Day 10 of Daily Footprint Project. I had to attend a business meeting in San Francisco late in the evening. Full of good intentions, I had planned to take the train.
Until I looked at the Caltrain schedule.
My meeting was from 6.30 to 8.30. The next train was at 10pm. I would not have gotten home until 11.15. Driving got me home at 9.15 instead. I am willing to go only so far with my green-ness. Two hours make a huge difference, especially this late at night. That’s a distance of 72 miles I could have not driven, if only the Caltrain system had been a bit more responsive to my needs.
I don’t know how many other folks go through this kind of calculated trade off. Huge invonvenience and pure green-ness, versus no hassle and a smeared green conscience. Again, economics come into play. Do the numbers warrant more late night trains? What is the cost of running more trains? Financial costs? Carbon pollution costs?
Upon further examination, I found this to be a hot issue in the Bay Area. Several advocacy organizations have been stirring the pot. The local papers have written articles on the subject. The real problem is not so much Caltrain, as the lack of a sound overall strategy for the whole Bay Area public transit. The train (Caltrain), bus (VTA), and subway (BART) authorities need to work together with local residents. This raises questions of leadership, priorities, and policy.
Daily Footprint Project Daily Log Day #10 Water personal: flush toilet 4 wash face 2 brush teeth 2 wash hands 5 two showers at the gym mom: communal: Electricity/gas personal: electric toothbrush 2 microwave tea 4’ microwave oatmeal 4’ laptop on half day mom: heat chocolate milk communal: lights Food personal: oatmeal with organic milk organic orange tea organic milk organic chicken soup organic bread mom: organic blueberry muffin organic hot chocolate communal: pizza takeout salad Waste personal: toilet paper orange peel salad veggie peelings mom: communal: 3 newspaper plastic wrappers Recycling personal: mom: communal: 2 papers 4 pizza cardboard boxes Transportation personal: drive to gym 6 miles drive to San Francisco 72 miles mom: communal: Non food shopping personal: mom: communal:
La Marguerite 
about a year ago I made decisions about business practices, I am very lucky to live 11 miles or about a 20 minute train ride into the city, and so when I do city things I have begun to opt for the train — yet my reasons at the time then were not carbon footprint related they were cost related. Gas went over $3 here, double from the year before. I basically couldn’t afford to put gas in my car. Not to mention what it took to park. As gas prices continue to increase I find myself wondering what are the actual %’s and how do people adjust or manage when they have to actually drive places. I have an economy car and balk when I fill my tank. I also evaluated how I get paid and dropped all face to face appts, I don’t get paid for that commute or often that time. I found appts on the phone really sharpened my client and I’s time. I doubled my availability. I feel good about that decision. Interestingly also I have turned much of my social life to local or walkable – merely by having fiscal struggles many of my friends travel here to me, instead of me hopping in the car. We do what we have to do, eh??
Mother Earth aka Karen Hanrahan
http://www.bestwellnessconsultant.com
I’m sure many people make this tradeoff. Here in Melbourne our public transport system is relatively good. Still, it needs improvement, thus the advocacy group PTUA. When people are asked why they don’t use public transport, the answers boil down to “service”. There’s no service in their area, it’s not available when they want it (buses commonly stop at 10pm on weeknights, 7pm on weekends, trains don’t run from midnight to 5:30am, etc), or it’s too infrequent.
For example, every fortnight I go to visit a friend who lives just nine miles away. This would be twenty minutes in the car, but is an hour or more by bus. And while I can get there before dinner time, I can’t get home, one of the two connecting buses doesn’t run after 10pm.
Our trains are arranged like spokes on a wheel, so that if I took the train then to go an adjoining suburb I’d have to go into the city then back out again. The buses don’t connect all the spokes directly.
This is all just piss-poor organisation. One interesting comparison of services made by the PTUA is here, and compares three cities of similar population density and size, with a similarly-long bus route.
Melbourne buses every 60 minutes at peak time, and gets 350 patrons.
Vancouver does it every 15 minutes, and has 4,000 patrons.
Toronto does it ever 2 1/2 minutes (!) and has 20,000 patrons.
So a service 4 times as often gets 11 times as many patrons, while the service 24 times as often gets 55 times as many patrons. Notably, Melbourne’s system only recovers 33% of the cost through fares, while Toronto manages 75% – with fares one-third those of Melbourne’s.
Provide a reliable, frequent and cheap service, and lots of people will use it. This is something known by every business in the world with even the tiniest bit of success, but for some reason escapes the operators of many public transport networks.
Write them a letter, and your responsible council people, and tell them to sort it out.
What a great example of the power of economics!
Kyle, thanks! These are fabulous statistics that definitely make the case for what we are trying to get at. There is real user pain here. I will pass this info on to the two local environmental advocacy organizations, that deal with public transportation issues.
Great.!