Hive Pass availability.

I emailed the Hive Pass people today to ask how long the passes will be for sale (it's a pilot program, and so not guaranteed to continue indefinitely).

Answer: until August 31, 2014

If you think you want one, don't delay too long!

Bad bus poetry (volume 1).

Composed on the bus ride to and from work today.

Beached behemoth
Rolls upstream
Fat on a breakfast of sleepy seers
Who now see all
The dog walkers
The cell phone talkers
The late o'clockers--you
Lumbering leviathan
Threading through
Scattered schools of frenzied fish
Whizzy dizzy bitty fish
You could have them for lunch
Baleen-straining beautiful bipedopods
And spitting out the shells
But you are not that sort, you
Gentle giant
Bider of time
Wender, winder
Steady (sea) tortoise in the harried hares
Spit me out at Nineveh, you
Wheeled whale
I will say what I saw.



(Perhaps its title should be "A-littered with Alliteration.")

The regulars.

Today's lesson: checking the weather report before leaving the house on bus-to-work day is extra important. This means if it's going to be a blustery day, you do NOT wear a wrap dress, especially if you do not also wear a slip.

Live and learn.

But it was exciting to be out in the wind and the cool temperatures made for a pleasant walk both ways. A young father and his toddler daughter rode with me in the morning, and they talked to a woman who had brought an empty stroller onboard. He told her that he was a computer science student. She explained to him and his confused little girl that she had left her own baby at school so she could go home and finish her master's thesis, entitled "Parents' Perspective on an Autism Diagnosis." (Yes, lady. I was totally eavesdropping and taking notes--'cause y'know--I have a bus blog, and you're my material.) After the pleasantries she retreated into her smartphone and the father and daughter launched in to a rollicking rendition of "The Wheels on the Bus" with their own special verse: "The dinosaur on the bus says 'It's too tight! It's too tight! It's too tight!'" It was cute enough to rot your teeth.

Walk to work: lovely, quick, and got there two minutes early. When I walked in, the mail clerk lovingly pulled a seed pod out of my hair. A gift from the beautiful big trees lining my walking route.

After long hours sitting at a desk and breathing office air the walk back to the bus is a joy, even in strong winds. Well, it was a joy as soon as I got past the busy street and onto the sleepy lane so that my wrap dress flashing my underwear was less likely to catch attention.

The father was on the return bus, too, this time without his daughter, and intently reading for his classes. He failed to pull the stop request line, but the driver apparently knew where he usually stopped and so it was only when the bus slowed down for the stop that the man looked up and gathered his things and hopped off, calling "thanks, Ralph!" to the driver. (I like the driver, too, and am glad to know his name. A jolly and helpful one.) I hope that cast of characters will make regular appearances on my Tuesday rides. I'm fond of them already.

Heck, maybe someday I'll even strike up a conversation.

A beautiful ride.

I fell off the wagon. I blame it on Tax Season and gardening season and that evil Heartbleed bug that had me in a panic last week. I had to get time-sensitive stuff done a couple of evenings, stayed up too late, and didn't want to get up underslept to ride the bus, so I drove instead, and therefore today was only my second day riding the bus to work. The prior time I was taking a route I don't expect to take often, because that day I needed to drop off my sick car first. Today I took my preferred regular route, which starts just a half block from my apartment and winds me through some of the prettiest suburbs in the valley--the Avenues and the Harvard/Yale area and the classier part of Sugarhouse. It really was a joy to not just take a pretty, roundabout route to work, but to have the luxury of really looking at things, which is dangerous to do when you're driving a car. From my high perch, like an Indian princess on her elephant, I surveyed the well-tended yards filled with spring flowers, the buds on the big trees lining the streets. I had brought a book to read, but I quickly put it down and just watched the beautiful world go by.

