The Perfect Time To Beef Up Our Public Transportation Systems

There is a lot of work to be done, now that more people are becoming receptive to the idea of public transportation

We are in a blessing in disguise situation right now. The lockdown for the past year and a half, has presented us with a golden opportunity to reinvent the transportation options for our urban, suburban, and even our exurban areas. There is a gradual decrease in the population density, as you get further away from the city center, with clusters located near the major arteries into the city. While there are folks that love the idea of living in a city with all the conveniences, there are folks that like the idea of having peace and quiet, and like the idea of having a lot of land. I say to each his own. My preference would be to live in the city if I could afford to do so. Right now I am in a compromise, a middle ring suburb of Washington, DC. Unfortunately, along with that financial compromise, comes a public transportation compromise. Putting it plainly, the public transportation options in Prince George’s County, Maryland, suck!

The $10,000 question (remember that TV show?) is: How do we get those middle suburban, outer suburban, and exurban families to use public transportation (PT) when they come into the city center, or to the middle and inner ring suburbs for most of their activities, instead of driving their own personal vehicles? This is a question that has vexed urban planners for years, if not decades. The first thing we have to do is we need to start creating viable alternatives to the automobile that will be palatable to those that have chosen to live in our suburban and rural areas. Not everyone wants to live in the city. If you don’t like it, too bad. That is their choice. You do believe in personal choice, right? Suck it up! People that live in suburban and rural areas drive cars, SUVs, and trucks. If they drive a Prius, fine. If they drive a Hummer, also fine. That is their business, and they are exercising their right to choose. Again, suck it up!  Oh, and the gradual switch from cars powered by internal combustion engines, to fully electric vehicles does nothing to decrease the number of cars on the road. A million Teslas on the road is still a million cars worth of rush hour congestion. I am predicting that that congestion will be slightly better, with more of the former commuter white collar workers, continuing to work from home. That being said, there are still going to be a large component of the downtown workforce that will go back to the office. They need to get there. If there is sporadic bus service, like there is here in College Park, Maryland, they are going to either drive to the Metro and park, or drive all the way to downtown Washington, DC. There has to be an incentive not to drive into the city.  

In order to encourage suburbanites and exurbanites to use Metro rather than driving, there needs to be either free or reduced parking at the Metro stations. I'll go with free. Free is always a better incentive. If Metro offered free parking during the week, those quarter full parking lots and garages at the stations would be full, and there would be a lot less cars driving into the city.

In order to increase its bus ridership, especially in the commuting bedroom community suburbs, Metro needs to improve its bus service, both feeding the Metro stations, as well as the major routes into the city. If I could walk the two blocks out to Baltimore Avenue from my house and catch a bus that ran every 15 minutes or less, and ran until at least midnight or better yet, 2 or 4 AM, I would be able to get rid of one, or possibly both of my cars. Not only that, since the bus comes every 15 minutes or less, I wouldn’t need to consult a timetable, and plan my activities accordingly. The rest of the time when I couldn’t use public transportation, which is rare, I could either rent one for the day, use one of the car share services, or take an Uber. 

The automobile is part of American culture. Whether or not we approve is irrelevant. It’s not going to change. In order to entice, and notice I said entice and not force people out of their cars, which is a goal of some of the more militant anti-car people, there has to be a better alternative to driving, and it has to be quite a bit better in cost, frequency, reliability, and safety. If not, people are going to drive.

There was a time when you had urban areas and rural areas. Yes, there were some suburbs, but they were small clusters of homes and small businesses along the major routes into the cities. Some of them were called towns, and some incorporated into becoming their own cities. These areas became the suburbs as time went on. Density also occurred along the rail and interurban lines that ran into the cities. A lot of it was part of the incorporated towns and cities. As the automobile became more popular, the density started to spread out away from the transportation route corridors. The trend started before the second world war. It was basically on hold during the war, but when the soldiers came home and married their high school or college sweethearts, they “got busy,” and low and behold 9 months later was the start of the baby boom in good old 1945. Over the next 15 years or so, the suburbs started to fill up with lots of single family housing developments for all those new families. Suburban sprawl was now ingrained in our American culture.

The American Dream of owning your own piece of the national pie became a reality, thanks to the GI Bill, VA loans, and developers who saw the $$$$$$$ in building those affordable,

“little boxes of different colors all made out of ticky-tacky, and which all look just the same,”

according to the song writer Malvina Reynolds, writing about suburban sprawl. Because the price of a gallon of gasoline was so cheap, the automobile became the main source of conveyance between the “ticky-tacky,” the office, and the suburban strip mall.

When I first moved to DC, I was able to experience the pleasure of living in a nice, safe neighborhood, that was a mix of single family homes, duplexes, row houses, and old style garden apartments. I lived in a really nice old one bedroom apartment that was less than 3 blocks from the Takoma Metro station. I was able to put less than 4,000 miles per year on my car. I was a drummer/percussionist with the United States Air Force Band. I would drive to various music jobs with my drums, but for the most part, including going into the base for rehearsals, I would use Metro and the bus. I got married, and my wife had a daughter by a previous marriage. The rules in my apartment complex were, “No kids, no pets.” That was very common in the DC area at the time. We bought a house in the suburbs, because it was the best compromise when it came to schools, ease of getting to the Beltway for my commuting to the various military bases in the area (using public transportation to the various military bases would now be time prohibitive. Unfortunately it was back to a car commute), and my wife’s ability to take either the Metro, the bus to the Metro, or the MARC commuter train into the city. The only problem is we are over a mile from the nearest Metro station. Fortunately at the time, the buses ran when she could use them, because she worked downtown during regular business hours. Unfortunately, over the years, that bus service has been cut back, rather than increased. Of course, the County Council is still “looking into it.”

