Our Buses are Broken

The Public Transit Struggle is Real

My car’s name is Rosie The Riveted. She is beloved, faithful, and she flaunts her “Women For Obama” sticker with incredible flair. She has been my traveling companion for almost six years, and she has watched me grow up.

You can imagine, then, how devastating it was when, one day, she was no longer able to take me on adventures. I needed a new distributor for my car, but I couldn’t afford it. Suddenly, I was without a car.

Now, I’ve lived pretty much my entire life in the Midwest, which I think we can all agree, is not a hub of public transit. During my formative years in Oklahoma and Missouri, however, I never needed to use the bus — I had parents, or friends who like to car pool, or my personal transit system, Rosie.

When my boyfriend and I moved to Pittsburgh, we didn’t necessarily expect that we would need to use the bus system regularly, but we thought that it would be a valid and dependable option if we found ourselves in a jam. A jam similar to the one we were in for a few weeks.

Boy, were we wrong.

To be completely honest, I have very limited experiences with public transit. When I visit New York City, I use the bus and subway regularly, and am quite pleased with their reliability. The one time I went to Boston, which was years ago, I remember thinking that I could see myself using their public transportation daily, and being very happy.

I will admit that both Boston and New York City were founded about 130 years before Pittsburgh, and had more time to develop their public transit systems. Boston and New York City also have larger populations than Pittsburgh, which means the infrastructure of the public transit systems would have to be larger and better to transport all of those people around. This problem isn’t localized, though. It is found on a national level.

Having been forced to use Pittsburgh’s Port Authority in order to get to work every day for just a few weeks, I can tell you that it is not reliable, nor should anyone have to depend on it to get where they are trying to be, especially if they want to be there on time.

I spent two and a half weeks taking the bus to work. Twice I watched the bus I was waiting for drive right past me at the stop. 7 out of 10 times I was waiting over 25 minutes for a bus that was supposed to come around every 15. They were consistently late, and sometimes they never showed up at all. Almost every day I made it to work with mere minutes to spare, and was often late.

I have a car now, thanks the generosity of my boyfriend’s family (a PT Cruiser named Tortuga). My time spent at the mercy of the Pittsburgh bus system was short-lived, but there are many who depend on it every day; getting to doctor’s appointments, going to work, picking up their kids, shopping, everything.

Why is this happening?

There are many issues wrapped up in access to/quality of public transit. I’ll talk about the ones that are most obviously harmful to our society.

The most visually noticeable problem is that the demographic most often riding the bus is low-income people-of-color. As if our white, patriarchal culture didn’t already make it more difficult for everyone else, it is also harder for them to get to where they need to be.

When you get on a bus, you see an incredible representation of the socioeconomic gap present in American society.

In fact, people who drive alone in their cars to work make, on average $4,314 more a year than bus riders.

This gap has created a culturally dangerous stigma around bus-riding, and not just in Pittsburgh. A few years ago in Tempe, Arizona, a new bus route started going through a predominantly white area. Neighbors complained that the line was going to attract serial killers, child rapists, bums, drunks, and Mexicans. (If you’ve been following American politics lately, this narrative will be all too familiar.)

The unreliability within the Pittsburgh bus system (and most likely many other cities) puts those who use the bus as their only form of transportation at an inherent disadvantage. They are stuck at the bus stops for way too long, and/or are late to work/doctor’s appointments/daycare. They are put through this simply because they either can’t afford anything else, or they are making a conscious effort to cut down on their environmental impact.

Which brings me to my next point.

If America wants to make any significant change in the direction of saving planet Earth from climate change, we need to catch up with the rest of the western world and fix the problem of public transportation.

It might not surprise you to know that the people who are most concerned with the environment are not actually the people who are primarily riding the bus. Despite the fact that public transit is proven to improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save energy, it is still an incredibly unappealing option to people who can afford something else.

If you are struggling to feed your family or pay rent, you are probably not thinking about your carbon footprint — understandably.

Hopping on a bus or catching the subway should be an easy way to be more environmentally sustainable on your way to work. Instead, it is a painful, disorganized process that is stigmatized and relegated to those who slip through the cracks of our society.

I don’t know what the solution is.

I don’t even know where to begin. What I do know is that we need to start coming up with solutions and implementing them. Some of the things I had ample time to think about on the bus are:

• Putting more buses on the streets to pick up some of the slack
• Make public transit free
• Incentivize transit to encourage a more diverse ridership
• Make all buses electric to attract the environmentalist crowd
• Simplify bus routes so people aren’t making a 60 minute commute to somewhere that’s a 15 minute drive away

I’m not the only person trying to come up with solutions to this massive problem, of course. There are those in the private sector who are trying to make some kind of difference. Specifically, Elon Musk.

In 2013, Musk announce his intent to build the Hyperloop; a solar-powered, city to city light rail system designed to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. Musk says it would be cheaper than flying, and would cost less to build than a regular train system.

This has not been built yet, and Musk has only just begun talking about a test track, but he seems to be doing more than the Department of Transportation when it comes to having good ideas.

These are just a few options, and they might not even work. We have to start somewhere, though, and something needs to change. Not everyone has a Rosie or a Tortuga to fall back on, and they shouldn’t have to.