing. As she said then "It's like they want everyone to drive." Well, they do in Houston; they want everyone to drive big SUVs and to buy as much gas as possible. The city reinforces the idea that you need to have a car with you at all times by steering clear of the type of public spaces where you can take care of things on foot. I know many people in Houston who would love to car pool or commute but fear the thought of not having a car.

It's five years later now and things have changed. The falling dollar coupled with the speculators in the gas market has caused the gas prices to increase by 300%. The commute with parking that used to cost four bucks now costs ten, and the parking price hasn't changed a cent. The price of the bus has also decreased, believe it or not, to seven bucks, full price, for the round trip to town and back, two dollars cheaper than it used to be.

So the bus is cheaper than driving in Houston, finally, and because of this I am riding the bus again and now I have a new list of pros and cons regarding the bus. On the positive side, the bus is just as relaxing as it always has been, I can read or watch movies on my iPhone while someone else drives, there isn't wear and tear on my car from the 70 mile commute which is good because my car is not doing well in traffic these days, and it is cheaper.

Lining up the negatives has to start with the length of time in my commute; a 60-75 minute car ride has turned into a 90-120 minute bus ride with one connection. This puts my work day out to thirteen hours, worst case scenario, and with a child that is just too much time to be away from home. Fortunately I've got support now with Melissa and a job that is flexible so Colin is well taken care of, but the bus would not have been acceptable at my last job. The commuter solution that Houston's Metro offers seems to be geared towards the 1950s family; where Dad goes into work and Mom stays at home.

At Colin’s after school care facility they have a policy that if a child needs to be picked up, say for an illness, then the parent has one hour from the time they are notified to collect their child. If I am called about Colin and have ridden the bus, then it could take me over two hours to get him. That doesn’t make the bus more attractive to a parent.

Things will have to improve. As gas prices get higher, and they will get higher, there are going to be more and more people who live in the suburbs demanding some sort of high-speed transportation into the city. For mass transit to work it needs to compete not only on cost, which Houston's Metro does only because of the high gas prices, but also on time. There has to be a way that transit cuts the amount of time that you spend in traffic.

There's going to be an interesting balancing act on the freeways of Houston soon. I suspect that as the price of gas gets higher the buses will become over crowded (just yesterday I had to watch two full buses on my route pass by my stop) and the freeways will become less crowded. A less crowded freeway means a shorter commute time; for example if I leave the house at 9:30am I can shave about thirty minutes from my commute. I suspect that the freeways will become a give and take as people decide that the longer commute on the bus, coupled with the over crowding, isn’t worth the savings on gas and will return to driving, then a month later when gas costs another five dollars more a tank, they will return the the bus.

For the suburbs to survive gas prices around six bucks a gallon then the needs to the suburbanites will have to be met. The long commute times in Houston both in the car and on a bus take valuable time away from our families. If we do not find a way to get people into the city in a more efficient manner then we are going to see an exodus from the suburbs back into the city (already a trickle in that direction). People should not have to pay a higher cost to use public transportation, in time or in money. Public transportation should be designed to improve the quality of life on many fronts. Houston’s transportation seems only to offer concessions to the people of the city.

This needs to change.