The first bus picked up a quiet lot of people: many students listening to iPods, a lady in leopard skin print reading a book, and most of these, like me, exited at the University of Utah. I thought I was being clever getting off a stop earlier than I'd been told to, not realizing that the connecting stop that normally would have been across the street had been removed for the construction of the new law building. So I ended up getting a good three-block sprint in as I tried to find the next stop down. It wasn't ideal, but it's just part of learning the route and it meant I got to work with a lot of energy. 

The second bus on this route leaves the university and heads south, dropping me four blocks from my work, about a 13 minute walk through a neighborhood of little houses with nicely kept yards. No sidewalks, but it's not a problem because the street is wide and not at all busy. I do have to cross a busy street at the end, but the city has recently added crosswalks and a signal to stop traffic (and even Rocky Anderson's orange crossing flags), so it works really well. The only problem I can see is that both coming and going that walk will have to be a fast one: even if the bus drops me off on time I have to walk briskly to get to work on time, and I have to leave work exactly at the buzzer if I don't want to miss my return bus. Maybe I can work something out with my boss to have a five-minute grace period at the beginning of work if my bus happens to drop me off a few minutes late. Or I can just plan on sprinting on occasion if necessary. This route to work is shorter and so much more pleasant and beautiful and involves a lot less walking than the alternate routes--I want to make it work.

The return trip was just as nice--no reading, just breathing deep breaths and thinking deep thoughts while my chauffeur took me on a leisurely tour of handsome old neighborhoods. The return transfer was also super easy (this time I followed the directions!) and a few minutes later I was dropped just a half block from my front door in the lovely warm evening. I loved this day. Let the experiment continue as planned.

Logistical considerations:

--Today I just wore my walking shoes to work and didn't bring anything nicer to change into. We're supposed to dress fairly nicely at my work (no jeans and the men are in ties), but I hope that if the rest of my outfit is nice my walking shoes won't be frowned upon. I'll probably explain what I'm doing to my supervisor--I think he'll be fine with it if I explain to him that I'm trying to avoid poisoning his children and killing polar bears. How can he say no?  :)

Observations: 

--With all my whizzing by in a car I'd failed to notice that right by my work there is now not only a dog washing business, but also a dog gym/spa business. I find this simultaneously hilarious and irritating. Pet worshipers: my pet peeve.

--Lots of younger, single men reading books on these bus routes. I'll be married in no time, if I can just get them to put down their books!

I've got to get a decent camera. This blog looks boring. Too many words, not enough pictures. I wouldn't want to read it--why are you?

So far, so good.

Whadayaknow? The first day I'd planned to take the bus to work, and I had to take the car in for repair. It's as if the universe is trying to remind me what a pain and expense car ownership is and that I'd be much happier if I could transition all the way out of it. (I'm $300 poorer. Ugh. Thanks, stupid car.) So I drove to the car repair shop, dropped off the car, and then took the bus to work. It all went seamlessly and I got to work a few minutes early, fairly glowing with energy from that final 15 minute walk from the bus. This won't be as fun in the winter, of course, but today it was wonderful and I honestly felt like I could be happy riding the bus to work every day, even though it means getting up 50 minutes earlier.

Logistical considerations:

--took breakfast with me to eat at work so I wouldn't have to eat an hour earlier than usual

--took an apple to eat on the way home so that I wouldn't be ravenous and eat half the fridge when I arrived
--took lunch with me (I almost always do this, but it will be especially important on days that I take the bus to work because there is no place in easy walking/busing distance of my work where I can get a healthy and inexpensive lunch)

--wore good walking shoes and took work shoes with me to change into at work

--brought a book to read

Observations:

--I never noticed there's a pinball machine dealer on State Street and a dental spa (??!?) on 2100 South (things you don't notice when speeding by in a car)

--UTA buses are frequently a bit late and sometimes even a bit early (though they're supposed to slow down if they start running early), so it's wise to be a bit early--who knows? If you're early enough you might get lucky and catch the prior bus that's running super late, and get where you're going early as happened today--booyah!

