Confessions of a Public Transit Zealot

The bus driver was trying to tell me something after pulling up at the stop but not opening the doors. I thought he was telling me to use the side door instead and I tried it but that door didn’t open either. He finally opened the bus’s front doors and asked, “Where’s your mask?” I waved him on because it was sitting on my kitchen table instead of in my pocket or my purse or on my face.

And, after a quiet four-letter word out loud, I was forced to walk back and retrieve it in order to travel where I needed to be. And up to then, I had been on time, for the first time in a long time. I ended up “Ubering” to my appointment instead.

I am rethinking my life-long love-affair with public transportation after trying to go carless in an upstate New York town.

By “love-affair” I do not exaggerate. Growing up within the limits of New York City makes using public transit a necessary part of life. Many native New Yorkers never even get a driver’s license or own a car. It’s completely possible to get wherever you need to go on buses, trains, subways and the occasional taxi. It’s also faster, cheaper, and more practical in every way.

My parents had my sister and me riding the subways almost before we could walk. Since we lived in Queens, my father did have a car he used to get to work at the New York Racetracks and accomplish other important errands that were too far to walk. But subways and buses were always a part of our lives.

My mother never learned to drive. She walked everywhere or took public transportation where available, I was 21 and living upstate before I got my driver’s license, and my sister was even older and living on Long Island with a family before she took lessons and got her license.

Floating above Queens rooftops

From an early age I loved the sensation of riding in subway cars. I liked the sound the wheels made as they chugged on and the feeling of gliding over entire neighborhoods on the elevated lines. From the windows of a subway car you could see the Manhattan skyline at sunset or just after dusk when the lights of the city blinking on looked like diamonds. I wrote my first poem in a subway car.

And the city’s transit system was extensive. You could ride all the way to Coney Island on the D train and feel a thrilling rush as it turned from south to west at the edge of Brooklyn–metal wheels screeching along the curve– and the entire Atlantic Ocean stretched in front of you. You could read on the subways, you could observe people in all their nuances and unconscious quirks, you could nap and dream or simply daydream. The subways were life and my connection to it. The subways were freedom.

But I never fell in love with cars. All those high-gloss ads and glitzy TV commercials painting the latest models as sexy, gorgeous, exciting, almost orgasmically satisfying–are wasted on me. Cars are a tool to get you from one place to another. Period. They begin to lose value the minute they’re driven off the lot; they’re hulking boxes of machinery on rubber wheels that can kill or injure; they get dents and suffer the effects of weather and uncertain roads; they break down like all man-made machines break down and even with the addition of computer systems they will require maintenance and repair.

Cars are a bundle of problems waiting to happen, a financial allocation and a big responsibility. And cars isolate people from each other and often cause anger and frustration directed at other people—people who might actually be human beings with qualities we might appreciate if they—and we—weren’t sitting behind the wheels of our separate vehicle pods.

So for many decades I have reserved my best feelings for modes of public transportation–specifically trains–more specifically subways. I’ve “collected” transit systems in other cites as I’ve navigated them, and I have a host of others I’m eager and passionate to ride in my travels.

“Collecting” transit

I am a collector of transit systems. I’ve ridden metro systems in New York—of course; New Jersey, Chicago—enjoying the famous Loop; Philadelphia; Boston; Washington, D.C.—an exceptionally quiet ride—when I lived there; Las Vegas—an automated monorail serving the casinos; Toronto; Hamburg; Paris—where some of the stations retain delicate Art-Deco entrances and where, from one line, you get a gorgeous full panorama of the Eiffel Tower.

I’ve also taken public transit in Amsterdam—a trolley; Denver light-rail with a view of snow-capped Rockies, and Atlanta and—oh yes a funicular up to Montmarte in Paris. I’ve traveled on Amtrak and commuter trains into the suburbs. I remember them all and I can never get enough—I feel like a kid at an amusement park.

And I’ve also been a zealous proponent of public transit. I gave a presentation once trying to persuade people to use transit systems for a myriad of reasons: it’s green and pollutes less; it’s relatively inexpensive, it helps you get exercise, it connects you to other people. I’ve been inspired by a speech once given by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey who pointed out that the U.S. spends more on highways in a single year than it spent on Amtrak in 40 years.

I maintain that the countries that have invested in public transit have it all over us: China, Japan, European nations. Their mass transit systems are shining examples of the triumph of technology.

But here in the U.S., ever since the end of World War II, cars have become our greatest love. And that’s put us in a vicious cycle with transit. As people relied more on cars, the use of public transportation has decreased, As fewer people use it, transit-systems become cash-strapped and cut service. Which leads to further declines in ridership and around and around it goes.

And now, with social isolation a coronavirus mandate, traveling separately in our own vehicles has become even more important and public transportation something to be avoided–a pariah—if it survives at all.

Even this Third Act blog, hoping to promote adventure and travel, will no doubt be relying on my next vehicle for its future stories and perhaps its very survival. Although it’s still a vague goal of mine to ride public transit in every large city in the world.

Riding against the tide

Great loves and good intentions are only useful if they are tested and survive the trials of real life over time.

And for about six-and-a-half weeks enveloping the holidays I tested my true love of transit. I was suddenly rendered car-less–the Monte Carlo I never really liked having given up the ghost amid my mechanic’s warning that it was no longer safe to drive and would cost substantially more than it was worth to repair.

That pronouncement allowed me to put my transportation convictions where my mouth is—so to speak.

Confirmation from others who know me led to the decision to go carless for the next few months, to coast through the holidays and save money for the first months of the brand-new year to buy another vehicle—maybe one I could use for my Third Act Adventures.

A historic blizzard between Thanksgiving and Christmas, dumping four feet of snow on cars—none of which I owned–that had to be shoveled out–sealed the deal.

So I studied the Broome County Transit details and schedules as if preparing for an exam, bought a 10-trip bus pass at a discount, and became encouraged by the local transit’s B.C. Comic strip logo (B.C.—Broome County—get it? Creator Johnny Hart and his family are local).

And I braced myself to be carless in Binghamton for as long as I could.

Maybe two months, maybe six, heck maybe until summer. Public Transit is my friend. Any difficulties could be no match for my enthusiasm.

More next time.