Subj : Re: 3.5 weeks to being la
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : boraxman
Date : Sun Aug 07 2022 12:56:37

 pF>  bo> I preferred driving to uni than taking 3 buses, but a good rail syste
 pF>  bo> beats cars.
 pF> 
 pF> When I commuted into San Francisco, I had a couple of options.
 pF> 
 pF> There is an elevated electric train called BART that runs underneath the 
 pF> bay. Skips the traffic, but frequent brealdowns and packed cars.
 pF> 
 pF> I did a casual commute from across the bay. Drivers would pick up 2 
 pF> passengers, then get to use the free commute lane. Everyone wins. They'd 
 pF> drop off at the SF Transbay Terminal, a bus hub that was conveniently 1 
 pF> block from my office. I took a bus back home from that terminal that
 pF> dropped  me off a block from home. Cheap, effective, and they started
 pF> offering wifi.
 pF> 
 pF> Driving could be a nightmare - stop and go traffic in the morning going 
 pF> through the toll booth, and sometimes 45 minutes of bumper to bumper
 pF> traffic  to get onto the bridge.
 pF> 
 pF> The holy grail was the ferry service. Service was limited but ran
 pF> hourly. I  drove to the ferry terminal, then took a bus transfer; they'd
 pF> let you take  one bus ride per ticket to get into San Francisco.
 pF> 
 pF> Mornings they had coffee, bagels, and donuts. The evening commute had
 pF> beer  and wine. Sitting on the upper deck in the summertime with a drink
 pF> watching  the sun go down under the SF skyline was a highlight.
 pF> 
 pF> You had enough room that you could hunker down and get 40 minutes worth
 pF> of  work done - I arranged with my boss to get out of work an hour early
 pF> based  on working on the ferry.
 pF> 
 pF> 


Sounds pretty sweet, and a pretty good idea here.  Making the commute actually part of your working day.  We "work from home", so why now have "Work while you commute".  So even if you are commuting an hour each way, that hour could part of your working day if you are actually able to get work done.  Then when you're there, you can have your physical face to face meetings.

The set up you described sounds like it could be like that.

Designing cities so that we are forced to sink literal months and years of our leaves moving back and forth was one of the colossally stupid mistakes of human advancements, and we really need to push and say that it is NOT ACCEPTABLE to design cities in such a way that we are forced to do this.  And I say forced because we often don't have the means or option to live near where we work.

Henry Ford is burning in hell for making the automobile a 'mass consumer' product.  He did to transportation what Bill Gates did to computing, ruined it.

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