public transportation

public transportation — No Comments
23
May 07

Park and Ride

Yesterday morning was part of my new morning routine of driving to Fashion Valley, parking near the bus and Trolley station, and taking the 20 to the language school in Downtown. As usual, I ran out of my car to catch the commuter bus and boarded it, only to find that my transit pass was missing. I clearly remembered seeing it before leaving, so I told that to the driver. She was nice enough to take me at my word and I got to work on time. The only catch was that I had to pay $2.50 to return to Fashion Valley after classes were over.

This morning, I found that my transit pass has been sitting my car’s passenger seat all day and night. ARGH!

At least I don’t have to buy another one for the rest of May.

public transportation / San Diego — No Comments
9
May 07

The Car’s Bitch

In Southern California, that’s definitely the driver. Cars take up so much money and time, yet they are a necessary evil here. The money that gets spent on maintenance, gasoline, and car payments could be spent on anything else (I can think of a few things). However, the public transportation in San Diego is horrible. Routes keep getting cut and streamlined, and buses never served San Diego’s suburbs well anyway. The Trolley provides some decent service, but it doesn’t go everywhere. While Los Angeles is much better with buses and their Metrolink, the service keeps decreasing while the fares and passes increase.

Adding to the financial headaches of owning a car are paying extra for the privilege of parking your car somewhere (meter or parking establishment), getting parking tickets (if you’re not careful), and traffic citations (if you’re not very cafeful). As for the last one, a court appearance and fines are standard, though you may have the option of traffic school, which requires a processing fee and some tuition. Plus, you’ve lost several hours of your life.

So what’s worse? Hours of aggravation due to commuting, sharing the road with bad and rude drivers, and getting trapped in congestion OR running after buses, taking an hour to travel a three mile radius, and being late to whatever engagement on the count of transferring between buslines?

I hate to say it, but motor vehicles prevail (at least in this part of the country). I got to hand it to the one or two friends who don’t drive in San Diego. Somehow, they always manage to get to where they need to go by bus, and when that fails, hit someone up (like me or another friend) for a ride.

I’m not completely sold on Flexcar as an option for a car-less lifestyle, but it sounds really good. San Diego participates in the program, so if I needed to have a car just for an hour or two, it’s available.

blogging / photography / public transportation — 2 Comments
8
Apr 07

Downtown Trolley Shots

Last week, I posted some Metro pictures for Brian. In the middle of the week, I took some Downtown Trolley shots close to Seaport Village. This is one of the nicer Trolley stops in San Diego, within walking distance of that tourist trap (AKA Seaport Village), the San Diego Convention Center, the angular Hyatt towers, the curved Marriott, some condo buildings, and famed BBQ restaurant Kansas City Barbeque.




blogging / photography / public transportation — 3 Comments
1
Apr 07

Some Metro Pictures from last year for Urban Bohemian



I just read Urban Bohemian’s blog entry about not being able to take photographs on the Metro. It seems utterly ridiculous that one can’t photograph a famous feature of DC with some nobody security guard vaguely citing 9/11 as an excuse. I did take some pictures of the Metro last year (early 2006), and no one told me I couldn’t do it. Being a tourist, I took a ton of pictures everywhere I went. I had to keep downloading the images into my computer because I simply filled my camera’s memory card every day that I was in DC.

There isn’t a subway system in San Diego at all, unless you count the Trolley stop at SDSU. The Metro is a part of Washington DC, and I don’t go there every day. In that situation, I was an out of towner and I wanted something to show for my rides on the Metro.

In the first picture to the left, there are few people. Not horribly busy, but enough to keep a bored security guard from trying to push someone around. I seriously doubt taking pictures is a serious security risk. The dedicated men and women who patrol Washington’s famous public transportation system should be more worried about someone trying to jump the baffle gates than if someone wants a picture of the station.

I took no pictures of anyone in particular that day. The second picture could have been taken anywhere, but the first and the last were taken at the Foggy Bottom station. I suppose the district name is a security risk, but anyone could have pulled it from a travel book. The stations look mostly alike until you emerge to ground level anyway.

Enjoy the pictures. Urban Bohemian, your post about security guard abuses made me righteously angry enough to post mine.

Now, I wonder if there’s a website where people took pictures inside the Corcoran. Illegal pictures, that is. That was one place where I was told I couldn’t take pictures, and there was an Andy Warhol exhibit.