I've had it up to here with the bus!!

[screamingflea]

It's taken me 13 months to get to this point, although there's been a lot of smiling denial along the way.

I had a perfectly good pickup that I sold last January amid predictions of gas topping at over $5/gallon. My city has some of the best mass transit in the country, and for the most part I'm pretty happy with it as long as I plan ahead. But today was one of those days when everything conspired against me.

My job is about a 20 minute drive from home. Since it involves a transfer, it takes about 40 minutes on mass transit, getting me there about 15 minutes early (effectively making it an hour's commute.) I take advantage of the time to zone out with some music and read the headlines. My afternoon ride home was a different story today; the bus heading downtown ran late and I missed my connection, which meant an arbitrary 28 minutes cooling my heels. Which meant an expensive sandwich and coffee because my pancreas couldn't wait for dinner.

I got home to find that while I had planned to put off grocery shopping for a few more days, I had no choice but to hit the store today as I was down to half a serving of dog food. Wal-Mart is less than a mile away, but I can't walk it right now because of an injury. Thankfully my bus line goes right to it (one of the reasons I chose the housing I did!) but I missed the bus home from it because it went by a minute early. Naturally I couldn't walk home any more than I could have walked there, so it was 45 minutes out in the howling cold waiting for the next bus. Counting the wait times on either end of both trips, that's about two hours out of my day shot to hell.

If I had the resources, I'd cheerfully declare this the end of my experiment and march out to buy a Prius. I could afford a nice junker, but of course the cost of the car itself doesn't reflect the ongoing gas, insurance, and maintenance. I can afford that ... barely ... but it would effectively clean me out.

Anybody got a winning lottery ticket?

:doh:

[Wildflower]

I wish you well and the best of luck in your future commuting! Some days just suck literally! Hang in there, flea...

[herbgeek]

Do you have taxis? Would that be a viable, if occasional, option instead of standing out in the cold?

[reader99]

Oy! You're not helping me - I'm about to sell my car and start taking the bus. Last year I spent nearly $4,000 running my paid-for car. 12 monthly bus passes would be $480. Plan B is to get a little 49cc scooter, but I'm hoping the bus will work out for me.

Years ago a friend of mine had no car, and she figured up she could take a taxi home from the grocery store once a week for a fraction of what it would have cost to run a car. I may have to fold the occasional taxi into my plan.

[creaker]

It happens - things happen with cars, too, whether it's traffic, breakdowns, digging it out and scraping it down after a snowstorm, taking time to maintenance done, etc. Still plenty annoying, though.

[gimmethesimplelife]

I manage to get by with the bus and light rail here in Phoenix but it is not Portland where I think you are if I remember right? I lived there for five years in the nineties and most of all, I miss the transit, it was incredible for a city of that size!!!!! There are days where transit here is extremely annoying but I look at the price of gas and what it would cost for repairs and such and I count my blessings to be without a car - most days. Trust me, it looks like I will be here for the summer this year and come July and August when it is 108 and muggy on top of that I will not be so keen on mass transit lol. Sometimes I do wonder if having a scooter or a basic motorcycle would be the ticket though.....Rob

[JaneV2.0]

I rode mass transit for years and years for practical reasons. I avoid it like the plague now that I can. I feel your pain.

[Jemima]

My last assignment at work before I retired involved a one and a half hour commute each way, and that was only on good days when no one had a wreck or a breakdown on the expressway. There was no public transportation to the work site and so, no choice. (I would gladly have taken the train.) The trip was 27 miles each way so a cab was out as well.

I just had my state inspection done and discovered that Just Tires not only installed the wrong oil filter, they installed the wrong size, and oil had leaked all over the engine. It took my Honda dealer over an hour to clean it up. It's a good thing I haven't been doing much driving. That little boo-boo could have ruined the engine.

Like reader99, my car expenses average out to $3,500 to $4,000 a year, and that's a Honda with less than 90,000 miles, good maintenance, and various discounts from State Farm for being a long-time customer. I've considered going the taxi route and haven't given up on the idea yet. I live in a far-flung suburb of Philadelphia where there are two bus routes and one train which goes to Philadelphia and stations in between, some of which are terrifying.

If there's one thing I've learned by the age of 66, it's that the world is not going to perform in precisely the way I wish, and getting angry about it only hurts me. Everybody but everybody is assigned a certain amount of crap every day, and you never know how much or what it will be until you're ankle deep in it. You might as well be happy anyway. :~)

[Gardenarian]

After living in Boston for 15 years without a car, I have become somewhat phobic (truly) about mass transit.
Towards the end I decided it was worth paying for the occasional taxi when I was stuck (as you were.) Even if I took taxis once a week, it was a lot less than buying & supporting a car.

Slightly OT, I picked up a hitchhiker the other day - first one I've even seen in a long time. He was a very nice young man. Maybe peak oil will see the return of hitchhiking! It's a pretty darn efficient way to get around (but there are always the psychos to worry about :()

[jp1]

I just had my state inspection done and discovered that Just Tires not only installed the wrong oil filter, they installed the wrong size, and oil had leaked all over the engine.

Ummmm, not to point out the obvious, but maybe you shouldn't trust a place called JUST TIRES to know anything about oil filters... :~)

But seriously, I owned a car for 1 year 20 years ago and it was remarkably expensive, at a time in my life when I couldn't afford it. Our transit in San Francisco is good when it's working right. It goes everywhere, it runs often, it's only $62/month for an unlimited pass. But too often it's just not reliable. In January I had to be at work at 8:00 to run a training call all 5 tuesdays. It's a 35 minute trip door to door to get to work and I can look online and see the lightrail trains in real time, so I never have to wait to get on one. All 5 days I left at 7:00 because I really didn't want to be late. Despite the 25 minute cushion I'd built in I was late 3 of the 5 days. Uggggh.

I still don't want a car though, and can live a full life without one because of transit. Like others have mentioned the occasional taxi, or in my case zipcar, can fill in where transit just isn't cutting it for a lot less then the cost of owning a car 365 days/year. And without the headaches of repairs, inspections, etc.

[Jemima]

Ummmm, not to point out the obvious, but maybe you shouldn't trust a place called JUST TIRES to know anything about oil filters... :~)



I admit that wasn't a very good idea, but that was back in my pre-retirement, ten hours work days when oil changes were catch-as-catch-can when I had the time. Jiffy Lube, which seems a more appropriate place to go, once installed a filter or gasket or something or other that was cracked and made the car leak oil and the local Honda dealer's service manager is so weird I flinched when he asked for my address. (You know, the kind of nice, quiet guy who goes postal and shoots up a McDonald's full of children.)

Now that I am, finally and gratefully, retired, I will take the car to my more distant Honda dealer who has always done the right things at a reasonable price, and no one who works there is any more weird than I am.

My point was that no matter how careful or righteous you are, things WILL go wrong, and there isn't much point in letting that be upsetting.