Calling commuting a form of travel is like calling a colonoscopy a good way to clear your throat.
For many it’s a necessity that we would rather avoid but know we must succumb to, telling ourselves it’s for our own good.
Between travels to Baja beaches and semi-staycations on local fishing expeditions, once in a while I actually do work at an eight to five gig that requires some form of commute transportation.
Driving was never a favored option of mine, even before $4.00+ a gallon petrol, what with over-priced parking at a premium and aggressive lane-shifting maniacs cutting in so close they would rub off my Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Starbucks bumper sticker.
And I never did like the other drivers glaring at me just because I insisted on eating my breakfast, shaving, and reading the morning paper while motoring down the freeway, while staying mostly in my lane.
So that left the Al Gore-approved transportation alternative of public transit as the least-of-all-evils option.
As many of you are likely to agree, commuting by public means has a number of feel-good pluses and a few humongous minuses.
Hint: coming home in a sweltering, over-heating bus in the unrelenting, searing heat of a 100+ degree afternoon, wedged next to the window by someone that Southwest airlines could charge for occupying two seats, is probably not on the positive side of the ledger.
So, when the California transportation folks–a.k.a. CALTRANS–decided to close the major interstate artery transecting downtown Sacramento, it was sure to cause some bleeding, mostly out the ears of the already irate commuting public.
I will have to give the planners credit though. Thanks to months of relentless advertising and promotional gimmicks the first two phases have seemed to cause a lot less headaches than anticipated by many.
Between the Internet, TV, newspaper blitzes and highway signs every few miles, you would have to have been on the space shuttle to not have known this was coming.
Unless, of course, you were from out of town and rushing to the airport to catch a flight.
Of course the first week there were a couple of drunk drivers crashing into the lookie loos, but that can happen on the best of commute days.
CALTRANS, after that, did decide to lower the speed limit through the construction area to 45.5 mph (really!), but I am not sure you want a drunk driver staring at their speedometer to make sure they weren’t getting up to 46 mph.
Up until this point in the project, the real news seems the lack of traffic, at least on the portions of the freeway I travel on. Where is everybody? Thousands of everybodys?
Either everyone is staying home–on extended vacations or possibly telecommuting–or opting for buses, trains, carpooling, etc.
Wouldn’t Al Gore be proud of us?!?
In doing my research for this story, I happened to read an article in the newspaper–while going into work on the bus–about a new booze tax being levied back in Pittsburgh, PA to subsidize public transportation, of all things.
Talk about hard to swallow!
You can read the whole sordid story for yourself, but let me tell you, it is creating desperate times,
“Now the brew-haha over the tax, which also applies to six-packs sold at bars, is taking a more serious turn.
And desperate people,
“I cannot afford to drink as much as I used to,” says (Michael) McDermott, 49, of Scott Township.
The locals are not at all happy with the politician who instigated this impediment to serious drinking, to the point where,
“One restaurateur even challenged (Dan) Onorato to a charity boxing match, with the tax’s future at stake if he lost.
Leave it to a politician to put buses over beer.
Beat the creep, indeed.
