Last Thursday I was too busy celebrating my 0x21st birthday to blog, but Monday follows with all the surety of a four-day survival rate for a 0x21-year-old.
I celebrated my birthday by taking a Greyhound bus to Tucson. I left immediately after work, first by taking the light rail from near my office in downtown Phoenix to the bus station a few miles east. Soon after, I boarded a bus with my $18 ticket and enjoyed a two-hour ride, with one stop midway, in the city of Casa Grande, before I got off in downtown Tucson—as much as that metropolitan area of a million people can be said to have a downtown.
The impetus for my Greyhound adventure was the arrival of my parents in Tucson that Thursday evening. They had had their own adventure earlier that day—a train adventure—having taken Amtrak's Sunset Limited from San Antonio. Neither of them had done a train trip before, and they loved it. But who doesn't love the train? (Answer: people in a hurry; people who hate government.) Not as clumsy or random as a car or airliner, the train is an elegant method of travel from a more civilized age.
The bus? Not so much. But though a Greyhound bus doesn't bespeak the same romanticism as a train, it scores well on value when compared to car travel. My Phoenix–Tucson trip was about 110 miles, which would have cost $39 in a car that costs about 35¢ per mile to operate—and that's frugal driving these days. So taking the bus ($18) cost less than half as much as driving, and I could have saved a few dollars off my bus fare if I hadn't waited until the day of my trip to buy the ticket.
With value like that, it's no wonder this country's white-collar, college-educated middle class shuns Greyhound. There's status to be defended. The bus driver announced each stop's itinerary in both English and Spanish, and it wasn't the kind of bilingualism where the full message is in English and the Spanish version is abridged. I suspect, judging by the snippets of passenger conversation I heard around me, that as many people needed the Spanish version as the English version.
Friday morning, while we sat in the car rental office awaiting our clumsy and random transportation back to Phoenix, my dad asked how much Amtrak is subsidized. It turns out it's subsidized a lot. By some accounts Amtrak is the most subsidized form of transportation in the country. But how is that measured? Where does one distinguish subsidy from status quo? As an example, I asked Dad where most police officers are. Answer: on the roads, patrolling. So local governments use tax dollars to make roads safe. Does that count as a subsidy? No. But cars and buses benefit nevertheless—even if the driver speaks Spanish.
Enough. This post is veering dangerously close to politics. I enjoyed my bus trip last Thursday. And I was impressed yet again with how unnecessary private car ownership is, even when taking trips to other cities. The means justify the end.
3 comments:
Does that mean your birthday is May 17 or May 10? I'm never sure of what week it is.
Also, when you said I can "write well when I want to" I went back and re-read my post. I fixed a typo while I was there.
My English teacher in 11th grade told me the same thing.
JEC, I am disappointed that we didn't celebrate your birthday in some high end way, like at the bowling alley or at Waffle House as is our practice...perhaps we can celebrate the 1 month aniversary of your birthday -- when would that be? Now, to your appreciated post...I think it is worth pointing out that personal auto travel can be the better monetary value in certain situations as well...for instance, when more that 2 people are traveling from Phoenix to Tucson the $18 Greyhound cost per person would then exceed what would be necessary to pay for the fuel required by a personal vehicle meeting your stated cost consumption formula. And we won't get into "time = money" for obvious reasons. Also, did you get on the light rail for free?
Chad— May 17.
And avoiding typos has as much to do with good writing as avoiding compile-time errors has to do with good programming.
Bobby— Yes, if you stuff enough people in a modest car then you can achieve per-passenger cheap transportation. That's what a bus does.
However, please don't make the common mistake of thinking that fuel cost is the primary expense of owning a car. By far for most cases depreciation is the biggest expense. And depreciation is mostly a function of how many miles you drive.
But enough of money. Let's write ourselves a rain check for Waffle House.
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