Location Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: April 2008
You know, for all its varied minuses, I’m actually rather fond of public transportation.
Ferries, trains, buses, they all just kinda float my boat, especially the ferry, but that’s an awful pun so I’ll leave it at that.
Still, I very rarely use public transportation these day. It’s not just because I rarely leave the house (yay hermits!) but because the public transportation options are rather limited in this area.
Let’s see…
Ferry – not applicable, not enough water.
Buses – small local county bus, comes once an hour on weekdays and twice a day on the weekends. Goes to the local mall and not much else. Hmm… not too useful…
Train – Yeah, there’s a train station named after my small town. It’s two miles from the town itself, and no, there are no bus lines between the town and here. And yes, there is a major highway between the two as well, so walking and biking to it is rather challenging. Which is a real pity, as it does hook up to the Washington DC Metro, which is a somewhat decent system.
We could have more. There’s the population density to support a decent system. But the county is too rich.
Yes, rich.
The median income is $105,692, which means that exactly half of the people in the county earn $105,692 a year or more. Which means that just about everyone has a car. And the place is designed for people having cars. It’s really tough to get around without one. Now, the residential areas have nice sidewalks and are actually really nice places to go through. It was designed as an upscale area, after all. But the commercial areas, not so much. There are far too many highly trafficked roads to get to them safely on foot, and they were added long after the residential areas and don’t have the nice sidewalks.
So while I’d love to be able to take a subway or bus to the grocery store or the art supply store, I cannot. And I’ll continue using more wasteful personal transportation until I move to an area that does have a decent system. It’s very tragic, really.
