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Mass Transit
Sep. 7th, 2002 11:11 amMy car's still in the shop today, so I took the bus in to work. Made me miss Portland even more. Living in Portland spoiled me for mass transit. You can live quite comfortably in Portland without even owning a car. The busses go throughout the city, they're easy and fast. Here in San Francisco's Bay Area, they just suck.
There is BART, though, which is nice. Inter-city train system. It's fast, comfortably, generally clean, air conditioned, and runs every 15-20 minutes during the whole day. The only complaint I have is their ticketing system, which is incredibly badly designed for such a good system. For one, there's no such thing as a monthly pass, so you have to pay separately for each trip. You can get "discount" tickets at various ticket outlets, which include "all major grocery stores". "All major grocery stores", however, does not include Safeway, Albertson's, or CostCo. The "discount" is $3.00 off a $48.00 ticket. So you can pay $45.00 for a $48.00 ticket, if you're lucky enough to find one. (I was once, but the place I went to doesn't sell them anymore.) Not that it really matters, since the tickets are paper, with a magnetic strip. The magnetic stip holds the current value of the ticket, and is re-written whenever you go through the turnstyle. Of course, if the ticket gets wet, creased, or stored next to a magnetic field (like a computer monitor, for instance), it will be erased, and, since you can't prove how much used to be on there, you're simply out whatever money you spent on the ticket.
You can buy individual tickets at the station, for any amount you want. Some machines take $20.00 bills, some don't. Some take the new $20.00 bills, some don't. Some take $1 coins. Some give change. Some will give you your money back if you don't want to spend the whole amount you put in and discover it doesn't make change. Some have paper signs taped to them describing what it will take, and whether it will give change. Some of the paper signs haven't fallen off at any given time.
OK, enough whining about BART. The Pittsburg bus system (tri-delta transit) is even worse. Some differences between it and the Portland bus system (Tri-met):
In Portland, you can get schedules of every bus route, which include maps of the route.
In Pittsburg, there may be paper schedules, but if so, they're kept very secret. I've seen racks on some busses, but never with schedules in them. There is no map, you just gotta know where to catch them.
In Portland, stops are clearly marked with signs giving the route#, and direction a bus that goes to that stop are going. Often with a schedule on the sign.
In Pittsburg, stops are clearly marked with signs saying "Bus Stop". Some have a phone number you can call to listen to a busy signal. You just have to guess which busses stop there, and where they go.
In Portland, a typical schedule of busses at a particular location will look like "...8:20, 8:35, 8:50, 9:05, 9:20, 9:35, ..."
In Pittsburg, a typical schedule will look like: "...8:20, 9:35, 11:05,..."
Busses on the above mentioned schedule in Portland will usually arrive somewhere between 8:20 and 8:25, then between 8:35 and 8:40, and so on.
Busses on the schedule in Pittsburg will arrive between 8:15 and 8:50, then between 9:25 and 10:00, and so on.
(Yes, I have seen them up to five minutes EARLY! Which means if you just barely get to the bustop in time, you got over an hour to wait til the next one. And that's during rush hours, when the stops are more frequent than at other times.)
I know this is terribly interesting to you all, but I felt like whining about it. Besides, if it's that boring why the hell did you sit there and read the whole thing, don't you have anything better to be doing? :-)
There is BART, though, which is nice. Inter-city train system. It's fast, comfortably, generally clean, air conditioned, and runs every 15-20 minutes during the whole day. The only complaint I have is their ticketing system, which is incredibly badly designed for such a good system. For one, there's no such thing as a monthly pass, so you have to pay separately for each trip. You can get "discount" tickets at various ticket outlets, which include "all major grocery stores". "All major grocery stores", however, does not include Safeway, Albertson's, or CostCo. The "discount" is $3.00 off a $48.00 ticket. So you can pay $45.00 for a $48.00 ticket, if you're lucky enough to find one. (I was once, but the place I went to doesn't sell them anymore.) Not that it really matters, since the tickets are paper, with a magnetic strip. The magnetic stip holds the current value of the ticket, and is re-written whenever you go through the turnstyle. Of course, if the ticket gets wet, creased, or stored next to a magnetic field (like a computer monitor, for instance), it will be erased, and, since you can't prove how much used to be on there, you're simply out whatever money you spent on the ticket.
You can buy individual tickets at the station, for any amount you want. Some machines take $20.00 bills, some don't. Some take the new $20.00 bills, some don't. Some take $1 coins. Some give change. Some will give you your money back if you don't want to spend the whole amount you put in and discover it doesn't make change. Some have paper signs taped to them describing what it will take, and whether it will give change. Some of the paper signs haven't fallen off at any given time.
OK, enough whining about BART. The Pittsburg bus system (tri-delta transit) is even worse. Some differences between it and the Portland bus system (Tri-met):
In Portland, you can get schedules of every bus route, which include maps of the route.
In Pittsburg, there may be paper schedules, but if so, they're kept very secret. I've seen racks on some busses, but never with schedules in them. There is no map, you just gotta know where to catch them.
In Portland, stops are clearly marked with signs giving the route#, and direction a bus that goes to that stop are going. Often with a schedule on the sign.
In Pittsburg, stops are clearly marked with signs saying "Bus Stop". Some have a phone number you can call to listen to a busy signal. You just have to guess which busses stop there, and where they go.
In Portland, a typical schedule of busses at a particular location will look like "...8:20, 8:35, 8:50, 9:05, 9:20, 9:35, ..."
In Pittsburg, a typical schedule will look like: "...8:20, 9:35, 11:05,..."
Busses on the above mentioned schedule in Portland will usually arrive somewhere between 8:20 and 8:25, then between 8:35 and 8:40, and so on.
Busses on the schedule in Pittsburg will arrive between 8:15 and 8:50, then between 9:25 and 10:00, and so on.
(Yes, I have seen them up to five minutes EARLY! Which means if you just barely get to the bustop in time, you got over an hour to wait til the next one. And that's during rush hours, when the stops are more frequent than at other times.)
I know this is terribly interesting to you all, but I felt like whining about it. Besides, if it's that boring why the hell did you sit there and read the whole thing, don't you have anything better to be doing? :-)
