By Cutting Rural Routes, Megabus Leaves a Void

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/by-cutting-rural-routes-megabus-leaves-a-void.html?ref=texas

Category: Infrastructure / public transportation

Level: State

This article concerns potential policies that affect individuals and families.

This article discusses the cutbacks in rural Texas communities by Megabus, a national interurban bus service.

My views:

Private companies are allowed to do whatever you need to do to cut costs and increase profits. I don’t harbor any enmity against Megabus, even though they still haven’t responded to my countless emails requesting that they add a San Marcos stop to their Austin to San Antonio route. If these routes aren’t making fiscal sense, they have an obligation to their investors and other customers to focus on improving other areas of service.

And that, in a nut shell, is why our country needs to expand its public transportation infrastructure. Privatizing roads, shuttle services, trains, etc. is not good for our country in the long run. It is propagating our culture’s dependence on cars. Many in our culture can no longer afford to buy, maintain, or fuel cars. There needs to be an alternative and it needs to be a public work.

I spent two years living in Austin without a car. With a bike and a voracious appetite for ridiculous novels, I did okay using the bus system. It still took an hour and a half to travel the six miles to campus and I was lucky enough to have a boyfriend and many other friends with cars to help me grocery shop and run other errands that required any type of hauling of stuff. I now have a car but, hand to the spaghetti monster, I would get rid of it today if there was an efficient and cost-effective route from Austin to San Marcos and if I could travel three miles by bus in Austin in less than an hour. People who live in rural communities don’t have these options and, with private companies pulling out of the area, they are left with fewer options. Let’s get trains going again, let’s create a public transportation infrastructure that allows people to move freely about our state without being tied to a gas-guzzling, paycheck-eating monster of a car.