Regional Transportation Planning = Mass Transit - Another Solution

I can't tell you how hard it is to read about how regional transit authorities are NEVER for building roads or adding lanes to existing roads, but are ALWAYS commissioning studies for light rail, heavy rail, or monorails first; exotic buses - especially reticulated buses - second; and van pools third. The only way they will even mess with a road is to mess it up with multiple occupancy lane.

These so-called car pool lanes, honestly don't affect me, because I avoid rush hour like a blue-hair avoids a natural hair color. I take it back. It affects me when the wife and I are on the freeway on a weekend and the left lane is full of the aforementioned blue hairs -usually from another state, toodling along at 55 when the other lanes are free and clear.

Yo. Old dudes. The car pool lane is not mandatory. You will not get a ticket if you travel in the right lanes. And you will be flipped off a lot less.

But back to the plan. As soon as public policy starts herding people into the inner city, property values go up. Property values go up. The folks who had been living there, especially those who are renting, see real estate prices (and rents) go up, and they end up having to move to the next band out, but that's a different blog.

It so happens, I have a quick and guaranteed effective solution. It's going to be hard, but what solution to a massive public problem isn't? My solution? Big and boxy and yellow. School buses.

Well technically the school buses aren't the solution. After all, we already have school buses, right? The solution is to get those lazy, over-privileged, silver spooned, GAP-wearing, snot-nosed through pimply-faced punka$$ students ON them every GD morning. This would take tens of thousands of moms, at least a few hundred dads, dozens of graduated siblings without jobs and tens of thousands of driving age teeny boppers in decked out pickups or Bimmers OFF the road.

It's disgusting, really. If I happen to be driving to a meeting (one I obviously couldn't get out of) during school bus pick up time, and school is in session, it takes another 20 to 30 minutes to make the trek. An added annoyance is driving by small subdivisions and seeing dozens of SUVs and minivans and the occasional mom in sweats standing or sitting with their sweetums, waiting for the arrival of the school bus. But as I think about it, I'd rather see the sweetums waiting for a school bus than being driven to school by their over-indulgent parental unit(s).

We should MAKE (as in FORCE) ALL elementary, middle, and high school students ride the bus to and from school. Why aren't liberals all over this? When you take all the school pseudocommuters off the road, it's very much like a quasi-holiday where all government employees (including so-called educators, but that's another blog) are off. You take the hundreds of thousands of vehicles off the road, and that frees up a lot of space for everybody else.

I bet it even opens up seats on buses, light rail and van pools.