two and a half hours in transport, half an hour on site

We just got back from cousin Rick's show over at *Asterisk. We RTA'd from Archwood-Denison to Tremont. We spent half an hour in Tremont at the show. The rest of the time between 8 and 11 PM was spent getting there and getting out of there. We walked a lot from stop to stop to kill time. The public transit around here is not conducive to mobility in the evening hours.

Tremont is a walking neighborhood incredibly clogged with cars. The bus stop to the side of Parallax was filled with valet parking. If the bus ran reasonably often, fairly late, and were dependable, the parking problem would disappear.

Sitting grousing in the grimy, sticky bus stop, we came to the conclusion that the public transit system has no real advocates, especially among those who run it. If there were advocacy, enthusiasm, and a sense of urgency and now of dire necessity, the funding would not have been cut back as it has been. The RTA folk seem not to be connected; state and regional "leaders" consider them and their mission expendable, and certainly not as integral as an economic driver should be.

Our RTA execs can be counted on to do something quite well: They don't make waves. Because of this, they get a nice retirement from good jobs.