The golden age of transportation
When I led a bus tour along The Esplanade as part of Butte County Air Quality Management District’s “Spare the Air Week” earlier this month, I was asked to fill out a survey. One of the questions I was asked was what would it take for me to ride the bus more often.
In all honesty, I had to answer “not having a car.” It’s similar to what I would say if someone asked me what would induce me to go to a laundromat (not having a washer and dryer at home) or could I think of any reason I would use a public library computer (not having a computer at home).
In Chico, most people ride buses because they are either too disabled to drive or too poor to own a car. This is a great service, but most of us have decided we can get along without it.
When I lived in the East Bay, I took the bus to school and rode the BART train to San Francisco. Public transportation makes sense in large, densely populate metropolitan areas with heavy traffic and high parking fees. But Chico isn’t like that. It’s relatively small and compact and traffic and parking problems aren’t bad enough to induce us to stop driving. I know a few commuters ride the bus to work, but I can’t imagine people using it for grocery shopping unless they don’t have access to a car.
One of Chico’s myths is that there was a golden age of transportation in the early 20th century. You could ride electric trains anywhere in the city and get connections to Sacramento and Oakland. People did this because they didn’t
have cars. Their only other choices were walking, riding on a horse or riding in a carriage pulled by a horse. When they got cars, they abandoned the train system.
For better or worse, we are living in the golden age of transportation. Our cars take us anywhere we want, anytime we want. We may feel nostalgic about trains and buses, but we value the freedom of movement that our own wheels offer us.