I'd never used the tap-on fare card reader thingy, though I'd seen them at TRAX stations. If you have a card that's good for transit (such as a monthly transit card or HivePass) or want to pay your fare with a contactless credit or debit card, you'll use this reader as you board the bus. Here's what it looks like--a bit different than the TRAX fare card readers, but they work the same.

It's next to the bus's cash receptacle thingy. You tap your card on the base of the reader where the hand icon is pictured and if your card is accepted there will be a green checkmark flashed on the screen. If your card is rejected (expired or no more funds), it will flash red and you will have to pay some other way. You're supposed to also tap off when you exit the bus (you can do this at either bus door), but I always forget to do it. It doesn't make a difference to me since my Hive Pass is unlimited use, but those whose cards are charged based on the number of bus trips need to remember to also tap off. If you fail to do so, UTA thinks you remained on the bus, which depending on your location and the payment system you're using, could mean extra charges, though I don't think that would ever mean more than one extra adult single-trip fare. (That is, I doubt that if you failed to tap off, the system would assume you rode the bus back and forth all day long and charge you for 10 or 15 or 20 round trips--probably just one round trip.) The other function of tapping off is to give UTA an idea of what portions of what bus routes are the most traveled, enabling them to adjust routes to be more useful to riders. A worthy reason for me to get into the habit of tapping off even though I don't have to.

Eventually UTA may begin charging bus riders by distance traveled, instead of a flat fee no matter the distance as they do now. This tap-on, tap-off technology is designed to make distance-based fares easy to implement, and this is already the payment system on the Frontrunner commuter trains. If you forget to tap off when exiting the Frontrunner, you get charged for a longer ride because the system thinks you remained on the train.

Again, if you're a Salt Lake City resident, getting the crazy-cheap Hive Pass makes all this irrelevant. One flat rate for unlimited rides for a year, and no need to remember to tap off. Just don't lose that precious plastic sucker, or you will be a very, very sad little wingless bee.

Confessions and aspirations, for the record.

My nephew, ever eager for an excuse to ride the TRAX. So what's wrong with me?

So the world's getting one more blog. Poor world. But this one I hope will be a bit more useful than some. I hope it will help motivate me to change for the better, and perhaps help few others to change as well.

Flashback: I began my adulthood in 1994 and that same year discovered the remarkable public transit system of Olde England. My traveling companion and I were able to get to any little village and any corner of any city we wanted to visit using buses and trains and reasonable walks. We were not alone: the English were enthusiastic public transit riders, which frequent use and abundant fare collection made possible the robust mass transit schedules and vast web of routes. It was a beautiful thing, those six weeks of bus utopia. I returned to the States with no desire to own a car. But....

This only worked until I graduated from college. I wanted to continue live in the "city" (Provo, Utah--ha!), but my new job was in the 'burbs of sleepy Orem, Utah. There was no way I was getting there and back every day on the very limited bus routes. So I bought my first car. I totaled my first car. Fifteen years and two cars later, I am still driving to work. *Hangs head in shame.* I still live in the city (now Salt Lake City) in the downest part of downtown, and I love the accessibility: being able to get easily on foot most everywhere I need to go, with the occasional help of a Free Fare Zone downtown bus or train. Most everywhere except work....because my current job is also in the 'burbs....of sleepy East Millcreek, Utah.

For ten years I have driven to this job. It's 7.5 miles from my apartment, about 15 minutes, so not a long commute compared to many, and I almost never end up in traffic because it's a reverse commute. But it bothers me that I've spent so many years' worth of 15 minutes polluting the air, wearing and tearing my car, and accomplishing nothing besides not crashing. And yet I continue to drive every day, because the quickest public transit option takes about an hour--almost four times as long. (Because we're not in England anymore.) And at $5 per round trip or $84 per month, it costs far less to drive than to take the bus, even with our current high gas prices.

