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10. Rolling

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I last drove a car in late September 1966. I’m transit dependent. Because of that, I’m not (to myself, at least) an authentic southern Californian. And my status as a permanent guest in your country of wheels, allows me, the foreigner, to be dispassionate about you who are drivers, about the insults you take and give to one another, about the imperfect infrastructure that sustains your forward motion (always at risk), and the pleasures, also, of your momentum, your command and your wheels’ response. I wonder if you know how impressive you are in those maneuvers. Heroic in a way, in that moment. Every one of you a Gatsby, and I’m along for the ride.

On the bus (on all the permutations of public transit in L.A., on what was painfully called the “Rapid Transit District” between 1964 and 1993), there aren’t many moments like those. Sometimes, though, there is the feeling of conveyance, a feeling that the world is being moved on your behalf, which is nothing like riding in a car.

Gas prices, frustrating traffic, “transit oriented development,” and density mandates are supposed to get you out of your car and on to public transit (this is the logic behind state legislation adopted n 2006 and expanded earlier this year that links higher density in existing neighborhoods to a 2% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020). Except there’s your car. I’ve been in your car (it may even have a beaten up Volvo, an eight-year old Camry, or a new Prius). Your car accommodates itself to you - from lumbar support to drink holder to AC to audiophile sound system. Even as a passenger, as a perpetual tourist there, your car shelters, swaddles protectively, shuts out, soothes. It embraces. I wouldn’t give it up, if your car were mine. (You know where this is going.) These comforts are not offered on the bus/light rail/subway. (Although some of them are available, as an artifact of transportation history, on MetroLink trains.) It’s against the law, in fact, to do much of what you might do in your car (drink a coffee, eat a taco, play your music, smoke). And what could be offered to passengers - frequent service, comfortable seats, better interior maintenance, reliable air conditioning and heating - is deliberately withheld for reasons of economy and efficiency. For reasons, too often, having to do with the color and condition and eligibility to vote of the people in those thin, hard, cramped seats.

They will stay thin, hard, and cramped for a long time. Between the late 1980s and 2003, MTA sold off its buses and rail cars to banks and other investors (providing an infusion of cash) and then leased their rolling stock back. The transaction was facilitated through the insurance giant AIG. AIG, nationalized in September, is in no position now to be MTA’s guarantor, putting the deal in technical default. MTA must find another player or pay investors hundreds of millions of dollars now. According to the MTA's chief financial officer, the transit agency will cut service if a new deal isn't signed soon. And MTA just lost $133 million in state transportation funds in the meltdown of the California budget.

I ride the bus because I must and I find the satisfactions I can there. They’re as real to me as your ergonomically-designed driver’s seat is to you. I’d welcome you aboard to share them with me, but this bus is packed already with riders standing in the aisle, and the next bus is an hour away (and it doesn’t run at all on Saturday and Sunday).

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user LA Wad. It was used under Creative Commons license.

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