(The first in an experimental series in which Molly Ivors attempts to suss out the potential of public transportation to and from Liberal Mountain.)
The cold, hard, facts: A monthly bus pass costs less than a tank of gas.
Here on Liberal Mountain, we have two cars. One is a minivan which assures us it's a low-emission vehicle, but gets crappy gas mileage (about 20 mpg). It has a 26 gallon tank which, at current prices, costs us just over $100 to fill. We generally do so once or twice a week. The other is a small economy car which mostly belongs to the teen now. That gets slightly better mileage (about 30 mpg, on average), but also has a smaller tank. We generally spend about $50 filling that one weekly.
A bus pass for one adult for one month, entitled to bring up to three children free, is $35.
Of course, we live together and work together, and so can often travel together. According to Mapquest, the trip from the ocelot-infested wilds of Liberal Mountain is 15.68 miles. That's just over 30 miles roundtrip, so one gallon in the small car, one and one-half in the large one. $4-$6 dollars a day = $20-$30 a week = $89-$126 per month. That gets us to and from work, but it doesn't get lunch or shopping or anything else done. And as I noted, our monthly gas bill for the van is about $450, and for the small car about $225.
Another problem: the bus doesn't actually come here. We have two choices, then. We can either (a) call the rural route bus, which is like a jitney and runs $2 per adult, or (b) drive to a place where the bus will meet us, preferably a parking lot where we can leave the car all day, maybe at a shopping center or similar. There are two places I can think of off the top of my head: one, a strip mall with Wal-Mart and Sam's Club and Barnes & Noble and stuff like that; the other the local library. The strip mall is 9.15 miles from Liberal Mountain, the library is 8.3 miles. So getting to either of those would mean driving more than half the distance to work anyway.
The next county over also runs a bus to our campus, though on a much more limited schedule. It is 5.86 miles to that stop, but there's nowhere safe to park the car.
This summer, I will be conducting a series of experiments on the financial and environmental impact of these options. I'll also calculate in what one might call the PITA index, that is, how much of a pain in the ass this whole process is. I expect this to be pretty high: any of these routes means 2 transfers, one at the local university, and one downtown.
In doing so, I hope to bring to light some of the problems with our current public transportation system.