Saving The Planet, 3 Hours A Day

One in eight US workers now leaves for the job before 6 a.m., according to the story. It also says Americans waste 3.7 BILLION hours a year stuck in traffic jams, according to a 2005 study. (It's probably worse now.) Think of the lost productivity.

Believe me, I do think of the lost productivity - the lost time waiting to ride mass transit.

I leave for work before 6:00 a.m. every day. I leave at 5:45, and arrive at work twelve minutes later. How can I do this?  Easily: I drive.

Care to guess how long the same commute from my home to my job would take if I used mess transit?

Go ahead, take a stab at it. I'll wait while you do the math.

Done? Good. Let's take a look at what TriMet says:

Error
Sorry, TriMet cannot take you from SW TAYLORS FERRY RD & SW 62ND AVE to 4001 SW CANYON RD by 6:00 a.m.

Hmmm. Fancy that. A twelve minute drive, or.... Well, maybe I could talk the bosses into letting me arrive for work an hour late. Let's try that:

Sorry, TriMet cannot take you from SW TAYLORS FERRY RD & SW 62ND AVE to 4001 SW CANYON RD by 7:00 a.m.

Well, darn. That's one heck of an efficient transit system ya got there. Now, if I could talk the bosses into letting me arrive for work two hours late, we can get some results:

Walk west from SW Taylors Ferry Rd & SW 62nd Ave to SW Taylors Ferry & 62nd (Stop ID 5742)
6:39 a.m. Board 43 Taylors Ferry to Portland
7:18 a.m. Get off at SW Jefferson & 16th (Stop ID 3052)
7:23 a.m. Board 58 Canyon Road to Beaverton TC
7:24 a.m. Get off at SW Jefferson & 20th
Go to Goose Hollow/SW Jefferson St MAX Station (Stop ID 10117)
7:41 a.m. Board MAX Red Line to City Center & Beaverton TC
7:45 a.m. Get off at Washington Park MAX Station
Walk 0.4 mile southwest to 4001 SW Canyon Rd

Travel time: 78 minutes (including 12 minutes walking and 22 minutes waiting)

Well now. Let me see...would I rather drive for twelve minutes each way to get to and from work on time, or would I rather spend about an hour and a half each way to get to and from work two hours late? Which do you suppose is the more environmentally-friendly approach?

By all means, take mess transit if you wish. "Save The Planet" for us all. If it's all the same, I'm gonna drive.

Comments

[Jason McHuff]

First of all, if you were going to do the transit trip, you could walk from the 43 directly to the MAX station and board an earlier train, saving much time. In fact, if you did this, you could arrive by 6:45-7:00 as the first bus gets close to Goose Hollow at 6:37am. The fact that Lines 43 and others stop just short of the MAX station is one of the issues I have with TriMet.

Second, no complaining about how TriMet does not provide full early morning service. If they were to provide it, people would complain about it not being underused and not a good use of money.

Also, people who do take transit can rest, read the newspaper, etc and be productive during their commute. This is something that's not really safe to do while driving.

[Jason McHuff]

Also, from looking at Google Maps, transit isn't really a fair comparison to driving for your trip. The bus takes a local, "scenic" route and you are able to take the freeway or a more direct local street route (Oleson to Scholls Ferry).

And regarding that freeway, if it had to be paid for entirely with local taxes on vehicle use (and no "free" Federal money), it would either not have been built or be more expensive to use. Overall, if people had to pay for the real cost of road use, the price to drive would be much higher and transit would be much better and more well-used. See http://home.comcast.net/~jmchuff/subsidies.htm