We are still in the same house 40 years later. However being Prince George’s County, the public transportation options haven’t improved in years. I can drive from my house to Catholic University in 20 minutes. If I take the bus and the Metro, it can take up to an hour and a half. If I’m attending a function or religious service that ends after 5 pm, I’m not going to be able to get home on the rail and the bus. That’s not good public transportation.

I spend a lot of time in that Brookland area near Catholic University. Around that area, you have Metro that runs until midnight, and there are buses that run until at least 2 AM. I’m a mile and a half walk from the nearest Metro station, and the buses stop running north of Mount Rainier, MD, or east of the Langley Takoma Transit Center after 9 pm during the week, and even earlier on Saturday and Sunday. That means from 4,000 miles per year on the car, to 15,000 miles per year on the car. 

My theory about why the public transportation system in Prince George’s County is the worst in the DC metro area, is not because PG County is majority Black and they are being discriminated against, despite what the race hustlers would like you to believe. It’s because a large percentage of Blacks that move to the suburbs, are distancing themselves from as much of the urban culture as they can. That includes riding the bus. They are going to drive. Along with that, you have a White working class culture that refuses to use public transportation. Why? Because, driving separates you from “those people,” giving you a demented sense of superiority. Unfortunately, it’s a remnant of Jim Crow. Fortunately, it’s disappearing on its own. But that’s not why the bus service is horrible. It’s because the County Council and Metro don’t want it to be better. I’ve mentioned it to our councilwoman on more than once occasion, and she said, “Yes, we know it’s a problem. We are looking into it.” Well, they’ve been “looking into it,” for the past 30 years! If you are middle class and you live along the Route 1 corridor, you are going to need a car, if you live past Mount Rainier. 

I know a guy who had to borrow a friend's car for a week, when he had jury duty. You can’t get to the county courthouse in Upper Marlboro, MD by public transportation, in time for your jury report time. In Montgomery County, which is next door, there are plenty of buses that run early in the morning, and the county courthouse is walking distance from the Metro. Why can’t they do that in PG? You should be able to get to the county seat by public transportation. 

Because PG is the last bastion of affordable housing in the DC area, the county is starting to gentrify. There are a lot more college educated, professional class people moving into PG. They can’t afford to buy in the city or in Montgomery or Fairfax Counties. The old redneck Prince George’s County, is getting a lot less rednecky. There are also a lot of infill apartment complexes being built along the Route 1 corridor. That increases the need for much  better bus service that feeds Metrorail, but also provides main artery bus service too. It’s time to stop “looking into it.” 

Our cities are starting to wake up again, following the year and a half lockdowns. People that live in the city and people that either commute into the city for work, or come into the city for all the wonderful things cities offer, need to get from point A to point B. Do we want the majority of those folks to drive into the city? No. Do we want them to drive to the nearest Metro station, park their cars, and take public transportation into the city? Absolutely! What’s the best way to entice them to the parking garage at the Metro station? Offer free parking. 

I know there are critics who say that free parking only encourages people to drive. Yes, that is true. However, if there is no viable bus service near your home that takes you to the Metro station, your options are either drive into the city, or drive to the Metro and pay to park. The $5.20 per day parking fee at the Metro station, while a lot lower than the $15 and up parking fee that you pay downtown, is still a big obstacle standing in the way of more people taking public transportation. For many, paying $5.20 per day to park, and then spending $6 each way for the Metro, means a cost of $17.20 per day to commute into the city. That’s $344 per month. People don’t average the price they pay at the pump into the equation. They only see $17.20 as opposed to $15. As we transition to electric cars over the next 20 years, that’s going to become even more apparent. Free parking at a station like Shady Grove, where there are a lot of commuters that drive there, park their cars and grumble about the parking fee, just might mean that the parking garage would be full instead of about a quarter full. $6 Metro fare each way X 5 days = $120 per month as opposed to $344. That’s a huge difference.

We will never get everyone out of their own personal cars, but we can offer viable alternatives that will get people out of their cars for a lot of their daily lives. That means the controversial subject of free parking at the Metro stations, as well as the non-controversial subjects of increasing bus service, and extending the hours of the buses and the trains to 24/7/365. Overall, people are becoming more receptive to the idea of using public transportation. Let’s encourage them out of their cars with nice, clean, reliable buses and trains, and bus stops that are protected from the weather. No one wants to stand out in the rain, waiting for a bus that comes once per hour. Eventually, I would like to see all bus stops having an electronic display that shows you when the next bus is coming. Actually, the bus should run frequently enough that you wouldn’t even need to look at the bus arrival electronic sign.  Remember what they said in the movie “Field Of Dreams”? “If you build it, they will come.” Let’s build it!