Today I attended two transportation events. This has nothing to do with my Low Car Diet except that thanks to it all my thoughts are pretty much permanently on the subject. First, I attended a fairly useless brown bag lunch where a speaker outlined federal and local sources of transportation project implementation funding. I was familiar with most of the sources, and fairly annoyed at the textbook (i.e. unrealistic) portrayal of our regional transportation agency, also know as our metropolitan planning organization, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. (You can view the SPC’s website here but, be warned, do not click the Project Region box…it’s scary.)
The second event was better. It was the cityLive! event for July: “Getting There…From Here: Transportation Solutions for Our Region.” The expert panel, including my boss, had some interesting things to say. A spin-off from the event is that organizers are asking the public to help in the creation of a regional integrated transportation plan by posting their ideas to a wiki. You can visit The CitiWiki Project here. Please contribute your ideas. It’s like monkeys with typewriters, eventually, we’ll get Shakespeare.
My travel today was not so much difficult as draining. After a week of extensive walking, I did my share today as well. I had a minor setback when my BlackBerry’s connection was down for a while and I had to remember which bus to take all on my own and I did miss one bus that I had intended to take. Otherwise, I was just moving slower than normal.
I look a lot of pictures today but thanks to Verizon, only these three (kind of gross ones) survived:
Finally, a moment on costs. In preparation for my new transit-based lifestyle, on Monday I bought a book of Zone 1 tickets from the Port Authority. That is $20.00 for 10 tickets. There is no deal here, the tickets just ensure that you always have the correct change. However, I need to admit poor judgment at the time of purchase. I chose the ticket route over purchasing a weekly pass for $20.00, which provides unlimited trips within the one week period. I would have saved tremendously with a weekly pass. To calculate, I have taken 23 transit trips this week. Now, some of them were transfers, which saved me $1.50 on those trips, but it’s clear that I spent more than I needed to by paying for individual trips rather than buying a pass. Let’s say that 5 of my trips were transfers- that would mean that I took 18 trips at $2.00 and 5 trips at $0.50. That comes to $38.50, which is significantly more than the cost of the weekly pass. Lesson learned.
Today’s tally:
Walked: ~7.5 miles (It’s no wonder I’m exhausted and hungry!)
Bussed: 7 trips
Carpooled: 2 trips
Drove: 0
