Friday, May 18, 2012

Just Folks

It's about 4:40 PM and all we want is to get home.
This bus is always full.
After work, a lot of my co-workers and I make a dash for the bus home.
It is virtually always packed with people, standing room only.
If we happen to miss the bus, we have to wait about forty minutes
 for the next one going downtown. A lot of us, including myself,
have to make a connection downtown to the bus that
will take us the rest of the way to our homes. 
If we miss that connection, it can be as long as an hour 
before the next bus is scheduled to arrive.

When I ride the bus to work in the morning,
the other passengers are usually all workers for downtown
businesses or students.  We are all alike in that
we are just wanting to get to our jobs so that we can
put food in our kids' bellies, clothes on our backs and
a roof over our heads -- as do the people who
drive to work. I will be the first to admit that a great
many of the people I see at the downtown bus stops are
less than reputable, but that problem would remedy itself,
as would problems with scheduling, if more 
of the office workers left their cars at home.

To say that the city government has no regard or respect
for commuters who use the bus system would
be putting it politely at best. Consequently, the Indygo bus system
is the "red-headed step-child" of the city/county government.
They all seem to have forgotten that the people who clean 
the offices where they work, who serve them in the restaurants
and cook the food, who file the paperwork, who park the cars, 
who make the beds in the hotels that host the city's sports events 
and conventions -- all of them are likely minimum 
wage workers who also take the bus to their jobs.
If they could not get to work, then business would
likely come to a halt. When was the last time
a CEO bused his own table, emptied his own waste basket
or unclogged his own toilet? 

From time to time, plans are floated to the public about
prospective urban rail systems, but so far its only
lip service; somebody, somewhere, is making too much money
from the parking garages, as well as the new meters that have been installed
by an outside vendor, which splits the proceeds with the city/county
government. Obviously, an improved bus system that actually
is well-scheduled, well-run and that works for
the commuter would be a threat to the sweet amount 
of pocket change received in parking fees.

1 comment:

lin said...

This one should be a letter to the editor as well as a blog post.