🚀 go-pugleaf

I too am pretty unhappy about the gas prices in California. I haven't gotten
the impression that the reason we currenlty have high gas prices had anything
to do with more money for public transportation. I'm not sure what its due to-
but I don't think its that. If so is it a Calif thing or a federal thing? if
federal why does the south (GA was mentioned) have cheap gas prices? 

As for public transportation.... I've seldom been able to use it any where I
lived and workd or attended shcool. it was either too expensive to live where I
could take public transportation to work or there wasn't housing available for
my lifestyle (dogs=yard). When I was a grad student in Hawaii I lived about 3
miles from campus and would have had to take three buses to get there at a time
cost of about 45 minutes. I could drive in 5. The cost of parking plus gas was
less than the cost of the bus. When I lived in Northern VA I was 6 miles from
wlrk and woul dhave had to take a bus to the metro and two metro lines (or was
it three) to another bus to get to work at a cost about 10X what it cost me to
drive and about 10x the time. Even in bad Beltway traffic. And to top it off-
in the snor or rain I'd have had to walk about 1/3 mile through the Navy base I
worked on to ge tto my office. Where I live now there simply isn't any public
trans that goes any where near where I work. I coulnd't find any housing really
close (and besides the location of my job just moved 20 miles in November. Once
when I lived in San Jose CA and worked in palo Alto there was an express bus
that stopped several miles from my house and then right in fornt of where I
worked. It was only a little mroe time (maybe 7-10 minutes a day) and the cost
wans't too bad. So I drove to the bust stop and took the bus to work. That job
accounted for <1 year in the past 12 when I could reasonably take a bus to
work. the live near wher eyou work is a great idea when it can be done- but it
usually can't or you change jobs and don't want to or can't affrod to move. The
greates public transportation disaster, IMHO, is the BART system in the S
Francisco Bay area as it related to Santa Clara County. SC county has been
paying a 1/2 percent sales tax for BART for about 25 years now and it still
doesn't come into the county. Nor, for that matter does it go to the SF
airport. The DC metro system doesn't go to Dulles airport either. In fact I
recenlty had to travel about 60 miles to get from Virginia to the Baltimore
airport. Here's how I did it... walked 1 block to bus station, waited, took bus
(50cents) to metro took metro to train station ($3.10) and had to change trains
once, took train ($14.00) to airport bus shuttle, took bus to airport. A total
of 3 hours. I could have driven it it less than one. I could have driven it for
about 2 gallons worth of gas or $18 worth of miles (using feder gas
reimbursement of .30/mile)

It all comes down to money. Id support US'ers paying the full cost for gasoline
but not the gas companies soaking Californians (and apparently texans) but not
Georgians.

OK enough of that soapbox.
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Lynn  email: joly@mbari.org