By Heidi Hope
(San Diego) — If you are a college student or a new career professional on a budget like me, you should be familiar with taking the bus and the trolley to get around. Transporting yourself is another living expense, whether it be taking the bus and the trolley or driving your own car.
From my own experience, taking public transit to school and work is a daily routine. It has been nice for me to protect the environment and the bank by using public transportation every day. Nevertheless, some ongoing obstacles that have come with public transportation are the bus running behind schedule and taking forever to pick up passengers.
A notorious experience I had was with bus route 115 at the SDSU stop to go to Grossmont College. This route came nearly two hours late at one point, which caused me to be late for class and miss the whole lecture. Due to this incident, I’ve had to withdraw from all of my in-person classes at Grossmont and only taken fully online classes, just to prevent the frustration of running late and missing out on the entire class session.
Now I am still anxious about taking this same route to go to Grossmont again, simply because I cannot tell for sure if this incident will repeat or not. There are still a few more in-person classes for me to take, but I have no other way to get there besides this route.
Additionally, according to this bus 115’s schedule, it shows that if you were to board this bus back to SDSU after 5 p.m., you would have to wait for exactly one hour to get picked up. How could anyone expect passengers to be waiting around at the bus stop that long after an exhausting day at school and work? This also raises potential safety issues, especially after dark in winter months.
There has got to be a solution to improve the scheduling for this specific route, so that students like me can efficiently take classes without stressing out about running late, missing out on a lecture, or how to get home in case of taking evening classes.
Furthermore, bus route one going to Fashion Valley and La Mesa has occasionally been behind schedule lately as well. I have recently had to wait for longer than ten minutes to get picked up, even though the bus stop for this route is right in front of my apartment. No matter how early I get out there, I still have to wait longer than expected.
There are pros and cons with both public transit and owning a car or other motor vehicle.
Riding the bus and the trolley is a great way to stay on budget, save money and gas along with going green and enjoying all the beautiful views through the window.
However, there are sadly a few buses around town that would bring these benefits to the dark side by having extremely long waiting times. Some buses make passengers wait between 30 minutes to an hour at the bus stop, and some even run behind schedules so that many passengers are late for school or for work.
Over the weekend, there are buses that sometimes never even show up, so many people end up having to call Lyft or Uber to get things done. These are situations that have made public transportation a recipe for daily frustration and concern for anyone that has to call a rideshare service or cab, spending more money in addition to the money already paid for a bus pass. This has happened to me.
There are places in San Diego that still do not have any steady bus access, such as Point Loma, Chula Vista, La Jolla and occasionally La Mesa. It would be very helpful for people in these areas to have constant access to both the bus and the trolley, so that they can better maintain their budget to get around without stressing out.
On the other hand, there are also pros and cons to owning and driving a car. The benefits are the freedom to get yourself places immediately without having to wait around for any driver to come to you, along with maintaining your privacy in your own vehicle without any disturbance by other riders.
The dark sides of having a car are the increasing gas prices, expensive annual insurance costs and maintenance fees such as oil changes and tire replacement, along with struggling to find parking spots, occasionally paying for parking, and most importantly, safety on the street to avoid crashes and injuries or worse.
Having access to all types of transportation is the best of both worlds. From my personal experiences after considering all aspects, I would still much prefer having consistent access to public transportation to go places. This is the best method for anyone who would like to save money on gas, maintenance fees and stay eco-friendly.
My biggest concern is how to fix the waiting time for these buses and the need for Metropolitan Transit Services (MTS) to provide more bus access all around San Diego in every single community, with consistent pickup times. That way everyone can drive less and ride public transportation more often to stay budget-friendly, reduce pollution from vehicles that contribute to climate change and maintain their commitments productively.
Overall, having access to all types of transportation is a great benefit, but I believe it would be financially healthier for many to have safe, steady and timely public transportation to be eco and budget-friendly without any concern about getting stuck in traffic or overspending their monthly budget on gas, vehicle maintenance or taxis during these tough economic times.
The views in this editorial reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine. To submit an editorial for consideration, please contact [email protected].