CUTTING PUBLIC TRANSIT

The Gold Country Stage bus service is being extinguished by a systematic, unrelenting infliction of a Thousand Cuts(as in Imperial China's torture regime): by reducing services areas and number of runs; by abolishing entire routes and emasculating others; by changing schedules and eliminating evening and Saturday service; and by increasing fares by fifty percent! As of the May 4, 2009, service cuts, our local bus service is headed toward extinction.

It appears evident that decision makers, our community oracles, who determine the status or fate of bus service in western Nevada County, have difficulty empathizing with people who do not share their emphasis on motor vehicle ownership and are not beholden to its concomitant dependencies and preoccupations. People of whom they know nothing about, except that they are quite different than themselves.

With a smile on my face, I can think that automobile addiction or mindset is a kind of pandemic disease, like Swine Flu(H1 N1)for example, for which there is no known cure. Understanding why anyone would use public transit when they could drive a luxury motor vehicle would be a daunting task.

The May Fourth cuts seem to reflect the disconnect suggested above. Collectively, the cuts impose a death sentence upon our humanitarian-oriented local bus service. I suspect the fear of creeping socialism also is a factor. Anything that promotes the notion of "all for one, and one for all" has to be crushed. The cuts affect real people: workers getting to work and back home; students; grocery shoppers; expectant mothers and seniors who want to get around town, but in a kinder and gentler manner than do automobile owners. Of course, there are many other needs and purposes for having bus service.

Even before the Prince of Privatization, President Reagan, pushed the agenda, anti-government forces were active in shrinking government and eliminating public services. After all, Nevada County has long since replaced Orange County as the bastion of neoconservative ideology and power in California. In this county, populist concepts of commons and covenants between people and their government are highly suspect.

With that said, I am still baffled by deep cuts in our local bus system during an increasingly severe economic depression, when the need for public transit is on the rise, when jobs matter and our local environment and quality of life are so badly degraded by a plague of motorized beasts. In this light, the May Fourth action virtually decapitates bus service and furthers community decline.

To the credit of the Transportation Committee, bus management, that had initially advocated wholesale termination of Routes 2, 6 and 8, was required to salvage some aspects of those routes; however, the skeletal service that remains is a service in name only; for riders, perhaps a majority, will have to find other means of getting about town and beyond. With the changes, my use of Route 2 has come to a virtual dead end. Its very limited schedule does not come close to meeting my needs. My companion will probably have to ride her bicycle to work!

Since May Fourth, patron anger is running deeply. It's lucky for politicians sitting on the Transportation Committee that the May 19 Elections do not include candidates! But, the time will come! Riders are reconsidering purchasing monthly bus passes. Although service has been cut to the bone, price of the pass remains the same! Why pay more for less? I certainly will not! And, I am walking, more out of necessity, because of inadequate service, but as protest, too. If the ship is sinking, why stick around? I'd rather donate some gas money to a friend who offers me a ride, than throw money down a rat hole.

Unfortunately, my disposition had soured when the Committee at the January hearing talked about the bicycle solution. Politicians have a studied spiel on placing responsibility on individuals to find their own means for getting about. They distract attention from where the responsibility truly lies. The chant about bicycles went on and on; and I asked myself, "When did I last see anyone on this committee ride a bicycle around town?" I got out of my seat and left the hearing. Subsequently, I had a dream, or was it a nightmare? There was a bicycle Critical Mass of late term expectant mothers, octogenarians and other former bus patrons descending upon the Transportation Committee members and demanding that they ride bicycles! What's good for the goose....