Local Transportation

New Yorkers are losing patience with the snow. The prepared, rallied to meet the crisis, and now they’re just getting mad as hell because it’s still inconveniencing them.

Traffic, which is exciting in the best of times, is now frustratingly slow for drivers who find that instead of 3 or 4 lanes, the have half that – and half a lane is considered by many to be more than enough. Of course, some of those are starting to be blocked off with barricades for the New Years festivities.

Drivers also find that, while a snowplow may have, “. . . . been run down every street,” as the Mayor claims, the streets are most assuredly NOT clear, especially if they’re side streets in industrial areas. Even if they are, it just takes one person to gum up traffic for blocks.

That’s a lot of responsibility on some people.

One discovery that I’ve made in all of this is that the horn on a car is to make sure that people know they’re being sworn at, even if they don’t speak your language.  If you don't speak, say Turkish or Mandarine Chinese or Pakistani and someone is yelling at you for your stupidity, you might not fully comprehend the facial expressions and hand gestures, assuming they are a local custom from that person's land of origin.  Accompany those things with a car horn, though, and there's little need for context or syntax.  The meaning is immediately apparent.

The subways are running normally, at least as best we can tell. City buses, on the other hand, still have issues.

Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon we decided to try a cross-town bus, just to have the experience and because we hadn’t tried the bus system yet. They take the same MetroCards as the subway, and you’re supposed to be able to get transfers between them so you can get from one place to the other without having to repay the fare.

This apparently involves standing in line to get a transfer, though, as best we could tell.

We just wanted to ride a few blocks because we were tired of walking. So we found the stop for our bus, saw the schedule that said a bus would be there roughly every seven minutes and waited.

20 minutes later, the M-42 came by going the right direction. OK, we’ll give them a bit of slack because of the weather and the traffic. They said on TV there might be delays.

The driver shouts out to the waiting crowd, “This bus is ending at 8th Avenue. If you’re going further than that, you should wait for the next bus.”

We were, so we did.

For about 30 minutes. That schedule posted on the sign is apparently about as fictional as the lane lines painted on the roadway. It’s puffery designed to lure you into a false sense of security, just like the delusion that if you call 311, someone will actually address the issue about which you are concerned.

The bus finally got there, though, and we climbed on and swiped our card.

Nothing happened, at least until we were told by the driver that the card only had 50 cents on it.

Bus fare was $2.35.

Each.

We were put off the bus, getting “those looks” from all the other people who were already on (and it was packed) and those behind us in line, whom we had to squeeze past to get back off.

It’s every bit as humiliating as going through the checkout line in the grocery store on a busy Saturday morning, only to have your card declined and no cash in your pocket.

You want to say, “Wait, there must be a mistake,” but nobody around you believes it and they just want you to get the heck outta the way. You didn’t have enough money, probably living beyond your means – if you’da planned better, you’d have bus fare.

It’s always the ones with the nice clothes and electronics hangin’ off ‘em who don’t have money to pay for essentials. They probably got beer in the fridge and cigarettes on the table, too.

So we slunk off the bus, because they don’t sell passes on the bus and you can’t pay in cash. You got to have a magic card.

After that, we walked down a couple of blocks to the subway station and bought more rides on our card. The station was packed, and full of people who were buying a single ride ticket.

At first, this didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. The lines are long, and it's something of a hassle to get the card filled for each ride.  After all, most of us don’t just put one gallon of gas in the car when that’s our mode of transport. Why not buy a ticket that will last a while instead of the single ride thing?

Then it hit – you DO buy just one gallon of gas if that’s all the money you have. It’s the 30th of the month. For lots of people on public transportation, there ISN’T money to buy more than that single ride, at least not until the first of the month hits in a few days.

Many of the subways will be free over the New Years holiday, so they can squeeze out a bit more value in the transportation budget that way.  Otherwise, they'll either be staying home or walking a lot.

There’s a dose of reality you might not run into every day.

After we got out of the subway station, we found another bus stop.

And waited.

After 30 minutes, we decided that we were tired of standing around, and it was just easier to walk home so we headed that way.

But from now on, we’ll keep a tighter reign on how much money is on our MetroCard – and might be a bit more patient if someone ahead of us doesn’t have enough on theirs for a ride.