But the last couple of winters the populated areas of Utah have been terribly smoggy. We have a frequent nasty weather phenomenon called an inversion that is caused when cold air is trapped under warm air, and both are hemmed in by our tall mountains. The air pollution builds in the cold air layer, trapped next to the ground, creating terrible thick soups of smoggy nastiness. These end only when a strong wind or storm blows in and clears the air, so for many winter days we have had the worst air in the country--something resembling Beijing. I rarely get headaches, but I had many this winter. I don't have respiratory problems (yet), but those I know who do were miserable. And it's depressing, not seeing the mountains or the sky for days or weeks on end.

It's ridiculous, particularly for a part of the country that prides itself on its beautiful scenery and outdoor appeal, to have air so bad that people are advised to stay indoors for weeks at a time. Businesses have started reconsidering whether they should jump on the bandwagon and move to beautiful and business-friendly Utah--can they convince their employees to relocate to a place that could easily give their children asthma and that will increase their cancer risk? There has been a public outcry this last winter. I participated in a big clean air rally, and we demanded that the legislature take swift and meaningful action to do all it can to clean up our air. Industrial pollution is one area that government has a lot of control over and needs to look at much more closely. But residential and vehicle pollution are big. And while there's much that government can do to incentivize improved fuel use habits of private citizens, ultimately we each have to decide to change our ways. Change is hard. Utah is part of the West, and the West cherishes big yards, big houses, big open spaces, and the big cars that such big lives were designed around.

Salt Lake City's mayor, Ralph Becker, recently launched a pilot program, the Hive Pass, which drastically reduces the cost of a monthly unlimited all-access transit pass from $84 per month to just $30 per month, for one year. This is a citywide experiment to see if people will actually buy and use them and if it will make a marked difference in the pollution levels in the Salt Lake Valley. I had been clamoring for reduced transit fares in my circle of influence (because the fares were high enough that there was little financial incentive to ride public transit unless you were traveling long distances). My feeling was that individuals were never going to lean away from a car-centric culture toward a public transit culture if there wasn't at least one way in which public transit benefited them personally. (Yes, we all benefit from decreased pollution, but that's so vague and each person's efforts to that end are all but impossible to detect.) So now that Mayor Becker has provided what I wished for in the form of these dirt-cheap transit passes, it is time to show that I am on board. I bought my Hive Pass two weeks ago: $350 for a full year. To break even, I need to make at least six round trips outside the Free Fare Zone each month.

So I want to prove to myself that I'm willing to make some consistent sacrifices of convenience to both decrease my car use and increase my familiarity with the UTA transit routes. And I don't want to substitute my normal frequent walking errands with mass transit (yes, this pass could actually make me lazier!) Rather, I want to be sure that I'm improving the health of both the air and myself with this pass, so I've got to use it to cut out some of my regular car trips. That means using it to make trips to/from work or church or my Sunday evening trip to visit my parents, as those are the places I still drive. There is no way I can get to church on time by public transit because the limited Sunday routes don't run early enough, and even if there were, there are physically challenged others in my congregation who rely on me to drive them to church frequently. And while UTA can easily get me to Sandy on Sundays, traveling the last stretch to my parents' house would require a 40 minute walk or being picked up from the station (and later returned to the station) by my family, because while the TRAX train runs on Sunday, the connecting bus does not. Not ideal. I am willing to be somewhat inconvenienced, but I don't want to inconvenience others if I can help it.

