doodledee

There's been a bus strike going on here in Minneapolis for something like 28 days now. I'm pretty sure that's 'actual days' and not just 'business days', but I can't be sure because I don't know if it's fair to count Saturdays and Sundays when the busses run so infrequently that there's no way anybody could actually ride them. I'll have my intern check on that.

Anyway, the strike hasn't been pretty. It hasn't been pretty because it's forced Twin Citians to talk honestly about transit, which is something a lot of people don't like to do. They'd rather speak in big, sweeping generalizations that are impossible to prove or disprove and say things like "without our bus system, the highways will be the biggest hornet's nest you've ever seen" or "shut 'em down, only rich people from Edina ride the busses anyway".

Go figure, the truth falls somewhere in between. Sure, some of us cake-eating Edina folk ride the bus, but it turns out plenty of other people do, too. And - uh, oh - lots of those other people also happen to have lower incomes and/or be unable to drive, so they can't just fire up their Jeeps and go to work when the busses stop rolling. So maybe, just maybe, the transit system is providing rides to people who actually *need* them. (Albeit expensive rides, depending on which math you believe.)

What's worse, the bus drivers brilliantly scheduled their strike during spring break season, so that, most of the time, the freeways have been hellasmooth-sailing. Seriously. I've driven 75 55 every day this week. Can you say utopia? ATTENTION MORON UNION LEADERS: that was wicked bad planning - "buses reduce congestion" is now an invalid argument. And it also means that all the people in the suburbs who don't take the bus lost interest in this issue after 10 minutes.

I want to be clear that I'm all for the busses. And bike paths. And light rail when/if they ever build it in a place where people who live here might actually ride it. (Hint: I don't need to go from downtown to the airport all that often and neither do lots of other people who live here.) I'm for all of it. But I'm for it on a quality of life, vibrant city, pro-environment, philosophical mumbo-jumbo basis, not for any 'real' reason.

And I want to be clear that just because I'm for alternative transit options that it doesn't mean I'm necessarily taking the drivers' side. I've barely read what their beef is, but I'll go out on a limb and guess it has to do with insane health care premiums or something. Fascinating.

Why doesn't somebody hold a pro-transit rally that doesn't imply solidarity with the strikers? I bet they'd get beat-up by union thugs, that's why. Damn union thugs.

But now that I'm clear, I'll also say that the bus system sucks. It sucks because they keep raising prices. It sucks because there aren't enough busses and they run too infrequently. It sucks because when you finally do get on one, it stops EVERY BLOCK which is simply insane and makes your ride take FOREVER if you're going any serious distance. It sucks because it's fractionalized between the suburbs and the city and it doesn't make any sense and it destroys any sense of metro-community. I've seen Mid East peace plans that had simpler boundary lines.

It also sucks because it trashed the awesome streetcar system, but that's another issue.

Maybe some other time I'll write about how to fix it. (Hint: personal helicopters)

After 22 days, neither side blinking in bus strike [strib] [last week]