So the work commute will be the big one. My goal is to take public transit to work at least six times a month, and ideally eight times a month. I will have to leave my apartment 50 minutes earlier than usual and will get home 50 minutes later than usual. I'll focus on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because demanding a big new sacrifice of myself on a Monday morning is a recipe for failure, arriving home much later on a Friday evening is a recipe for a damaged social life, and I have a commitment after work on Wednesdays that would make that day somewhat hard.  I will need to reconsider a lot of little things to make this my new habit: Do I wear good walking shoes and carry appropriate work shoes to change into? Or do I just have one pair of work shoes that I wear every day and leave them at work so I don't have to carry them back and forth? Or do I invest in new shoes that could work as both walking and work shoes? I don't want to eat breakfast an hour earlier than usual, so do I carry breakfast with me and eat it between bus transfers (no eating on the buses!) or do I store breakfast food at work and eat once I arrive? Do I pack an after-work snack to keep me from gnawing my own arm off during the longer trip home? What foods can I keep in the work freezer for backup in case I forget to bring my lunch one day (the food purchasing options within walking distance of my work are scarce, so being without a car when I forget to bring a lunch becomes a problem). And there will be other questions to answer through research and trial and error. I'm sure all such puzzles will have elegant solutions, and I think I will enjoy coming up with those solutions and feeling like I'm making even a small difference as I try to make this work commute a natural part of my life. I expect that I will also feel much better physically arriving at work having walked about 15 minutes total to and from buses, and arriving back home having walked about 15 minutes again. Time on the bus can be used for reading or writing, and the walking part of the journey can count as part of my daily exercise.

I will also explore the rest of the transit system--places I don't ordinarily need to go--just because I can now get there and back for no extra cost with my Hive Pass. I'll do this just to become familiar with the various routes, to learn how best to transfer between routes, and I'll investigate what is easily accessible on the Frontrunner commuter train, as well. The hope here will be to give myself and any readers an idea of what is reasonably accessible on the current routes and what interesting new places might be discovered by trying new routes. So this portion of my blog will be more about exploration and adventure and trial and error: for example, with a little advance planning and by leaving a little early, can I get to the restaurant on time to have dinner with friends? Will buses still be running the other direction when dinner is over? UTA's routes are admittedly limited at present. Only as we get a sense of what key places can be reached on current routes and at what times of what days will people start increasing their mass transit use, and only as the system registers increased regular use will UTA be likely to expand service and make regular mass transit use more reasonable for more people.

This blog will probably seem silly to any readers who don't have easy car access and so have had to get everywhere they go on the local buses. But my goal with this blog is to overcome my own attitude about Utah mass transit and my own knowledge hurdles and to communicate with people like me: people who can afford to have a car and drive it a lot, but want to move away from that habit--people who despite good intentions know too little about the finer points of the UTA system and have been reluctant to devote the effort necessary to figure it out and then commit to regularly make the extra effort to choose public transit over car travel. I hope that frequent and regular public transit use becomes my new habit, a way of easing out of the belief that I am always free to plan my life poorly and race from place to place by car in the name of efficiency (but honestly, more often laziness and lack of planning). I'm currently single and childless. If I'm going to change my transportation habits in a meaningful and permanent way, this is a perfect time to do so, while I have few people dependent on me to be at specific places at specific times. A more complicated future life will be easier to mesh with public transit use if I'm already well versed in the system and if the rhythms of my life have been adjusted to accommodate a slightly less frenetic pace. One day I may move to the 'burbs for the sake of scampering children, and have less walking access to what I need, so learning the bus system very well now may serve me even better in some future life as I try to keep my car use minimal.

I don't flatter myself that these minor changes of my habits will make a huge impact on the local air. But I'm hopeful they'll make a huge impact on my attitude and lifestyle and that as I learn to adapt cheerfully and creatively to that new lifestyle, others around me who have been been uncertain about how to make similar changes in their own habits will have a better idea of what to expect and how to do so without unreasonable sacrifices. As more of us pass around encouragement and useful advice, more of us will use the system. And as more of us use the system, the routes will gradually be expanded, and with any luck the next generation in the Salt Lake Valley will have a beautiful and extensive transit system like the one beloved in England, rendering car ownership optional and dramatically improving our air quality.

So here begins my little personal journey--learning to watch the world out the side windows.